What a waste

The EU faces challenges in terms of water quality and quantity, and the cost of tackling them could be high.

Water’s ceaseless change from liquid to vapour to liquid, from earth to sky to earth, has been described as “the ultimate form of recycling”. But despite its seeming abundance, clean water is a finite and fragile resource. In the European Union, population growth, climate change, wasteful usage and pollution are piling pressure on rivers, lakes and seas.

The first cluster of problems relate to water quantity. European countries overexploit lakes, rivers and groundwater. This is not an issue only in hot countries: population-dense countries, such as Belgium, Germany and the UK, face scarcity problems just as acute as dry countries, such as Italy, Malta and Spain.

According to the European Environment Agency, around one-third of Europeans (people living in the European region, which includes Russia and central Asia) live in water-stressed countries, where demand exceeds supply at certain times. Scarcity is exacerbated by leakage and theft. In Europe, such losses are most serious in non-EU countries, such as Georgia; but a staggering 20%-34% of water supply goes missing in the Czech Republic, France and Spain.

The second set of problems relate to water quality. EU laws have cleaned up beaches and strengthened drinking-water standards, but implementation of water protection laws is far from complete. The Baltic Sea is an example of how environmental problems can fester when bodies of water become dumping grounds for pesticides and inadequately treated sewage. Algal blooms and non-native comb jellyfish are thriving in this shallow northern sea, while native cod and eels are dying out.

Scientists say that the sea- bed off Finland is completely dead – another challenge for the latest clean-up plan, now envisaged under the EU’s recently published Baltic Sea strategy. A similar Danube strategy is in gestation among central and eastern European countries, and due to emerge in 2011.

Getting tough

The EU has no lack of laws and strategies. The problem is ensuring that they are implemented – and the European Commission is now threatening to get tough with defaulters.

Janez Potocnik, the European commissioner for the environment, has promised a Commission “blueprint to safeguard European waters” for 2012, aimed particularly at improving implementation of the EU’s flagship law on water, the water framework directive. It will also focus on resource efficiency and on exploring the impact of climate change and other man-made pressures on water resources.

The Commission wants to designate 2012 as the year of water, to follow 2010 on biodiversity and 2011 on resource efficiency.

Public behaviour

National, regional and local governments’ success in implementing EU laws will depend on changing public behaviour and understanding about water. The public admit to worries about water problems: a 2009 Eurobarometer survey revealed that 68% of respondents considered water quality a ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ serious problem, while 63% felt the same way about water quantity issues. But more than half the respondents said they were ‘not well informed’ or ‘not informed at all’ about the problems facing lakes, rivers and coastal waters.

Governments will have to test whether these concerns will persuade people to pay higher taxes for better waste-water treatment, or give up eating Spanish hothouse strawberries in winter.

Ultimately, the trade-offs and real costs of water degradation will have to be confronted, if the EU is serious about protecting the integrity of the water cycle.

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