Lessons from the 2018-2019 European droughts: A collective need for unifying drought risk management
- 1University of Freiburg, Environmental Hydrological Systems, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, Freiburg, Germany
- 2German Centre for Rail Traffic Research, Dresden, Germany (veit.blauhut@gmail.com)
- 3Freshwater Centre, Finnish Environment Institute, Finland
- 4Department of Earth Sciences, Program for Air, Water and Landscape Sciences; Hydrology, Uppsala University, Sweden
- 5School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
In recent years, drought impacts have been perceived as more severe and frequent than those of past events throughout Europe. Due to the heterogeneity of Europe’s hydro- climatological situation as well as the multiple Nations on the continent, drought events and their impacts vary with respect to location, sector, extent, duration and scale. In order to understand recent effects of drought and their possible drivers, national representatives distributed a uniform questionnaire to water management related stakeholders at different scales of 28 contributing countries. The survey focused on collecting information on stakeholders’ perceptions of drought, impacts on water resources and beyond, water availability and current drought management strategies at national and regional scales. The survey results were compared with the actual drought hazard information registered by the European Drought Observatory (EDO) for 2018 and 2019. The final results of the study highlight the diversity among national drought event perception and the value of implemented drought management strategies. Only few countries practise drought management, an absence of drought management is mostly attributed to lacking of resources, but also lacking political will for implementation and lacking political advice. Supported by the national representatives’ perspectives, the study concludes with an urgent need to further reduce drought impacts by constructing and implementing a European macro-level drought governance approach, such as a directive, which would strengthen national drought management and lessen harm to human and natural potentials.
Veit Blauhut1, Michael Stoelzle1, Lauri Ahopelto2, 3, Manuela I. Brunner1, Claudia Teutschbein4, Doris E Wendt5, Vytautas Akstinas6, Sigrid J. Bakke7, Lucy J. Barker8, Lenka Bartošová9, Agrita Briede10, Carmelo Cammalleri11, Ksenija Cindrić Kalin12, Lucia De Stefano13, Miriam Fendeková14, David C. Finger15, 16, Marijke Huysmans17, Mirjana Ivanov18, Jaak Jaagus19, Jiří Jakubínský9, Svitlana Krakovska20, Gregor Laaha21, Monika Lakatos22, Kiril Manevski23, Mathias Neumann Andersen23, Nina Nikolova24, Marzena Osuch25, Pieter van Oel26, Kalina Radeva24, Renata J. Romanowicz25, Elena Toth27, Mirek Trnka9, Marko Urošev28, Julia Urquijo Reguera29, Eric Sauquet30, Aleksandra Stevkov31, Lena M Tallaksen7, Iryna Trofimova20, Anne F. Van Loon32, Michelle T. H. van Vliet 33, Jean-Philippe Vidal30 Niko Wanders26, Micha Werner34, Patrick Willems35, Nenad Živković36 1 Environmental Hydrological Systems, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Freiburg, Germany 2 Water and Development Research Group, School of Engineering, Aalto University, Finland 3 Freshwater Centre, Finnish Environment Institute, Finland 4 Department of Earth Sciences, Program for Air, Water and Landscape Sciences; Hydrology, Uppsala University, Sweden 5 School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK 6 Laboratory of Hydrology, Lithuanian Energy Institute, Lithuania 7 Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 8 UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wallingford, UK 9 Global Change Research Institute CAS, Brno, Czech Republic 10 Faculty of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Latvia, Latvia 11 European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy 12 Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service, Zagreb, Croatia 13 Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain; and Water Observatory, Botín Foundation, Madrid, Spain 14 Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, Slovak Republic 15 School of engineering, Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland 16 Energieinstitut an der Johannes Kepler Universität, Linz, Austria 17 Department of Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussel, Belgium 18 Institute of Hydrometeorology and Seismology, Montenegro 19 Department of Geography, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Estonia 20 Laboratory of Applied Climatology, Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, Kyiv, Ukraine 21 Institute of Statistics, University of Natural Resources and Live Sciences, Vienna, Austria 22 Hungarian Meteorological Service, Budapest, Hungary 23 Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Tjele, Denmark 24 Faculty of Geology and Geography, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria 25 Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland 26 Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands 27 Dept. of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy 28 Geographical Institute “Jovan Cvijić”, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia 29 Department of Agroforestry Engineering, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Agronómica y de Biosistemas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain 30 INRAE, RiverLy, Villeurbanne, France 31 Department of Meteorology, National Hydrometeorological Service, Skopje, North Macedonia 32 Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands 33 Department of Physical Geography, Utrecht University, the Netherlands 34 IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Water Resources & Ecosystems Department, Delft, the Netherlands 35 Hydraulics and Geotechnics Section, Department of Civil Engineering, KU Leuven, Belgium 36 Faculty of Geography, University of Belgrade, Serbia
How to cite: Blauhut, V., Stölzle, M., Ahopelto, L., Brunner, M., Teutschbein, C., and Wendt, D. and the Drought Risk Europe - a Panta Rhei working group: Lessons from the 2018-2019 European droughts: A collective need for unifying drought risk management, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-6146, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6146, 2022.
