Farmers and green activists clash as parched France gasps for water

Anger as vast reservoirs spring up to serve the few and a pesticide ban is reversed - symbols of crisis on a continent relaxing climate targets while heating faster than any other, writes Megan Clement in Niort

- Megan Clement in Niort

It is a mild, calm morning in western France and Julien Le Guet - tall, softly spoken, his curly hair pulled back in a scrunchie - slowly punts his boat through the waterways of the Poitevin marshland.

Kingfishers dart from bank to bank, dragonflies hum in the foliage, and coypus, the industrious semi-aquatic rodents, ease into the water. Behind it all is the quiet rustling of corn in the fields abutting the canals that crisscross this corner of rural France.

But the tranquillity belies a sense of crisis gripping the country this summer. Weeks earlier, France was hit by a spell of extreme heat that killed at least 480 people. A large proportion of the country has water restrictions owing to drought. But limits on water supplies aren't necessarily evenly distributed.

Le Guet is part of Bassines Non Merci, a collective that protests against the construction of giant farming reservoirs - which activists have taken to calling "megabasins" - in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region.

As France becomes drier, more and more of these vast, plastic-coated reservoirs that draw water from local aquifers in winter to be redistributed in summer have sprung up across the country.

There are believed to be more than 100 megabasins, though precise figures don't exist. On average, they cover a surface area of eight hectares - the equivalent of about 10 football fields - though two projects, dubbed "gigabasins", have planned spans of up to 18 hectares.

Le Guet says the reservoirs put the water table at risk in a time of scarcity, representing "the monopolisation of water for the benefit of a few" - the big agriculture firms that own the whispering cornfields that surround us.

Today, Le Guet is one of a group of environmentalists, researchers, scientists, public health advocates and organic farmers who have mobilised mass public sentiment against agriculture reforms that would roll back a number of environmental protections in France.