“Awareness raising actions for the general public on the problem of water shortage/scarcity and strategies to confront it with emphasis on the wastewater reuse”
Funded by the Green Fund, Hellenic Ministry of Environment and Energy
Programme: NATURAL ENVIRONMENT – INNOVATION ACTIVITIES
Project start: 1 September 2023
Duration: 12 months
Objective of the Programme
Our programme aims to:
Description of the problem:
Water shortage/scarcity is the inadequate availability of drinking water or irrigation water due to natural shortage or lack of access to sufficient quantities of water. Water scarcity already affects every continent. Water use is increasing globally at a pace exceeding more than twice the one of the global population growth, and an increasing number of regions are reaching the threshold at which people do not have access to sufficient water quantity. This is particularly the case in arid areas.
One possible definition of water scarcity, in quantitative terms, is a situation in which people have access to less than 1000 m3 of water per year. In reality there are people living with less than 500 m3 per year.
The figures below show the situation in Europe as it was in 2016 and as it is expected to be in 2026, adopting a case scenario in which the average temperature increases by less than 2 oC.
Figure 1. Average water scarcity in the period 1990 – 2014 and situation assessment for the period 2024-2030. Areas facing severe water shortages are represented in black (source: Joint Research Center of the European Commission).
The National Strategy includes measures to reduce the risk of water scarcity, with an emphasis on reusing water for crop irrigation and/or industrial uses, expanding the use of desalination for drinking water production with an emphasis on its application on islands, and saving water by reducing consumption.
Currently, about 1 billion cubic metres of treated urban waste water is reused annually, representing about 2.4% of treated urban waste water and less than 0.5% of annual freshwater abstractions in the EU. Both southern Member States, such as Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta, Cyprus and Italy, and northern Member States such as Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom already have numerous initiatives in place regarding the reuse of water for irrigation, industrial uses and aquifer recharge. Cyprus and Malta already reuse more than 90% and 60% of their wastewater respectively, while Greece, Italy and Spain reuse between 5 and 12% of their wastewater, clearly indicating huge potential for further uptake (https://ceenergynews.com/energy-me/how-to-reuse-treated-urban-wastewater-for-agricultural-irrigation/, 19 August 2022).
It therefore appears that Greece is still quite behind in the reuse of water, even though it is one of the European countries expected to be significantly affected by severe water shortages in the coming decades.