教授、国际水利与环境工程学会主席

Report Content：The presentation will report the latest improvement on water status at global scale with a focus on Europe. Europe's water is under significant pressure, presenting serious challenges to water security, now and in the future. As such, Europe urgently needs to improve its resilience and ensure sustainable freshwater supplies for people and the environment. Water stress is already occurring in Europe. It affects 20% of Europe's territory and 30% of the population every year, figures that are likely to increase in the future due to climate change. The deadline set by the Water Framework Directive (WFD) for European rivers, lakes, transitional, coastal and groundwaters to meet good status was 2015. That was not met and there has been little improvement since 2010. In 2021, only 37% of Europe's surface water bodies achieved a good or high ecological status. 29% achieved a good chemical status. The majority of protected aquatic habitats and species in the EU are assessed as having a poor or bad conservation status. Reporting under the WFD shows that the status of some aquatic plants has improved, but this rarely translates into attaining overall good ecological status. Europe's waters continue to be impacted by chemicals, predominantly by atmospheric pollution from coal-powered energy generation and diffuse pollution from agriculture. The lack of improvement in chemical status can be partly attributed to long-lived pollutants, such as mercury and brominated flame retardants. If these long-lived pollutants were not considered, 80% of surface waters would achieve good chemical status rather than 29%.

The water status in Europe is driven by economic activities and legacy of environmental management over several centuries. Developing countries are facing a major challenge for maintaining high quality water status and at the same time provide the needed resources and services for the population. The presentation will address those challenges through the example of the Tonlé Sap lake in Cambodia.