Green

From electricity to snow sports, Alpine water is key. Can these 8 countries protect it?

A battle is brewing around ‘Europe’s rooftop’ over the planet’s most precious resource.

Bountiful for centuries, the crystal-clear waters issuing from the Alps could become increasingly contested as climate change and glacier melt affect the lives of tens of millions in the coming years.

Italy wants them for crop irrigation in the spring and summer. Swiss authorities want to hold up flows to ensure their hydroelectric plants can rev up when needed.

For the first time in four years, after a pandemic lull, government envoys from eight Alpine countries are today meeting to discuss their water issues.

Under the Alpine Convention, a group set up 30 years ago to help coordinate life, leisures and the mountains’ limited resources, the nations are meeting in the southern Swiss town of Brig.

The countries, ranging from pint-sized principality Monaco and small Slovenia to powerhouses like France, Germany and Italy, have focused much attention on what’s known as the “Simplon Alliance.”

Named after an Alpine pass between Italy and Switzerland, it aims to make transportation more eco-friendly, including by favouring rail over roads, and public transport over private cars in the mountains.

How are Alpine nations adapting to climate change?

People work on a tarpaulin which covers the ice of the Corvatsch glacier, near Samedan, in Switzerland last month.Gian Ehrenzeller/AP

With global warming causing a worrying shrinkage in Alpine glaciers this year, especially in Switzerland, the issue of water frozen up in the mountains, or showered and snowed on them, is of growing importance.

Environmental advocates say jockeying for water isn’t being addressed with enough urgency — and want the Alpine countries to do more to talk about the future of the resource.

This isn’t new: Turkey and Iraq, Israelis and Palestinians, are among many countries and peoples to feel the strains of water woes.

But well-irrigated and relatively rich Europe has been largely above such troubles, reaping bountiful water resources for agriculture, hydropower, ski resorts and human consumption.

The Alps are a huge reservoir of water, which ultimately flows to the benefit of some 170 million people.

The “9th report on the State of the Alps” — drafted by the Swiss hosts and set to be approved Thursday — notes that water supply is a “particularly pressing issue». This is because the Alps are a huge reservoir of water, which ultimately flows to the benefit of some 170 million people along some of Europe’s most famous rivers, including the Danube, Po, Rhine and Rhone.

“Drinking water supply, industrial production, agricultural productivity, hydropower and other uses all require consistent availability of Alpine water,” says a near-final draft of the report, seen by The Associated Press.

“Climate change puts these functions under pressure, as glaciers are receding and precipitation regimes are constantly changing.” Therefore, it adds “reduced quantities of water and limited reliability of water supply will be a major issue in the coming decades.”

Which European countries are in the greatest water trouble?

A huge water jet throws 20,000 litres of water per second into the Geneva Lake, during a check of a hydropower plant in Veytaux, Switzerland, 2009.Dominic Favre/AP

While Alpine resorts and villages rely on water, the major upstream users are Switzerland’s hydropower plants, which want to hold onto the water until it’s most needed to power turbines that provide some 60 per cent of the country’s electricity.

But the biggest consumers of the water are downstream. Industrial areas like Grenoble and Annecy in France, Austria’s capital Vienna, and areas around Bolzano in Italy’s South Tyrol are likely to feel an impact.

The southern Alpine towns, especially in France and Italy with their drier climates, are more likely to undergo water shortages than the northern towns, the report said. “This is particularly true of inner-Alpine dry valleys such as the Aosta Valley in northwestern Italy, already affected by significant water stress.”

Campaigners call for greater action to protect Alpine water resources

Kaspar Schuler, director of CIPRA International, a commission devoted to protecting the Alps based in tiny Liechtenstein, said governments have stopped short of steps to tackle the issue like they should — by setting up working groups, expanding research, or coming up with ways that water can be better shared in the future.

“We — the observer organisations — are happy that they have it on the agenda, but we are really astonished that it is so blurry,” Schuler said in a recent interview. “They are aware of the fact that this will be the big issue in the future. But they behave like it’s not so important yet.»

He suggested that many have become too complacent about the Alps’ bountiful waters — and those days may be over soon.

In future it will be a battle about these resources because especially the lack of water can really harm a lot of people.

“Until now, all the non-Alpine countries — the lowlands — were happy that the Alps have been providing so much: landscape for leisure and sports, ski resorts, and the water as much as everybody needs,» Schuler said. «They’ve also been providing peak electricity and hydropower electricity on demand.”

“So far, everybody was happy and the Alps delivered,» Schuler said. «In future it will be a battle … about these resources because especially the lack of water can really harm a lot of people.”

Boats line the dried out shore of the Lac des Brenets in Les Brenets, Switzerland, 2018.Anthony Anex/AP

Can COP27 help arrest the Alps’ glacier melt?

State Secretary Bettina Hoffmann, who is representing Germany’s Environment Ministry in Brig, said her country was working to “bundle” issues of sustainable water in the broader context of the fight against the climate crisis — the centrepiece of the UN climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, starting 6 November.

“The Alpine countries have to act on two levels: Only resolute climate action that stops global warming can preserve the remaining glaciers,” she said. “At the same time, however, we have to adapt to changes in the water balance both in the Alps and in rivers fed by water from the Alps.»

She called for “in-depth exchanges on how to protect the water cycle in the Alps,” and suggested countries in the region should share best practices and ideas. “We need to involve all stakeholders, from tourism to agriculture right through to the water supply sector.»

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