Liquid assets
Providing enough clean water for all the EU’s citizens is a challenge that is attracting increasing attention.
The two key issues in water management – quantity and quality – are giving rise to growing concern in the EU.
Careless management of Europe’s water systems since the industrial revolution has led to a degradation in quality – pollution, flooding and biodiversity problems affect thousands of kilometres of waterways. At the same time, over-extraction, over-use and climate change have led to a decrease in the quantity of water in many regions.
The EU has adopted numerous laws on water supply, including the landmark water framework directive, which was meant to address both quantity and quality issues. But implementation by member states has been poor, and the availability of adequate supplies is now under threat.
“Making sure that water is available at the right quality, in the right quantity, at the right place and at the right time, is essential to our health and economic growth. But for Europe these challenges are getting harder,” said Janez Potocnik, the European environment commissioner, at the Water Innovation Europe conference earlier this year. “Water is certainly a ‘pillar of life’, but it is also a pillar of economic and social development. Yet, it is a resource that is still too often undervalued and undermined.”
The EU has been energetically promoting improvements in the approach of member states, to ensure that water remains a renewable resource. The European Commission dedicated 2012 as the ‘year of water’, and this year’s Green Week conference in May was devoted to the subject. In July, environment ministers meeting informally in Cyprus debated water issues. The culmination was the publication yesterday (14 November) of the Commission’s blueprint for water, which provides a sobering assessment of the current situation, and outlines action to be taken over the next several years.
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Water policy in the EU is governed chiefly by three separate directives: the 1991 urban waste water treatment directive, the 1998 drinking water directive and the 2000 water framework directive. These three pieces of legislation have produced some improvement in water quality over the past decades, but attempts to require member states to implement more sustainable practices have met with less success.
Ensuring quality
A recent report by the consultancy Ecorys records that some improvements have been made in EU water quality. In 2009, 89% of inland bathing areas complied with mandatory values, and 71% complied with more stringent guide values. Acidification has decreased substantially, driven by regulation and limits placed on the emissions of sulphur dioxide since the 1970s. Waste-water treatment is improving in every European region, with more homes connected to sewerage systems and wider installation of better- quality treatment plants. Over the next five years, €50 billion will be invested in waste-water treatment systems.
But large discrepancies remain. Although 97% of the population in Germany, France and Britain is connected to waste-water treatment, the figure is only 65% in eastern Europe, and 40% in south-east Europe.
Ensuring quantity
Europe has an abundance of water, and only 13% of available resources are extracted. But in some areas there are serious supply problems. Weather patterns mean that many of the hotspots of water scarcity are in the south – Cyprus, Spain, Italy and Malta. Cyprus, the worst-hit country, is under ‘severe water stress’ – it extracts 63% of its available water per year. But some areas of northern Europe are also suffering because of population density, most notably Belgium and south-west England. Under current EU legislation, member states are obliged to draw up river-basin management plans that address the problem. But the states with the most acute problems have been the worst performers in finalising those plans. Spain still has no plans for 19 of its 25 river basins.
Water scarcity is also starting to be taken into account by businesses. In this year’s Global Water Report by the Carbon Disclosure Project, 68% of companies surveyed identified water as a substantial risk to their business, up from 59% in 2011.
About half of the respondents said water supply problems had negatively affected their business over the past five years. Yet according to a recent study by KPMG, 60% of the world’s 250 largest companies have yet to adopt long-term strategies to deal with water scarcity. Growing populations and the effects of climate change will reinforce the problem.
One of the approaches is to price water, so as to encourage more prudent usage. But this provokes controversy, with campaigners insisting that water is a basic human right that should not be privatised.
Yesterday’s publication of the water blueprint will do much to focus attention on the issues confronting Europe.