which was about 0.05 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006 (Strosser et al. 2012). A recent study by Brown et al. (2013) has found that a 1 per cent increase in the area affected by drought can slow a country’s annual GDP growth rate by as much as 2.7 per cent.


Good practices in adaptation to climate change in water management range from improved water use efficiency to adaptation strategies coordinated between the riparian countries (UNECE and INBO 2015). As cautious water allocation cannot itself improve total water availability, climate change adaptation in regions affected by water shortages requires demand management in one or more sectors (Wimmer et al. 2015), and/or measures to increase the supply, such as desalination. Demand-side measures, however, should have higher priority than supply-side measures (Kossida et al. 2012), as there is still a large potential for water saving through the application of economic incentives and promoting behavioural changes. (More...94) Water efficiency gains are already being made across the pan-European region, though rebound effects sometimes lead to an offset, as higher efficiency does not necessarily lead to decreasing water use, especially in the absence of adequate water allocation mechanisms (Scott et al. 2014). Furthermore, efficiency improvements in Mediterranean agriculture are only partly a question of technology, (More...95) and need to be accompanied by appropriate policies reflecting socioeconomic needs, for example, commercialization of improved cultivars and marketing Tuberosa et al. 2007).


Another way to save water is to reuse treated wastewater, an approach used in the Mediterranean rim countries, mainly for agricultural purposes. In Western Europe, Spain accounts for the largest amount of reused wastewater (347 million cubic metres per year) followed by Italy (233 million), with agriculture receiving most of it. Israel is another large user of treated wastewater: 280 million cubic metres per year, or about 83 per cent of the country’s total treated wastewater. The water reuse rate is high in Cyprus at 100 per cent, and Malta at approximately 60 per cent, whereas in Greece, Italy and Spain treated wastewater reuse represents only 5–12 per


cent of all effluents (MED-EUWI 2007). Nevertheless, there is significant potential for increasing the volume of wastewater reused in the EU, but a wider uptake of water reuse solutions is hampered by several barriers such as inadequate water pricing or insufficient control over freshwater abstraction (BIO by Deloitte 2015). Although the water reuse industry benefits from technological innovations, water reuse solutions face new challenges, such as for example risks to human and environmental health impacts, energy footprint, as well as social and economic considerations (Alcalde-Sanz and Gawlik 2014). It needs to be borne in mind that safe wastewater reuse requires stringent control of water quality and related health risks (WHO 2006b).


The Central Asian sub-region is considered to be facing water scarcity resulting from excessive water consumption in agriculture, with average water withdrawals for irrigation at 12 294 cubic metres per hectare per year for the sub- region (FAO 2013d), compared to a global annual average of 7 700 cubic metres per hectare (FAO 2011a). The difference is partly due to the region’s large area of saline soils (Murray- Rust et al. 2003), which need to be flushed at a rate of 3 000 - 3 500 cubic metres of water per hectare after harvest, sometimes two or even four times for the most saline soils. As a result, this sub-region’s water use efficiency is one of the lowest worldwide (Europe Aid 2010).


Water availability is the major limiting factor for crop cultivation in the pan-European region (Murray-Rust et al. 2003). Although the overall regional trend indicates a slight reduction in precipitation over Central Asia (IPCC 2014b; Lioubimtseva and Henebry 2009), the opposite has been observed in the vicinity of major oases due to an increase in the area under irrigation (Pielke et al. 2007). A moderate increase in precipitation of 10 per cent (Kirilenko et al. 2009; 2009; Micklin 2007) or a slight decrease is projected for the region. Higher temperatures are likely to affect the melt rates of glaciers in the Tien Shan Mountains and the Pamirs, increasing the flow of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, with the potential to compensate for the growing irrigation demands caused by higher temperatures (Micklin 2007). However, the flow will rapidly decrease during the dry


107


Chapter 2: Environmental State and Trends


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