Water is essential to all life forms known. One of the most important challenges of the XXI century is to ensure the sustainable management of this vital resource. Undoubtedly, chemistry and chemical technology will be an important source of ideas and solutions to meet this challenge successfully.

The problem of the shortage and poor condition of the water is not only Spanish or the Mediterranean region but global. A sample of the concern that water problems arouse is that last March 25,000 people around the world met in Istanbul in the V World Water Forum.

Realizing the growing importance of the problem and the role that chemistry can represent in its resolution, the National Association of Chemists of Spain (ANQUE) has decided to organize the 7th International Congress to be held in Asturias from 13 to 16 June 2010 under the title "The Water Cycle. Present and Future" under the slogan "A shared commitment".

Researchers, users and mangers are beginning to take a key idea for a new approach to water management, considering the problem globally, the so-called "water cycle". It will be no longer considered the caption as something separate from the drinking water treatments or the treatment technologies because this last step is, should be, the first step of another cycle. Thus the concept of water reuse has been extended; if the water is cleaned enough to become reclaimed water, which can be used again, returns to the starting point of the cycle.

This congress will provide a forum for discussion and exchanges of information among enterprises, administration and public institutions, research centers and universities in which the latest scientific and technological advances related to the sustainable management of water resources in the integral water cycle will be presented.