Our Publications

Water suppliers in the catchment areas of the major European rivers are convinced that a future-proof, climate-friendly, safe and affordable public drinking water supply for everyone requires generation-spanning preservation of the usability of the drinking water resources. Their common intention and aim is sustainable and precaution-driven protection of our drinking water resources. In their river basins, in addition to the indirect use of the surface water bodies (as riverbank filtrate or enriched groundwater), the abstraction of natural groundwater formed through precipitation is also of major water management importance. The present Groundwater Memorandum formulates five key requirements for the protection of naturally formed groundwater resources and thus complements the European River Memorandum (ERM) aiming at the protection of the surface water bodies.

The EauMega Youth Declaration for the EauMega Conference is agreed by the EauMega Youth Steering Committee and revised by different youth networks and organizations related to water management from all across the world. The objective is to establish a commitment to taking practical measures to improve water management in megacities and call upon other young people to do the same.

The declaration calls everyone to stand up and participate in local and national actions to achieve better water management and urges adults to do more. The declaration also calls for more political will at the national and community levels to tackle the water-related challenges in megacities.

It urges not only the public in general but all stakeholders to take action and give also worth to the actions of youth and vulnerable groups and communities when facing all impacts that global change brings in terms of water management. It highlights measures to be implemented and a shift of paradigm.

A study of how Swedish companies are affected financially in the event of an interruption in the water supply

Authors: Karin Sjöstrand and Josefine Klingberg, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Noor Sedehi Zadeh, VTI Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute

Summary: How are companies in different industries affected by water supply disruptions? The project has collected information from more than 1,400 Swedish companies. Based on the survey results, resilience factors have been calculated for 35 different industries. The factors provide a measure of the proportion of companies’ operations that can be maintained in the event of an interruption. They can be used, for example, to calculate interruption risks and estimate the benefits of risk reduction measures. They also provide a basis for in-depth dialogue between drinking water producers and companies.

Keywords: Water supply outage, critical infrastructure disruption, economic loss, business interruption, resiliency factor, risk reduction

Removing PFAS from the urban water cycle causes a wide range of problems for water service providers. While technologies exist to remove most PFAS, they are unsustainable, mainly due to their technical complexity, resource intensity (water, energy, treatment chemicals etc.) and the generation of PFAS-containing residues. Reliance on end-of-pipe solutions creates a substantial stumbling block on the water sector’s journey towards climate neutrality. Any emissions of chemicals belonging to this group into the environment need to be avoided, using the Precautionary Principle and the Control-at-Source Principle. This can be best achieved by an EU-level ban of all PFAS uses.