The summer of 2022 is likely to go down as being one of the worst in the history of modern Europe. Almost the entire continent, stretching practically all the way from the UK to Ukraine, has experienced the worst drought in more than 500 years. There has been scarcely any rainfall for months, from the winter through spring and summer, and this has caused many once-mighty rivers to dry up. In the UK, the Thames has dried up at source. Parts of the Loire in France can now be crossed on foot. The Po in Italy has fallen to such low levels that sea water is rushing in. And in some places, even the Rhine can be waded through. Germany’s Federal Institute of Hydrology has said the level of the Rhine will continue to fall for at least another week. The flow of the Po has dropped to barely 10 percent of normal and its overall water level is 2 meters lower than normal. The consequences of this drought are widespread, affecting not only industry, transport, energy and agriculture, but also households. Take, for example, the effects on rivers. Most of the big rivers in Europe are central to national economies as their waters are used for freight transport, irrigation, manufacturing, power generation and drinking water. Now all of these activities and uses are threatened by the drought. Many river-transport companies have warned of the suspension of at least part of their operations because water levels are too low to allow safe navigation. In 2020, European rivers carried close to 500 million tons of freight, which is far from a negligible amount. Europe’s rivers are also key to energy production; they are used to generate hydroelectric power and provide the water used for cooling in many power stations, including nuclear and thermal plants. With the water levels so low, French utility Electricite de France has already had to shut down some of its nuclear power plants, reducing energy availability at a time when demand is at highest-ever levels as a result of the heat wave and the widespread use of air conditioning. The drought has also seriously threatened irrigation, given that large tracts of European farmland are irrigated by river water and now there is simply not enough of it to meet the needs of the agricultural sector. In Italy, for instance, about 30 to 40 percent of total agricultural production comes from the Po valley and farmers there say that rice production might be down 60 percent because the paddy fields are too dry and are in trouble as a result of the inflow of seawater along parts of the parched river. The shortages of water are bound to result in higher costs in all sectors of the economy. Worst hit will be consumers and households that have been struggling with record inflation for the past several months. Some consumers are already facing sharply increasing water bills, especially in countries such as the UK where private water companies are notoriously inefficient and their charges were already very high. Europe needs greater sensitivity concerning the use of water. The hosepipe bans currently in place in the UK need to spread and become permanent. Ranvir S. Nayar The unprecedented drought is a moment for Europe to pause and review its water consumption. Blessed by nature with generous bodies of water and a temperate climate, Europe has immense water resources in the form of lakes, rivers and glaciers, as well as relatively rich groundwater sources. As a result of this seemingly limitless availability, Europeans are among the highest consumers of water in the world. In some countries, such as Germany, the average household uses about 150 liters per person per day, and the EU area as a whole consumes billions of cubic meters of water each year. For the past few years, however, there have been signs that Europe is headed for water stress, or even severe water stress. About 88.2 percent of freshwater use in Europe, for drinking and other uses, comes from rivers and groundwater, with the remainder supplied by reservoirs (10.3 percent) and lakes (1.5 percent). This means that the main sources are extremely vulnerable to threats posed by over-exploitation, pollution and climate change. The per capita availability of renewable water resources in the EU area has fallen by 24 percent across the continent over the past 50 years. The decrease is most clearly noticeable in southern Europe, where in the summer of 2015 renewable freshwater resources were 20 percent lower than during the summer of 2014, due to a 10 percent drop in rainfall. About a third of the EU region is vulnerable to water stress conditions, even permanent ones. While this is most evident in southern Europe, where Greece, Spain and Portugal have been hit by severe droughts in the past decade, it has now become evident that no part of the continent is safe from the threat of a severe water crisis. The need for change has been evident for a while but politicians and bureaucrats, as well as citizens, have been reluctant to read the writing on the wall. Europe needs to reduce its excessive water consumption, especially in the sectors where there is great scope for it. Farming is the biggest culprit, with 9 percent of farms in the EU area soaking up 50 percent of all the water consumed across the 27 member countries for all purposes every year. The share rises to 60 percent in spring, especially to grow popular crops such as olives and oranges that need a lot of water. Farming is already heavily subsidized by the EU and water for farming is no exception. In households too, Europe needs greater sensitivity concerning the use of water. The hosepipe bans currently in place in the UK need to spread and become permanent, not to kill kitchen gardens or lawns but to encourage citizens to use the more-efficient irrigation technologies that are readily available in most supermarkets. Also, the luxury of bathtub after bathtub of water for daily washing needs to be moderated. While hiking the per-unit cost of domestic water use is one way to address this, it is a blunt weapon that hits all households irrespective of their usage. It is therefore better to use the smart meters that are now installed in most homes across Europe to impose charges in tiers, beginning with some free water for the poorest families and the lowest consumers, and then scaling up the per-unit prices as household consumption rises. A similar, but higher, pricing strategy also needs to be put in place for farmers, industry and utility companies. This might add to the economic pain at a time when economies are still struggling as a result of high inflation, but it is the best way to ensure that a parched Europe can survive not only this current water crisis but future droughts as well. • Ranvir S. Nayar is managing editor of Media India Group.