Drought causes economic damage to Europe amounting to 9 billion Euros annually

New official data revealed that Europe’s economic losses due to drought amount to 9 billion Euros annually, and this cost could rise to 25 billion Euros if the planet’s temperature increased by 1.5 degrees.

Reuters published a new report by the World Wide Fund for Nature showing that drought affected about 62,000 square kilometers of agricultural land in Europe between 2000 and 2021, which is more than twice the size of Belgium.

The data included in the report focuses on four cases such as the Mignon region in France, Doña in Spain, the district of Chilena in the Netherlands and the Holtingervereld region in Bulgaria, which is increasingly suffering from water shortages due to decades of mismanagement of water resources.

According to the data, this has caused drought of wetlands and extraction of underground resources beyond sustainable limits, irregularly, while dams and hydroelectric power stations are being built illegally.

Experts have warned of the seriousness of the problem of water scarcity in Europe, underlining the need for the European Union to address this problem in its environmental and climate policies.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, Spain will experience more frequent and severe floods and droughts with climate change, which will exacerbate the effects of more heat waves, flash floods and reduced water security.

The Fund stressed the need to take emergency measures in times of crisis, including preventive initiatives against drought and floods, comprehensive control of water and soil use, and stopping illegal extraction of water from rivers and aquifers.

Inas Abdulkareem