A Water Resilience Strategy for the European Union

With Claudia Olazabal, Head of Unit, Sustainable Freshwater Management DG ENV, European Commission

I’ve been reading a book by Turkish writer Elif Shafak called “There are Rivers in the Sky” about the importance of water. The author uses the “hydrosphere” to link her characters through time and geography: the same raindrop that fell on a king in ancient Mesopotamia thousands of years ago forms part of the rivers and lakes that present day characters experience. It’s a breathtaking literary device that gives the book its epic quality.

So I was alarmed when preparing to moderate at the 2025 Mission Ocean and Waters Forum to discover that climate change is affecting the hydrological cycle. Water collects in clouds, then falls to Earth in the form of rain or snow. This water collects in rivers, lakes and oceans. Then it evaporates into the atmosphere to start the cycle all over again. The degradation of freshwater ecosystems including the loss of moisture in the soil has become a driver of climate change and biodiversity loss. The water cycle is out of balance. We cannot take it for granted any more.

I was honoured to moderate the day long stakeholder consultation to help design a Water Resilience Strategy for the European Union. This follows Commission President Ursula Von de Leyen’s political guidelines in which she announced a new European Water Resilience Strategy to ensure that water sources are properly managed, scarcity is addressed and that Europe enhances the competitive innovative edge of its water industry while taking a circular economy approach.

Together with experts from the Commission I facilitated discussions with stakeholders on environmental and societal aspects of water management, a competitive water industry, research and innovation. The Strategy will be published later this year.

You can watch the event here.