Focus on intelligent urbanisation
The international trade fair for water, sewage, waste and raw materials management IFAT 2014 opened in Munich today. "The great and continuously rising interest in this event clearly proves the increasing importance of innovative engineering in sectors such as water, sewage, waste and resource management", Parliamentary State Secretary Pronold stressed at the opening session. With almost 3,000 exhibitors from different countries, IFAT is the largest environment technology fair worldwide. This year's focus is on intelligent urbanisation.
Although cities only take up 2 percent of the world's land surface, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities or urban agglomerations - in Germany the figure is 74 percent. Worldwide two-thirds of energy consumption, 60 percent of water consumption and 70 percent of all CO2 emissions can be attributed to cities.
Florian Pronold stressed: "Worldwide cities and their environs are constantly coming up against new challenges. A rising population, structural change in demographics and the economy and the impacts of climate change are among these challenges. Intelligent concepts for integrated and sustainable urban development combined with innovative engineering geared towards improving resource efficiency and reducing the environmental burden are the order of the day". At the same time Florian Pronold underlined that sustainable development of rural areas must not be neglected since there is a need to open up opportunities for people in these regions and thus counteract migration into cities.
As in 2012, the Federal Ministry for the Environment and Building was represented at IFAT 2014 with two stands. A stand in Hall A5 on the Environmental Innovation Programme energy-efficient wastewater treatment plants and international water resources management as well as a stand in Hall B2 on waste and life-cycle management. The stands were set up in cooperation with the German Water Partnership, the German RETech Partnership, the Association of Engineers (VDI ZRE), GTaI, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Federal Environment Agency (UBA).