Water Resources: Europe

In order to identify the most prominent European environmental problems, a meeting of European environment ministers was held at Dobris Castle near Prague in 1991. As a result of this meeting, work began by making a survey of the literature and analyzing international initiatives by, among others, the EU, UNECE, UNEP, OECD and the US Environment Protection Agency. This resulted in a list of 56 environmental problems in Europe of which the following 12 problems were considered the most significant.

• the management of water;
• waste management;
• climate change;
• stratospheric ozone depletion;
• urban stress;
• forest degradation;
• chemical risks;
• acidification;
• major accidents;
• the loss of biodiversity;
• tropospheric ozone and other photochemical oxidants;
• coastal zone threats and management; Only the first of these problems, management of water, is briefly discussed here from information presented in the report of the study