The theme chosen this year for World Water Day is Water for Peace: a resource at risk can transform from a reason for conflict into an opportunity for cooperation. A process that is certainly complex, as also highlighted by a recent legal study by CIMA Research Foundation
Water can create peace or spark conflicts. It is from this consideration that the United Nations have chosen to dedicate this year’s World Water Day to the theme “Water for Peace.” This is a point of reflection on the role of water resources, increasingly at risk, as a vehicle for cooperation and equity – not only in regions historically affected by water scarcity issues.
The climate crisis, coupled with intensive water use for human activities, has brought Europe among the areas that could experience conflicts related to this resource, as at least partly shown by the drought of 2022.
What about Italy?
One way to begin answering these questions is to analyze the management of the 2022 drought, primarily addressed through the issuance of emergency ordinances. This is what researchers from CIMA Research Foundation, in collaboration with the Department of Law of the University of Genoa, have done. Their analysis, published in the legal Italian journal Consulta Online, collects and classifies the ordinances issued for water management in the Po River basin area, which was most affected by the drought of 2022, attempting to evaluate their spatial and temporal distribution, meaning, and actual effectiveness they have assumed.
Analysis of ordinances
It is known that droughts, due to climate change, are becoming more frequent and intense in various areas of the planet. Among these, the Mediterranean basin, which according to predictive models, will experience a decrease in precipitation. The monitoring carried out by CIMA Research Foundation on snow points in this same direction: in recent years, it has highlighted a continuous deficit of snow – and consequently, of the water contained in it, affecting water supply in spring and summer.
In this context, “The ordinances issued during the 2022 drought represent the regulatory tool chosen by local administrations to address the emergency and balance the interests, both public and private, related to a resource – water – at a time when it was very limited,” say Francesca Munerol and Margherita Andreaggi, co-authors of the article and researchers at CIMA Research Foundation. “Their very issuance, in fact, indicates how those territories could be the scene of conflicts over water management (also due to the strong dependence on snow water, increasingly scarce), because it shows how the public decision-maker felt the need to take measures to reduce and establish the priority of water use.”
The study collected state acts, but also regional (issued by Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont, Aosta Valley, covering about 90% of the Po basin) and municipal ordinances. From the analysis of the latter, it emerged that 44% of the municipalities issued contingency ordinances (an urgent legal instrument) to address the impacts of the drought; the most active response was where the regions provided models or schemes of ordinances to the municipalities. It also emerges that there is a general lack of content homogeneity: some seem ineffective in the proposed preventive measures, while others are useful in redefining water use among different users but involve different strategies (from requiring the control of private irrigation systems in favor of those with economic purposes to banning the use of drinking water for gardens or sports fields).
The “seeds of conflict”
The most significant aspects emerging from this analysis concern the role and timing of the ordinances. Indeed, the signals that the summer would be characterized by a severe water scarcity were already evident from the scarce winter precipitation. However, almost 70% of the ordinances were issued only in June, even towards the end of the month, revealing both a lack of long-term municipal planning and poor regional coordination. “Partly for this reason, the ordinances were elements that created, or exacerbated, even greater conflicts over water use. Besides being issued late, they were often arbitrary in content, because of the lack of planning at a higher level, and therefore essentially ineffective for preventive or waste limitation purposes, also because of the municipalities’ inability to verify compliance,” explain Dr Munerol and Dr Andreaggi.
Based on these considerations, the study concludes by identifying precisely in the measures taken during the 2022 drought the “seeds of conflict,” which represent indicators of the legal-social impacts of drought. The research group defines them as facts or actions that represent a cause of conflict over water or exacerbate existing conflicts, without necessarily intending to do so or that there are violent actions. In other words, we expect that conflicts related to water resources will emerge in Europe, without this being made evident by violent actions, accompanied by emergency legal measures that fail to manage the different needs of farmers, private citizens, public entities, and economic entities.
“The drought of 2022 was one of the many demonstrations of how urgent it is now to adopt broad-ranging strategies and measures, which have a strong preventive character and are based on scientific data; it is also necessary to assess the timing of such measures being adopted, so that they are as effective as possible. It will be essential, moreover, that they result from shared discussions among different users, both public and private, so that they can truly represent a barrier to new conflicts over water. Only then can we say that we are on a path of pacification regarding water management, increasingly scarce,” concludes Dr Munerol. “In short, strategies and measures that favor unity, collaboration, and dialogue, not new ‘seeds of conflict.’ A complex process, for sure, but fundamental to respond to one of the key messages of this World Water Day: fair and sustainable use of this resource can be a means to unite communities and nations.”