INFORMATION NOTE

ENVIRONMENT COUNCIL,27 JUNE 2006

"EUROPEAN ACTION ON WATER SCARCITY & DROUGHT"

First Analysis of Water Scarcity and Drought Issues

  1. INTRODUCTION

Further to the request of a number of Member States to initiate a European action on water scarcity and droughts made during the Environment Council of 9 March 2006, the Commission agreed to analyse this and to present a first report for the Environment Council in June 2006.

This paper is a preliminary analysis of the issues of water scarcity and droughts. Based on current data, it provides first elements for the diagnosis of the problems – including identification of information gaps –, it presents the main existing EU mechanisms available to address them and it draws some very preliminaryinitial conclusions.

This paper refers to both water scarcity and droughts, which are two different phenomena, even if they have common features. It focuses only on impacts of water scarcity in terms of water resources management. It does not cover other dimensions of the problem such as social, health or economic impacts – issues that would have to be taken on board for future analyses.

In this document, "water scarcity" refers to long-term water imbalances, combining arid or semi-arid climate (low water availability) with a level of water demand exceeding the supply capacity of the natural system.

Aridity and droughts are natural aspects of the Earth’s climate, but aridity is a long-term average feature while droughts are a deviation from an average situation, for a limited period of time. Aridity is defined by long-term low precipitation rates, often together with high evaporation rates, and results in a limited availability of water resources.

Droughts, on the contrary, can be considered as a temporary decrease of the average water availability. Droughts can occur anywhere in Europe by definition in both high and low rainfall areas and in any season, whereas aridity concerns only the Mediterranean region (semi-arid characteristics). The impact of droughts can be exacerbated when occurring in a region with already low water resources, with mismanagement of water resources and with imbalances between water demands and the supply capacity of the natural system.

It is essential to differentiate between transitory periods of water deficiency, due to an exceptional drought, and long-term imbalances of available water resources and demand.

The main sources of data on which this preliminary analysis is based, available at the European level, are publications from the European Environment Agency, EUROSTAT, and the Joint Research Centre and also publications from Blue Plan[1].

  1. FIRST ELEMENTS FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE PROBLEM

2.1 Water availability

Even though fresh water resources are largely available in Europe, both their spatial and temporal distribution leads to periodic droughts and water scarcity situations. France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom have the largest total fresh water resources (more than 150 km³/year) whereas Malta, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Denmark have the lowest (less than 10km³/year). But expressed in terms of exploitable resource per capita, Malta and Cyprus, the "water poor" countries of Europe, have the lowest ratio of the EU (less than 100m³/cap/year) followed by Spain, France and Italy (less than 2000m³/cap/year).

2.2 Imbalances between supply and demand

Europe as a whole abstracts annually a relatively small portion (10% - 300 km³/year) of its freshwater resources. It seems that potentially Europe has sufficient resources to meet its demand. However, the spatial and temporal variability causes a very uneven distribution among countries and even within each country, at the river basin level. 46% of Europe's population lives in countries which use more than 20% of their freshwater resources (Spain, Belgium, Malta, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany and also, among the association countries, Bulgaria). Some countries combine low freshwater resources and high abstraction rates (such as Malta, Cyprus, Spain and Italy).

2.3 Causes of imbalances

On average, for Europe, in 2000, agriculture used 32%, electricity cooling 31%, manufacturing 13% and domestic sector 24% of the total water abstraction.Here again, the distribution varies according to the countries and river basins. In Belgium and Germany, two-thirds of water is abstracted for cooling towers at power stations, whereas in southern countries, the main user is agriculture. There, irrigation accounts for more than 60% of the total volume abstracted in these countries.

The seasonal demand from tourism is also a significant pressure, particularly in southern Europe. Use of water by tourists is nearly 2 times higher than for local consumers and, additionally, they require larges volumes of water for leisure.

The pressure of irrigation and tourism often occurs in the period of minimum or low water resource renewal, therefore the impact on the environment is the greatest.Moreover, in term of consumption, the major “consumer” is agriculture. When one cubic meter is used for irrigation, 0.8 cubic meter is either absorbed by crops or evaporates from fields and only 0.2 cubic meter returns to where the water was abstracted. In the industry and domestic sectors, 0.8 cubic meter returns to the local environment.

Regarding volumes of water needed for preserving ecosystems, nogenerally accepted environmental water demand is being calculated. However, balances between demand and abstraction must also take into account ecosystems needs, as stated in the first objective of the Water Framework Directive (WFD)[2].

2.4 Droughts in the EU

A characteristic of droughts, which is distinct from other natural hazards, is their spatial extent. Droughts generally cover large areas or an entire region rather than occurring locally or in one catchment area only.The latest episode in 2005 struck Portugal and Spainparticularly severely and the 2003 summer drought affected most countries in central-western Europe. Rainfall deficiencies in the period 1988-92 were experienced from Denmark to the Mediterranean although with large regional variations.

2.5 Impact of climate change

It is considered that climate change would affect the spatial and temporal distribution of air temperature and precipitation in Europe.The variability is expected to increase, leading to higher probability of extreme events such as droughts or floods. Southern Europe is likely to suffer more frequent and more severe (in space and time) droughts because of both a decrease in rainfall and an increase in evaporation[3].

  1. WHAT IS ALREADY BEING DONE AT EU LEVEL?

If lower average water availability and drought episodes cannot be prevented, human activity will contribute to an increase of imbalances between supply and demand and adverse impacts of drought events. Appropriate measures have to be implemented, especiallyin terms of water demand management with highest priority.

Even if not sufficient, some measures and instruments to deal with water demand management are however already in place. The Water Framework Directive (WFD) constitutes the general framework for water management in Europe. Although the WFD is not directly designed to tackle quantitative issues, its purposes include provisions to deal with the mitigation of droughts effects. When and where needed, a specific “drought management (sub) plan” could be included in the WFD river basin management plans. Moreover, the Water Framework Directive generally gives Member States flexibility to adapt the measures to be included in the River Basin Management plan to the situations faced. This allows Member States to take into consideration water scarcity and droughts. Moreover, the WFD requests Member States to have water-pricing policies which provide adequate incentives to use water resources efficiently.

In the framework of the Common Implementation Strategy of the WFD, a subgroup on Water scarcity and droughts, set up by the Water Directors in 2004, has recently produced a document on these issues[4] including recommendations, case studies and proposals for future developments.

Other existing instruments include:

  • Common agriculture Policy (CAP), with the CAP direct payments,Rural Development programmes and states aids for irrigation.
  • Structural funds and Cohesion funds, where water scarcity and droughts are included for the period 2007-2013.
  • Life+, with demonstration projects.

Possibilities of using EU funds are made available bearing in mind that no actions are earmarked from the European Commission[5]. In other words, within the existing budgets, it is the responsibility of the Member States to set their own national priorities and to target properly those funds.

In addition to water management measures, specific instruments featured for risk management can be utilised to address drought episodes that are also natural disasters. Thisare, however, instruments for remediation and not of prevention or containment. The main EU responsesarethe European Union Solidarity Fund and the Community Mechanism for Civil Protection.

In addition an early warning system for droughts is being developed by JRC.

The European research policy is also contributing to a better knowledge of the phenomena and their impacts and water resources management scenarios in arid areas are being tested.

  1. GAPS IDENTIFIED

More needs to be done to better understand the situation and which actions need to be taken to address water scarcity and droughts. However, this very preliminary analysis points out that there are substantial gaps in terms of available information that would be necessary for a more detailed assessment. Collection of more homogeneous data across Europe, at national or river basin level is therefore needed on a variety of issues and of pressures on water demand. For example, there is the need to assess the impact of water demand from tourism and to characterise drought events and assess their impacts.

Regarding implementation of existing measures and mechanisms, the currently available data allow only a qualitative assessment at this stage. A quantitative analysis of utilisation of financial instruments to address water scarcity and droughts issues remains to be done.In addition, specific aspects of water scarcity and droughts linked to the implementation of the WFD will have to be addressed.

  1. CONCLUSIONS AND WAY FORWARD

In the light of available current information, it appears that:

  • Even though fresh water resources are largely available in Europe, both periodic droughts and structural long term imbalances exist. Whereas water scarcity concerns primarily southern countrieswhere there is a combination of scarce resources, high pressure through abstraction and concentration of abstraction during the hottest months, droughts impact the whole of the European Union.
  • It is expected that climate change would influence rainfall and air temperature patterns and therefore water availability. If this pattern is confirmed, droughts events are likely to be more frequent.
  • The available data and information show that there is a significant potential for water savings that could lead to a decrease of the demand and therefore reduce imbalances and thus also have a positive effect in mitigating the impacts of droughts.
  • Various sectors and activities are high water consuming. More information is however needed to get a more complete picture. The available data nevertheless already show that, in arid and semi-arid regions, agriculture is probably the main sector to be tackled.
  • The EU has already developed some measures and mechanisms to address long term imbalances. Despite the fact that many Member States have already taken actions to mitigate water scarcity and drought, there is still the need to draw a more complete picture. This may call for more measures to be taken in addition to working towards a substantial progress in optimizing the implementation of the existing EU measures and mechanisms.

It is important to underline that these first preliminary assessmentshighlight the fact that water scarcity and droughts are not only linked to water issues,but are also connected with several other policies impacting directly on water demand and risk management.

Therefore, the Commission will take the analysis of water scarcity and drought issues forward and will come back with an in-depth assessment.In parallel, the specific aspects of the implementation of the WFD linked to water scarcity and droughts will be included in the work programme 2007-2009 of the Common Implementation strategy of the WFD.

To carry out the in-depth analysis, the Commission will be supported by the existing Group on water scarcity and droughts, set up by Water Directors, supplemented with new members, Member States and stakeholdersin the framework of the Common Implementation Strategy for the Water Framework Directive.

The main objective will be to clearly identify the magnitude of the problems linked to water scarcity and drought and the size of the residual gapsin the implementation of EU existing policies.

The Commission will develop these issues forward along the following lines:

  • Strengthen the diagnosis, on the basis of complementary data to be provided by MemberStates and stakeholders, in the coming months;
  • Prepare a first interim report at technical level to be discussed with the Water Directors in December 2006.

Based on this analysis, the Commission will then consider which further action will be taken to address water scarcity and drought issues at EU level.

1

[1] See inter alia, latest reference of EEA, 2005 - the European environment – state and outlook 2005 and Blue Plan, 2005 – A sustainable future for the Mediterranean

[2]Directive 2000/60/EC of the Europeanparliament and of the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy.

[3] EC, JRC – Climate change and the European Water dimension, 2005, EUR 21553 EN.

[4] “General approach to water scarcity management in the context of WFD”; Policy summary and technical document, June 2006.

[5] Apart from the proposed earmarking dedicated to promoting the economic modernisation, growth and job creation aspects of the Lisbon strategy for the Structural and Cohesion Funds 2007-13.