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Globally, it has been estimated that four billion people are facing severe water scarcity. While the situation is not yet critical in Europe, water stress is already a serious issue and climate change is expected to make it worse in the future. What is the extent of the problem, and what solutions are available to avoid running out of water?

Irrigation is the provision of water to help crops grow when rainfall is not sufficient. While new farming methods and technologies allow some types of crops to be grown without soil, a certain amount of water is needed to grow any kind of crop. In today's economy, agriculture is one of the sectors that consumes the most water resources. Irrigation is the major cause of water consumption in agriculture. It contributes to increasing crop productivity, but it is also a threat to the preservation of ...

This memo was drawn up for the delegation of the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development to Andalusia (Spain) in May 2016. It includes: 1) an introduction, setting out the key political, geographical, climatic and demographic data; 2) a chapter entirely devoted to the EU's and Spain's macro-economic framework; 3) a study of the agri-food sector in Andalusia; 4) the region's environmental challenges; and finally 5) concluding comments on the implementation of EU agricultural ...

PDF Version The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a distributed network connecting physical objects that are capable of sensing or acting on their environment and able to communicate with each other, other machines or computers. The data these devices report can be collected and analysed in order to reveal insights and suggest actions that will produce cost savings, increase efficiency or improve products and services. The IoT is growing rapidly, with an estimated 25 billion connected objects throughout ...

Water issues in Central Asia, which have proven contentious since the breakup of the Soviet Union, have attracted international attention with the World Bank's recent impact assessment condoning Tajikistan's plan to build an enormous dam. The Rogun Dam, under construction for decades, is strongly contested by downstream Uzbekistan. Tensions between energy-deprived Tajikistan and water-starved Uzbekistan – exacerbated by the region's endemically unsustainable resource management and growing competition ...

Lack of water is expected to affect one-third of the population worldwide by 2025. Today, 1.2 billion people live in areas of scarcity, while 1.6 billion face water shortages due to economic problems. The issue is particularly worrying in least developed countries (LDCs), where water is scarce or there is little or no infrastructure to extract, distribute or conserve water.