Event Details
WATER INNOVATION EUROPE 2023
EU Water Policies: What's Next?
90% of water stress is due to the extraction, cultivation, and processing of material resources – biomass/food, minerals, metals, and fossil fuels, according to the International Resource Panel. Energy and agriculture are also part of this resource-intensive and linear economic model that our societies are implemented along their different value chain.
During the last years, the EU institutions have been deploying the Green Deal to create a paradigm shift towards a green, resilient, and digitalised Europe. Despite positive evolutions in the EU legislation such as the Zero Pollution Strategy, the legislative proposal of the Industrial Emissions Directive and the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, water-related risks have been underestimated and managed with a short and fragmented perspectives. Europe must go further!
As we are approaching the end of the mandate of this Commission, it's time to raise the following question: What's next? We do believe that Europe must not close the Green Deal chapter but open the second one for a Water-Smart Strategy in Europe which will put water - the main natural resource of our society, economy, and environment - at the heart of the next Commission's programme. Water deserves more:
- CDP assessment stressed that A majority (62%) of companies disclosing to the CDP water security questionnaire in 2019 stated that their business models are highly dependent on water availability and quality. 78% stated that the availability of good quality freshwater is important or vital to their direct business operations and 67% reported that the same is true indirectly in areas outside their operational control.
- Yet, 10 million people still lack access to safe sanitation services in the EU and 11% of Europeans at least are affected by Water scarcity, impacting access to drinking water (EU Commission).
This year, Water Innovation Europe 2023 focuses on the importance to put water at the heart of the next years by deploying a European Water-Smart Strategy:
- Why the Water-Smart Society vision must be the root of this strategy?
- Which collaborative tools Europe should support to achieve this strategy?
- Which leadership for Europe in deploying water-smart policies?
- Which action plans in the water-smart strategy to secure water?
Water Innovation Europe aims at shaping the EU water future by gaining new perspectives and insights from high-level EU decision-makers and experts from the water sector and offer the latest updates and trends on the new water technologies and innovations.
