{"id":7984,"date":"2019-07-24T09:46:18","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T07:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sonnenseite.com\/environment\/feeling-hot-bad-water-management-aggravating-drought-says-new-paper.html"},"modified":"2019-07-24T09:46:18","modified_gmt":"2019-07-24T07:46:18","slug":"feeling-hot-bad-water-management-aggravating-drought-says-new-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sonnenseite.com\/en\/environment\/feeling-hot-bad-water-management-aggravating-drought-says-new-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling hot? Bad water management aggravating drought, says new paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

With temperatures across Europe set to skyrocket this week and national governments taking emergency measures to tackle drought, a new paper from WWF signals that EU Member States’ poor management of rivers, lakes, wetlands and groundwater is worsening the impacts of drought.<\/p>\n

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To make matters worse, many EU Member States are continuing to push the European Commission to weaken the only tool that will help us better face the pressures ahead [1].<\/p>\n

By stretching water resources thin, poor water management threatens future water supplies and makes these ecosystems far less able to cope with climate change. The paper, published today, shows that Member States’ mismanagement of their water resources can be rectified through full implementation of the EU water law – the Water Framework Directive (WFD). A key mission of the legislation is to mitigate the impacts of droughts and ensure that freshwater ecosystems are resilient enough to cope in a changing climate, and subsequently able to keep supplying good quality water during dry periods. The central role of healthy freshwater ecosystems in adapting to climate change were outlined just this week in a global report from WWF and AB InBev<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Andreas Baumüller, Head of Natural Resources at  WWF’s European Policy Office<\/strong>, said: 
“With intense droughts, heat and floods quickly becoming Europe’s ‘new normal’, smart water management – coupled with reducing emissions – can help us tackle the issue at the source. Climate change is happening, and the European Commission needs to decide today to buffer the impacts by signing off the EU water law as fit for purpose.”   <\/p>\n

In the face of climate change, droughts are becoming increasingly common and severe, and Europe is no exception. The latest data indicates that even Europe’s northernmost countries are experiencing the first warning signs of drought [2]. And yet, Europe’s water resources are continuing to be stretched extremely thin. 60% currently fail to meet the WFD’s “good status” requirement [3], despite evidence showing that freshwater ecosystems which are not healthy – for instance, through pollution, changes to shape or flow, or the pressures of over-abstraction (excessive use of water, such as for the purposes of irrigation) – are those hardest hit by drought, heat and floods. <\/p>\n

Key points: <\/strong><\/p>\n