The WaterStrategyMan Project aims at contributing to the solution of water shortage problems in arid and semi-arid regions of Southern Europe. Some issues related to the arid conditions are recurrent in these regions. In most, the presence of continuous sources of water stress is combined with periodic droughts; the limited amount of rainfall is not sufficient to support the local agriculture. New infrastructure needs to be built to deal with the issue of ensuring and providing an adequate supply. Yet infrastructure planning is made on the basis of average years and deviations from those, but cannot be made to accommodate infrequent/rare events and thus these events are not dealt with adequately.
This in turn raises the question of adequate institutions and administration that enable the development of such infrastructure as well as the imposed economic burden. Further compounding the problem, the coastal regions, where the unevenly distributed population tends to concentrate, are an attractive tourist destination. Massive numbers of tourists arrive and stay for a short time period and infrastructure planning needs to take into account the seasonal peak; but this creates the issue of recovering the cost of the infrastructure, and who will pay for it, as part of the year-round maintenance and use.
The local societies often mistrust the relevant authorities and/or other interested parties, and therefore tend to view the potential for joint actions in a negative light, preferring to address the issue locally. In fact, in a number of regions there are no clear water policies defined, and a general lack of long term planning with respect to the development and conservation of aquatic resources. The available resources tend to be exploited in a manner that suggests no systematic long term management. The different demands for irrigation, domestic use, tourism and industry use are constantly competing for the scarce resource (due to many reasons, such as differential water pricing, importance to the economy coupled with their strategic significance for further industrialization and modernization).
The decline of water resources and increasing demand for freshwater cause threats to the environment and provoke conflicts between competing and conflicting users, even in comparatively water-rich areas. Appropriate water management tools, decision-making practices and thoroughly-planned interventions are necessary for increasing the availability of supply and/or managing the growing demand, and the project seeks to develop and evaluate strategies and guidelines towards integrated water resources management in the Southern European Regions.
The steps in which this task is being undertaken are the following:
1. The formulation of a Typology for arid and semi-arid regions, highlighting the commonalities and gaps among regions of southern Europe, and defined in terms of water deficiency types,
2. The conceptualising of these into the corresponding water management Paradigms, (Paradigm is a school of thought on prioritizing during the selection of Policy Options for the Management of Water Resources) relevant to the regional context, and addressing:
3. The selection of a set of representative regions that will be used to analyse and evaluate Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) options,
4. The definition of six complementary and non-overlapping Case Studies according to the:
5. The adaptation of tools able to analyse quantitative and qualitative impacts and intersectoral competitive water use, and to describe potential responses and water policy consequences,
6. The suggestion of appropriate responses to water stress and implementation alternatives,
7. The development of improved water management strategies, and
8. The formulation of widely applicable guidelines and protocols for their implementation.