The European Parliament today adopted its report on the European Water Resilience Strategy. In this report, Members of the European Parliament recognise the essential role of mountain areas and point out that “mountains are real water towers and important freshwater reservoirs in Europe, the Alps alone providing 40 % of Europe’s fresh water”.

The MEPs also call on the Member States to pay more specific attention to mountain areas in their national climate change adaptation plans and point out that these territories have difficulties in accessing public or private funding to improve water management – as we also highlighted in our comparative European study on water management in mountain areas.

The report also stresses that adapting to climate change must not be at the expense of ecosystem degradation and must not lead to increased demand for activities that consume large amounts of water and energy.

Euromontana welcomes these elements, which are in line with our demands for greater account to be taken of mountain areas and for European policies and investments to be water-proofed, particularly those established via the European structural and investment funds.

As the European Commission is about to present its EU Water Resilience Strategy within a few weeks, we call on Commissioner Roswall to fulfil her commitment to a “from source to sea approach” by proposing concrete measures to meet the water challenge in mountain areas. At a time when glaciers are melting faster than ever, threatening Europe’s mountain water towers, we urgently need to come up with solid, cross-cutting responses within climate, environmental, territorial cohesion and agricultural policies!