On 29 and 30 May the European Commission held its conference on the environment, the so-called EU Green Week, which stressed the need to make people more aware of the water challenges we face and concluded with a clear call for the EU to become more water resilient.
Water is a vital shared resource to be passed down from generation to generation and one of the essentials for people, the environment and a just, sustainable, and resilient economy. In recent years, Europeans across different parts of the continent have faced a surge in natural disasters, such as droughts and floods, which have made the EU’s water challenges even more severe and triggered a new awareness about the need to become more water resilient. However, pressures on ecosystems, which are the source of freshwater, are not only due to the impacts of climate change, but also due to decades of structural mismanagement of this precious resource, pollution and ecosystem degradation. Our water cycle is out of balance, closely intertwined with climate change and biodiversity loss, all further exacerbating each other. The recent update of the Living Planet Index has highlighted again just how degraded Europe’s aquatic ecosystems are with migratory freshwater fish in Europe showing a drastic 75% decline in populations due to those pressures.
This is why the conclusion from the EU’s Green Week that Europe must become more water resilient is right, however, it needs to be achieved through nature-based solutions and should be a political priority for the EU in the next legislative mandate. While existing EU policies and legislation, such as the EU Water Framework Directive, are well designed to address the mismanagement of water resources and the protection and restoration of freshwater and marine ecosystems, they are poorly implemented, underfunded and barely enforced.
Our water cycle is out of balance, closely intertwined with climate change and biodiversity loss, all further exacerbating each other
The Initiative for Water Resilience, announced as one of the three priorities for the European Commission in 2024, received positive feedback from many Member States and stakeholders and has created expectations for a more sustainable use of water resources. Water resilience must come from maintaining and enhancing the many services healthy and resilient ecosystems provide, such as wetlands which naturally absorb, filter and store water and provide natural buffers against floods and droughts, diverse forests which support the water cycle, deltas which maintain the balance between salty and freshwater conditions, or agricultural systems under organic and agroecological farming which protect water bodies from contaminants, reduce leaching and enhance the ability of the soil to retain water. Climate adaptation solutions should not come at the cost of ecosystem degradation and should avoid locking in water- and energy-intensive practices, without increasing inequalities in water access. This is why nature-based solutions should be prioritised over building new water reservoirs, water transfers or desalination plants.
There is also a strong need for the EU to guide, coordinate and drive Member States’ water and climate adaptation action, in a more stringent way including via the adoption of the Climate Resilience Law which would require Member States to create natural water reserves to protect critical water supplies and their catchments in water-stressed areas among other requirements.
In a nutshell, we need more nature, not less, to address the interrelated triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. We also need to move towards a more responsible and equitable use of our water resources. For decades, we have been extracting unsustainable amounts of water in many regions of the continent, as if unlimited water would be available forever. The EU needs to transition towards a more sustainable use of water for all sectors and households, which leaves enough clean water in ecosystems and enables decision-makers and economic actors to plan the necessary investments and ensure that this transition is fair.