EU Water Policies must be linked to climate
At the Climate Change Committee's Fourth Thematic session on Tuesday, MEPs
and experts discussed the complex links between global warming and the
world's water. Water scarcity, climate change and sustainable development,
it was agreed, are issues which are closely linked and cannot be
successfully tackled in isolation.
UN Environment Programme (UNEP) official Kaveh Zahedi, speaking on behalf of
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner, argued that "it is hard to draw
a line between where water ends and climate change begins; and between where
climate change ends and sustainable development begins." It was clear, he
added, that without a far-reaching post-Kyoto climate change regime, "our
ability to reach the Millennium Development Goals, as they relate to water
and other issues, will be impossible." That said, "we cannot confine water
in a box and address it with exclusively water related policies.”
Developing countries will not be the only ones to suffer water-related
problems from climate change. Southern Europe, said Mr Zahedi, is due to
become "especially vulnerable to droughts": rainfall in the region, he
warned, may fall "by as much as 80% over the coming decades". Any sensible
water policy for Europe and beyond, he concluded, "must include combating
climate change, just as any sensible climate change policy must have water
at its very core”.
Professor Riccardo Petrella, President of the European Research Institute on
Water Policy, underlined the human dimension of global water scarcity by
pointing out that "1.5 billion people have no access to drinkable water and
2.6 billion people don’t have access to a clean toilet. The ecological
disaster is really a cultural disaster,” he said.
Contact information |
Piotr Zalewski, Matthias Klettermayer - Press Service
(email: envi-press@europarl.europa.eu ) Phone: +32-2 28 32232 (BXL) ; Mobile number : +32 498 98 32 57 / +32-2 28 31392 (BXL) |
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News type | Inbrief |
File link |
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/064-19759-028-01-05-911-20080128IPR19733-28-01-2008-2008-false/default_en.htm |
Source of information | European Parliament |
Keyword(s) | water scarcity, sustainable development |
Subject(s) | POLICY-WATER POLICY AND WATER MANAGEMENT , RISKS AND CLIMATOLOGY |
Relation | http://www.semide.net/topics/climatechange |
Geographical coverage | EU |
News date | 07/02/2008 |
Working language(s) | ENGLISH , FRENCH |