Page 194 - ΝΑΥΤΙΚΑ ΧΡΟΝΙΚΑ - SEPT 2025
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Resources under pressure
Water scarcity in Greece
and across the EU:
Challenges & prospects
For many people in Europe, water scarcity was not
a critical issue in the past few decades, as the
continent was considered a region of rivers, lakes,
and summer thunderstorms.
However, this is not the case in South- cept expressing the gap between water
ern Europe, which has historically been demand and supply. Water scarcity may
an area of intense climatic variability, exist even without a formal drought if
characterised by frequent alterna- consumption, leakage, and water pollu-
tions between dry and wet periods. tion exceed available water resources.
Greece, in particular, is at the epicen- Across the EU, monitoring agencies
tre of these trends, having a Mediter- closely track this gap. The European
ranean climate that, over the last few Environment Agency (EEA) estimates
years, has tended to be hotter and that in southern Europe, approximately
drier. These physical characteristics, 30% of the population lives in areas
combined with heavy summer tour- experiencing permanent water stress,
ism, intensive irrigation, and ageing and up to 70% face seasonal summer
water infrastructure, maximise water stress – a reality driven by irrigation
stress and put significant pressure demand, public water supply, and tour-
by Εlias Dimitriou, on farmers, hoteliers, and house- ism.
Research Director holds. The good news is that today,
in the Department of Inland Waters Europe and Greece have a growing tool- The European view on the issue
of the Hellenic Center for Marine Research
box of solutions to increase water use The EU has an important water-related
efficiency and mitigate scarcity. The legal framework, including the Water
challenge is to deploy them fast and Framework Directive (2000/60/EC,
efficiently. WFD), which requires Member States
to achieve “good status” for their
What “water scarcity” actually means water bodies (lakes, rivers, groundwa-
Very often, people confuse water scar- ter) within a specific time framework.
city with drought, a natural phenom- Nevertheless, the implementation is
enon that occurs when the amount of proving challenging, as a recent Euro-
rainfall is lower than usual in a given pean Commission assessment indicates
area. Water scarcity is a broader con- that only 39.5% of EU surface waters
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