Water Security and Water Geopolitics

Szöllősi-Nagy, András and Tamás, Enikő Anna and Lionetto, Francesca and Corcione, Carola Esposito and Charalampopoulos, Nikolaos and Kaiser, Ferenc (2023) Water Security and Water Geopolitics. In: Security, Resilience and Sustainability of the European Union. Ludovika Egyetemi Kiadó, Budapest, pp. 115-129. ISBN 9786156598042

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Abstract

Water challenges can no longer be connected exclusively to arid regions of the world. They become a global security challenge, and humanity has to make worldwide steps to cope with them. Europe needs to take action, as increasing hydrological extremes, such as floods, droughts and water scarcity are all linked one way or another to climate change. These are just some of the threats that have more or less affected Europe in recent times. Just think of the major devastating flash floods that occurred recently in Germany with unprecedented losses. To confront these threats, Europe needs a long-term, perceptive and progressive water strategy. It also needs to set an example to the rest of the world that expects Europe to proceed constructively and collectively to the most pressing natural resource matters facing the world. These highlight the fact that water crises should be approached not only in isolation through policy reforms, technological innovation or investment, respectively. These will require increased co-operation among all stakeholders. Therefore, a comprehensive approach is needed. Experience shows that unless the parties are able to come up with a shared vision of the transboundary issues at hand, the finding of a workable solution is difficult. Negotiation support systems, ranging from the hydrology of the basin, up to finding multi-criteria feasible solutions, or Pareto optima for that matter, are key to the effective solution(s). Europe might not have an entirely developed water security strategy as of now, but it has a strong commitment to evolve one. This basis is contained in the comprehensive water legislation of the European Union and this is extremely important asthe problems related to water, especially to water security, are soon becoming one of the most important issues on Europe’s environmental agenda. Among the issues connected to water security, the pollution of seawater and freshwater has to be considered also due to the huge physical, chemical and biological impacts. A rapidly growing worry concerning environmental and human safety has stimulated interest in the potential risks induced by the chemicals associated with microplastics. Studies reporting the presence of microplastics in treated tap and bottled water have raised questions and concerns about the potential health impacts from microplastic exposure and the removal of microplastics during wastewater and drinking water treatment.

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