Climate Change and the European Water Dimension - Agri ...

Climate Change
and the
European Water Dimension
BACKGROUND AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The European Water Directors (WDs), consisting of the Water Directors from the
European Members States (EU25-MS), and the associated countries of Iceland,
Norway, Switzerland, Romania and Bulgaria, guide the strategic development and
implementation of water issues for the EU. They provide strategic guidance to the
common implementation strategy of the Water Framework Directive, the European
Marine Strategy, and initiate discussions and actions on issues such as river basin
management, flood protection and management, drought management, and now
climate change.
The WDs acknowledge that the reality of climate change is recognised internationally
and the Kyoto protocol is designed to commit countries to progressive reductions of
greenhouse gases. However, even if it is assumed that the Kyoto Protocol
commitments are respected, this still presumes significant changes in climate,
average temperatures, precipitation patterns and river hydrology. How much climate
change (i.e., temperature rise) will or is likely to occur before ‘dangerous’ climate
change exerts its influence? (Note February 2005 Conference in Exeter, UK on
Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change 1 ) Climate change will have a major impact on
water resources in Europe that in turn may require changes in the way that
Europeans manage and protect these resources. And of course climate change and
viability are and will continue to impact the wider environment worldwide (Note the
2004 Arctic Council Report on the climate change and impacts in the Arctic).
The WDs asked ‘to what extent have the Commission, Member States, marine and
river basin commissions, and others developed detailed predictions concerning the
possible consequences of climate change? Where these forecasts/predictions exist,
have they been developed on the basis of common scenarios? Do we know enough
about the possible impacts of climate change at the European scale to act?
In the light of the information needed to address these questions set out above, the
WDs concluded that there existed a serious need to improve the knowledge base for
Water Directors? They asked how should this be done? And to what extent and how
should this be co-ordinated?
1 Note in Editing: Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change – Exeter (UK) Conference, February 6, 2005:
Although the initial trigger for this conference to consider was the need to define precisely what
constituted "dangerous climate change," the scientists ended up instead detailing "critical thresholds that
we should aim not to cross”. Questions asked were why is the climate warming happening, how we
know about it, and what we can do about it were central to the conference. The impact of continued
rapid increases of levels of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere will be world-changing, one might
say, but in a bad way. But just how bad? How fast will they happen? And what are our best choices for
mitigating the worst of it?
(see http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002062.html)
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