Europe faces a water crisis of its own making, and EU countries aren’t doing enough to avert it — that’s the central message from a major new report on the state of Europe’s water from the European Environmental Agency.
The report, published Tuesday, paints a picture of a continent covered with polluted rivers and degraded habitats, where overuse of fresh water and climate change’s worsening consequences are putting access to this most basic and essential of resources at risk.
It finds that the bloc is on track to miss its clean water targets under EU law — posing “serious challenges to water security, both today and in the future,” the EEA’s Trine Christiansen told reporters ahead of the report’s publication.
“Due to these pressures, we simply may not have enough water of good enough quality for the many purposes we would like to use it for,” Christiansen warned.
