Abstract
European agriculture and water policies require accurate information on climate change impacts on available water resources. Water accounting, that is a standardized documentation of data on water resources, is a useful tool to provide this information. Pan-European data on climate impacts do not recognize local anthropogenic interventions in the water cycle. Most European river basins have a specific toolset that is understood and used by local experts and stakeholders. However, these local tools are not versatile. Thus, there is a need for a common approach that can be understood by multi-fold users to quantify impact indicators based on local data and that can be used to synthesize information at the European level. Then, policies can be designed with the confidence that underlying data are backed-up by local context and expert knowledge. This work presents a simplified water accounting framework that allows for a standardized examination of climate impacts on water resource availability and use across multiple basins. The framework is applied to five different river basins across Europe. Several indicators are extracted that explicitly describe green water fluxes versus blue water fluxes and impacts on agriculture. The examples show that a simplified water accounting framework can be used to synthesize basin-level information on climate change impacts which can support policymaking on climate adaptation, water resources and agriculture.
Highlights
In many regions in Europe, climate change impacts on water resources are threatening the sustainability of the agricultural systems [1,2]
While some stakeholder groups think of solutions in terms of irrigation efficiencies, e.g., [12], others rather think of solutions in terms of crop water productivity, e.g., [13], reuse of drainage water, e.g., [14] or irrigation with wastewater, e.g., [15,16] for which legislation is currently being drafted by European Union (EU) member states
This work presents the application of a single simplified water accounting framework to assess the climate impacts on water resources availability and use across several European basins in a standardized way
Summary
In many regions in Europe, climate change impacts on water resources are threatening the sustainability of the agricultural systems [1,2]. Policies and legislation are needed to mitigate the related risks and to adapt to climate change impacts [8,9]. European-level decision makers need information on how climate change impacts affect water resources for all sectors, agriculture, especially in the most drought-prone and/or water scarce regions in Europe. The European Union (EU), in coordination with its Member States, is committed to support the implementation of the United Nation’s (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and it strives towards improved water efficiencies and climate adaptation, among other targets, as are stated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is an urgent need for information at the European level to feed into reports and monitoring efforts on past performance
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