Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat)

E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development

e-mail contact : ESTAT-SDG-MONITORING@ec.europa.eu

The indicator is part of the EU Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards SDG 6 on clean water and sanitation; which is embedded in the European Commission’s Priorities under the 'European Green Deal'.

Among other things, SDG 6 calls for ensuring universal access to safe and affordable drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, and ending open defecation. It also aims at improving water quality and water-use efficiency and encouraging sustainable abstractions and supply of freshwater. Protecting and restoring water-related ecosystems such as forests, mountains, wetlands and rivers is essential for mitigating water scarcity, as is the implementation of integrated water resources management.

Indicator can be considered as global SDG indicator 6.4.2 "Level of water stress: freshwater withdrawal as a proportion of available freshwater resources".

The Water Framework Directive is the main European legislation aiming to - among others - to promote sustainable water use based on a long-term protection of available water resources. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 supports the implementation of the Water Framework Directive’s objective by requiring Member States to restore freshwater ecosystems.

The 8th Environment Action Programme sets the environmental policy agenda for the years from 2021 to 2030 and explicitly mentions water-related issues in two of its six priority objectives. These two objectives are: (1) pursuing a zero-pollution ambition for a toxic free-environment, including for air, water and soil and protecting the health and well-being of citizens from environment-related risks and impacts; and (2) protecting, preserving and restoring biodiversity and enhancing natural capital, notably air, water, soil, and forest, freshwater, wetland and marine ecosystems.

The regionalised water exploitation index (WEI+) measures total water consumption as a percentage of the renewable freshwater resources available for a given territory and period. It quantifies how much water is abstracted monthly or seasonally and how much water is returned before or after use to the environment via river basins (e.g. leakages, discharges by economic sectors). The difference between water abstractions and water returns is regarded as ‘water consumption’. In the absence of Europe-wide agreed formal targets, values above 20 % are generally considered to be a sign of water scarcity, while values equal or greater than 40 % indicate situations of severe water scarcity, meaning the use of freshwater resources is unsustainable.

Annual calculations of the WEI+ at national level do not reflect uneven spatial and seasonal distribution of resources and may therefore mask water stress which occurs on a seasonal or regional basis.

Where data reported by the countries are not sufficient to compute seasonal WEI+, model-based disaggregation is applied by the EEA based on data from the WISE SoE-Water quantity database (WISE 3) and other open sources (JRC, Eurostat, OECD, FAO) and including gap filling methods.

% of renewable water resources

Calendar year.

Annual calculations at national level cannot reflect uneven spatial and seasonal distribution of resources and may therefore mask water scarcity that occurs on a seasonal or regional basis.

For detailed assessment of accuracy please refer to the original source (see link to external data source and metadata in section “Annexes”).

EEA

Data source: Data modelling based on data from the WISE SoE-Water quantity database (WISE 3) and other open sources (JRC, Eurostat, OECD, FAO) and including gap filling methods.

Data provider: European Environment Agency (EEA).

Every 2 years

The indicator is updated every two years with annual data.

> T+2 years

New data points are disseminated within three years after the latest reference year.

All EU MS

Data are presented for all EU Member States plus Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, North Macedonia, Albania, Türkiye and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

All EU MS

Comparability between reporting countries needs to be considered with reservation due to the different nature of external inflow and internal flow (which is precipitation minus actual evapotranspiration), as their share in renewable freshwater resources varies considerably among countries.

> 10 years

Presented time series starts in 2000.

> 4 data points

Length of comparable time series without methodological break is longer than 4 data points. Comparability over time is generally good, but can be limited due to data gaps and breaks in series.

Analysis of indicator is presented in Eurostat's annual monitoring report on Sustainable development in the EU (progress towards SDGs in the EU context).

See table sdg_06_60

Eurostat dedicated section on SDGs: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/overview

Copyrights: Eurostat Copyright/Licence Policy is applicable.