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EuroMediterranean Water Forum | Rome 29.09 - 02.10.26

Themes

The Mediterranean is among the regions most exposed to climate change, with over 180 million people already living in water scarcity and extreme events — from prolonged droughts to catastrophic floods — becoming increasingly frequent across the basin. Rather than giving in to narratives of inevitable crisis, the Forum is grounded in hope and trust: it aims to bring together policymakers, businesses, civil society and academia to address the region's "water trilemma" — too little, too much, too polluted water — and to build, through visionary innovation, stronger governance, greater inclusion and deeper cooperation, a shared path toward water security in the Mediterranean by 2050.
It is around this ambition that the Forum's eleven thematic sessions take shape, each addressing a specific dimension of the challenge — from scarcity and extreme events to finance, governance, technology and hydrodiplomacy. This page brings together the concept note for each theme, outlining its direction, objectives and the questions it sets out to address.
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One Water

Concept Notes

T1

Water Scarcity & Non-Conventional Water Resources

Water scarcity is one of the defining challenges of the twenty-first century. Global water demand is projected to rise 20-30% by 2050, while the Mediterranean — home to 7% of the world's population but only 3% of its renewable freshwater — is one of the world's most prominent climate hotspots. With agriculture accounting for 70-80% of freshwater use, improving water-use efficiency and scaling up non-conventional resources such as reuse and desalination are among the most immediate, cost-effective paths to resilience.
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T2

Water Footprint in Business and the Value of Water

Water has quietly become one of the most important yet least understood variables in business decision-making — no longer only an environmental issue, but a strategic economic factor. Economic activity worth an estimated US$58 trillion a year, around 60% of the world economy, depends on water and healthy freshwater ecosystems, yet it is still valued mainly for its extraction and distribution costs. Companies can usually account for water entering their own sites, but have far less visibility over water embedded in their supply chains.
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T3

The New European Water Vision

Over the past five decades, the EU has built one of the world's most comprehensive water policy frameworks, from the first water quality directives of the 1970s to the Water Framework Directive of 2000. Water security is now emerging as a prerequisite for economic resilience and industrial competitiveness, reflected in the 2024 Letta Report and the Draghi Report's call to streamline water regulation and accelerate infrastructure. The Mediterranean's decades of experience in desalination, reuse and demand management position it as a knowledge partner, not merely a beneficiary, in shaping this new vision.
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T4

Blue Finance and Blue Investments for Water

The Mediterranean basin faces a structural water investment gap of USD 40 to 80 billion a year, a challenge that differs sharply between its two shores — modernisation and digitalisation in the EU, network expansion and sanitation in the south and east. The constraint is rarely the absence of financial instruments, but their misalignment with project preparation, regulation and the underlying "3T" framework of Tariffs, Taxes and Transfers. Outputs are designed to feed directly into the 2026 UN Water Conference and the 2027 World Water Forum in Riyadh.
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T5

Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems Nexus

The complex challenges posed by climate change, demographic shifts, conflict and unsustainable agriculture cannot be addressed through simplified, sectoral approaches. Integrated Water Resources Management first evolved into the Water-Energy-Food nexus, and later into today's WEFE Nexus with the addition of Ecosystems, turning it from a resource-efficiency model into a full sustainability governance framework. The ambition now is operationalisation: moving the Nexus from a theoretical concept into pragmatic, fundable tools for policymakers.
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T6

Beyond Source-to-Sea Approach

The complex challenges posed by climate change, demographic shifts, conflict and unsustainable agriculture cannot be addressed through simplified, Managing human and economic activities in coastal areas in a shared, effective manner is one of the great challenges of our time. Mediterranean coastal populations could grow from approximately 500 to 800 million inhabitants, while 2025 sea surface temperatures spiked up to +5°C above historical averages and an estimated 230,000 tonnes of plastic entered the Mediterranean. Water stakeholders are increasingly central to coastal governance itself, building on models such as the Marseille Bay Contract and recent EU strategies on coastal communities.
T7

Extreme Events and Climate Change: Prevention and Mitigation

Climate change is fundamentally reshaping the frequency and intensity of extreme weather across the Mediterranean, warming around 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels — faster than the global average. The region's defining challenge is the simultaneous experience of scarcity and excess: drought and desertification coexisting with increasingly severe floods, in patterns that differ across the Maghreb, Mashreq and Balkans yet frequently cross borders. Closing gaps in preparedness and cooperation, including through AI-driven forecasting and early-warning systems, remains a central priority.
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T8

One Health, One Water

"One Health One Water" recognises that the health of humans, animals, plants and ecosystems is interdependent, and that water management choices directly affect public and individual health. Today's water crisis is insidiously worsened by compounding health threats — antimicrobial resistance, chemical and pharmaceutical contamination, zoonotic disease — that ageing infrastructure and extreme weather only amplify. Embedding health, and values like dignity and wellbeing, directly into how water investments and policies are evaluated is central to this approach.
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T9

Water Governance: Cities, Basin Authorities and Stakeholders' Commitment

Water insecurity in the Mediterranean cannot be understood in isolation from climate change: the region has warmed about 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and is heating around 20% faster than the global average. Governance itself — not just water supply — is the decisive fault line, since fragmented responsibility across cities and basins turns manageable stress into competition and vulnerability. Framed as "a space of hope grounded in evidence," the focus is on working models worth replicating, rather than treating insecurity as inevitable.
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T10

A New Blue Technological Hope – Digital and AI

Connected sensors, digital twins and predictive algorithms offer unprecedented opportunities to reduce leaks and improve water management — set against a structural paradox: the digital sector is itself a rapidly growing consumer of freshwater. A landmark 2026 UNU-INWEH report found global data centres consumed 448 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, with AI's water footprint projected to reach 9.3 trillion litres by 2030. The stated goal is water neutrality for the tech sector by 2050, paired with faster deployment of smart water management tools.
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T11

Hydrodiplomacy: Advancing the Right to Water for Peace and Stability

Water is often discussed as a source of tension, but in the Mediterranean it should instead be treated as one of the few practical spaces where cooperation can continue even when political relations are difficult. Transboundary waters account for about 60% of the world's freshwater flows, shared by more than three billion people, with groundwater often even less visible and less governed than rivers. This logic extends to fragile and post-crisis contexts, where restoring damaged water systems helps rebuild trust, not just infrastructure.
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