International, continental and marine waters are threatened by the overexploitation of natural resources and the cumulative effects of climate variations and human activity (various pollutants, particularly chemical) on ecosystems.

They may be shared between several States, which further complicates conflicts of uses, or be located beyond areas of national jurisdiction, on the high seas, where the exploration and exploitation of mining resources and deep-sea fishing pose an increasingly perceptible threat.
 

To contribute to improving the management of these international waters, FFEM focuses on integrated approaches and supports projects which give a prominent role to cooperation between States, strengthen measurement networks and monitoring systems, and contribute to reducing sources of pollution.

FFEM operates in the fields of both continental waters (surface water or groundwater) and marine waters.

For both of these fields, FFEM seeks to support the implementation of integrated water resources management policies:

• Integrated Water Resources Management in Transboundary Waters (TIWRM)
• Integrated Coastal and Marine Zone Management (ICMZM)

These projects, which are by nature complex to implement, require the existence of efficient inter-State contracting authorities. Training and, more generally, capacity building for these institutions are crosscutting components for most of the projects conducted by FFEM in the field of international waters. These are long-term actions, over periods of time sufficiently long to take these components into account.

For the period 2015-2018, FFEM is focusing its action on projects which aim to support the integrated management and resilience of coastal and marine areas.