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Chapter 2. Natural ecosystems altered and damaged by climate change: a threat to human health

Climate change and water resources: Excess, shortage, and pollution

Franck Galland
p. 80-84

Abstract

A series of extreme climate events in 2022 had a profound impact on water resources in France and western Europe. Droughts led to water shortages in several areas and were followed by winter storms that caused record flooding.

Long-term projections point to significant reductions in the amount of water in rivers and groundwater reserves. Some French departments, such as the Pyrénées-Orientales, are already confronted with conditions of semi-aridity while others, such as Pas-de-Calais, are experiencing water surplus. The changing climate has serious, unsettling effects on homes and infrastructure, particularly for the production and distribution of drinking water as well as on sectors such as agriculture and industry that are heavily reliant on water. This article explores these issues and presents individual and collective solutions to address these challenges and prepare critical infrastructure for the impacts of extreme climate events.

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Introduction

1“Gouverner, c’est pleuvoir” [to govern is to rain]. Whether attributed to Marshal Hubert Lyautey, the first French Resident-General in Morocco, or to Théodore Steeg, his successor in Rabat from 1925 to 1929, this saying refers to the impact of drought on the colony’s economy. It shows how forward planning in Morocco inevitably involved making allowances for water resources and setting strategies for the construction of water infrastructure designed to respond to the vagaries of the climate.

2Although pronounced in Morocco 100 years ago, the phrase perfectly describes the water situation in present-day France and its nearby European neighbors as a consequence of climate change. In some regions, this change takes the shape of structural water shortages caused by persistent drought and heatwaves. Conversely, other regions sometimes have too much water, with tropical downpours resulting in the equivalent of three months’ rainfall in just three hours.

2022: a marker of climate change

  • 1 Ministère de l'Agriculture et de la Souveraineté Alimentaire. (2023, April 12). Retour d’expérience (...)

32022 is perceived as a turning point in terms of resource scarcity. According to the interministerial mission on drought,1 1,260 French waterways were dry on August 1, 2022, causing disruption to water supplies in a little over a thousand municipalities. Another thousand, under stress, were on the point of tipping into a water shortage.

4This pattern of resource depletion is likely to occur on a regular basis between spring and late fall, without any region in western Europe being entirely spared. According to a range of forecasts, France will experience an average 20% fall in river flows and a 20 to 30% decrease in groundwater levels by 2040.

5However, these reductions will not be spread evenly across the country, with regions such as the Pyrénées-Orientales moving toward lasting semi-aridity, similar to the situation in neighboring Spain. Month after month, it is the only area marked in red – showing levels of groundwater classed as low to extremely low – on maps compiled by the French Geological Survey (BRGM).2 In 2023, the station in Perpignan recorded just 245 millimeters of rain compared to an annual average of 578 millimeters.

  • 3 Infoclimat. (2023). Climatologie de l’année 2023 à Boulogne [Climate data for 2023 in Boulogne]. ht (...)

6Conversely, on the other side of France, Pas-de-Calais recorded extremely high groundwater levels on May 1, 2024, the result of winter rains that had battered the region earlier in the year. Storms Ciaran and Domingos brought as much rain to the Hauts-de-France region in the space of a few days as usually falls over three or four weeks. Throughout November 2023, the Boulogne-sur-Mer station recorded cumulative rainfall of almost 317 millimeters, surpassing the previous record of 304 millimeters in 2000.3

7The duration and volume of these heavy rains, falling on ground that was already saturated, led to widespread storm flooding. The devastation caused by the floods was exacerbated by the harmful effects of widespread soil sealing over the past 50 years. Flooding from rivers bursting their banks is generally aggravated by the impact of rising groundwater and overloaded sewage networks.

8This threefold flooding (heavy rain, rising groundwater, uncontained discharges from wastewater networks) has devastating and long-lasting impacts on infrastructure that is vital to local communities, such as electricity and telecommunication networks, and causes damage to countless houses and apartment blocks.

Consequences for drinking water

9Water use is disrupted by these extreme phenomena caused by climate change. Accounting for 18.7% of water withdrawals in France, the production and distribution of water by operators (whether public or private under delegated management) ensure the supply of drinking water to the population and to high-risk customers for health (e.g., hospitals) and security reasons (e.g., critical industrial sites).

  • 4 Bureau d'informations et de prévisions économiques. (2019). Les services publics d’eau et d’assaini (...)
  • 5 State caused by an overabundance of organic matter in a waterway, lake or coastal area.
  • 6 Lowest average level/minimum waterway flow rate.

1033% of the water withdrawn is abstracted from the surface, with the remainder coming from underground sources.4 In 2022 the sight of parts of the River Loire looking like a sea of sand was justifiably alarming for operators of the water treatment plants found widely along the river’s course. In the Loire region as elsewhere, water treatment plants need access to raw water that must not exceed a temperature of 25°C, be overloaded with pollutants caused by low flow rates, or suffer from eutrophication.5 Unfortunately, precisely the opposite occurs in low-water6 rivers during extended heatwaves and droughts.

  • 7 Series of bores and wells used to extract water from underground. These installations are often use (...)

11Still in 2022, wildfires in the Gironde department highlighted the vulnerability of water and sewage infrastructure threatened by advancing flames. That summer, 70,000 hectares burned, ten times more than usual. The fires that ravaged the municipality of Teste-de-Buch are a perfect illustration. Water infrastructure such as well fields7 in forest areas were at risk, along with the availability of water for firefighting.

12A new problem arises with the fact that affected areas are no longer located exclusively in the southern half of France, where farmers are used to clearing scrub and brush from around their facilities in the winter and adopting fire-prevention strategies in the summer. On July 18, 2022 95 wildfires were reported in 37 different departments, including in places like Finistère, Maine-et-Loire and Eure with no history of forest fires, not even during exceptionally hot years such as 2003.

13Flooding also causes serious disruption to drinking water production and distribution capacity. It leads to issues that include: turbidity, pollution of raw water caused by uncontained discharges from wastewater plants with insufficient capacity to deal with the volumes of storm water, and pollutants arising directly from the flooding, such as from home heating oil tanks and waste oil from garages being washed into the floodwater.

  • 8 Directive 2022/2557 of the European Parliament and the Council.

14As with every other essential activity, the water industry must improve its robustness and needs to be better prepared to manage the consequences of climate change. This is an issue covered by the December 14, 2022 EU directive on the resilience of critical entities.8 When it enters into law in France on October 17, 2024, the directive will require water and wastewater operators, as designated critical operators, to draft resilience plans that include details of their efforts to anticipate and respond to extreme climate risks.

Consequences for other uses

15Climate change also has a significant impact on the water-energy nexus. While energy is needed to extract groundwater, treat raw water to make it drinkable, and carry it all the way to users’ taps (in France this takes 0.5 Kw/h per cubic meter of water distributed), generating energy also requires large amounts of water.

  • 9 Ministère de la Transition Écologique et de la Cohésion des Territoires. (2023). Les prélèvements d (...)
  • 10 Water abstracted is not the same as water used. Water abstracted is “freshwater taken from undergro (...)

16The energy industry is a major water user, accounting for 44.7% of all water abstraction in France.9 Water is used mainly for hydro-electric generation and cooling nuclear reactors. Although a major abstractor, the energy industry is a relatively small consumer, as EDF’s nuclear plants, operating in a closed loop, discharge the vast majority of the water they abstract.10

  • 11 As defined above, lowest average level/minimum waterway flow rate.

17The biggest challenge facing EDF lies elsewhere, in its capacity to dilute the cooling water discharge from its power plants when rivers are at their lowest.11 This is why nuclear power plants need to increase their effluent storage capacity in tanks holding 300 to 500 cubic meters, making it possible to reach the minimum flow rate above which cooling water can be discharged into the environment.

18Water scarcity also impacts the manu-facturing industry, which accounts for an average of 7.6% of water abstracted in France, with significant variations across the country. South of the Loire estuary for example, industrial water use can account for up to 50% of total withdrawals due to water-intensive activities. The Donges refinery, which supplies 11 million metric tons of refined petroleum products annually (17% of French fuel), uses 3 to 4 million cubic meters of water annually, taken mainly from the Campbon aquifer. Nearby Saint-Nazaire, Cargill processes sunflower seeds into vegetable oil and livestock feed, using the equivalent of half an Olympic-size swimming pool every day.

19Like the petrochemicals and the agri-food industry, the new technology sector is also a major consumer. The ST Microelectronics site in Grenoble, whose output is strategically important for the production of chips in the European Union, used 4.5 million cubic meters of water in 2022. This amount is equivalent to 20% of the drinking water distributed by city authorities, and is necessary for ensuring ultrapure water required for its manufacturing process.

20In a context of resource scarcity due to changes in precipitation patterns, one of the major challenges for the coming decades will be to boost the resilience of power plants and industrial sites, including those located in zones that have not yet experienced any meaningful signs of water shortage.

21Let us take the Rhône as an example. Between 1960 and 2020, the Rhône basin saw temperatures rise by 1.8°C as well as changes in river flow, which is 7% lower when exiting Lake Geneva in Switzerland and as much as 13% lower at Beaucaire in the Gard department of France. These figures, when taken in combination with lower volumes of water in shrinking Alpine glaciers, are cause for alarm, especially considering that 25% of France’s electricity production, as well as a quarter of all the residents and employment opportunities in the Rhône-Mediterranean-Corsica basin, are concentrated along the banks of the Rhône.

Drought is a threat to health

Water is vital to human health. Maslow’s pyramid depicting the hierarchy of needs places water as one of the pillars of human health: it includes physiological needs, such as drinking and eating, among the fundamental prerequisites for survival and wellbeing. Our social and economic structures mean that health is also indirectly dependent on water: water conditions the production of electricity, agriculture, housing, and sometimes even employment.

The phenomena described above underline the likelihood of an increased incidence of droughts, with consequences that could have profound impacts on health and wellbeing. For example, changes in flow rate or water temperature can increase the presence of pathogens, as bacteria thrive in water with temperatures between 25°C and 50°C. Additionally, interruptions to water supply can undermine healthcare providers such as hospitals, dialysis units, and care homes

The diagram below offers a non-exhaustive illustration of the direct and indirect impacts drought has on health. It also highlights how closely human health is linked to the environment and socio-economic context.

Pathways through which drought impacts human health in the context of climate change

Pathways through which drought impacts human health in the context of climate change

Source: Yusa, A., Berry, P., J Cheng, J., Ogden, N., Bonsal, B., Stewart, R., & Waldick, R. (2015).

22Downstream from Beaucaire is a pumping station that extracts 75 cubic meters of river water a second to supply the whole Occitanie plain with its coastal tourist zones, many of the built-up areas between the cities of Nîmes and Montpellier, as well as the agricultural regions of the Petite Camargue and the arboricultural Costières plateau (one of the largest in Europe). The water is abstracted by BRL Exploitation, which manages and operates the regional water network concession.

  • 12 Launched in 2008 this is a project unlike any other in Europe, with the Aqua Domitia network drawin (...)
  • 13 Abstractions from the Rhône (2024). Compagnie d’aménagement du Bas-Rhône et du Languedoc (BRL).

23With the extension of the Aqua Domitia12 project, water from the Rhône, which is of strategic importance to this entire part of the Occitanie region, is now carried beyond Montpellier and may in the future continue as far as the Pyrénées-Orientales to provide a lasting solution to a department that, as we have seen, is struggling with the effects of persistent drought.13

24More than ever, the Rhône is playing the role of the main artery for southern regions and Rhône-Alpes, where all those drawing water will have to pay particular attention to the new realities they face. This is notably reflected in exceptional measures to limit or suspend water use through prefectural orders under the terms of articles L.211-3 II-1° and R R211-66 of the Environment Code. As of June 30, 2023, all installations requiring environmental protection certification are also subject to varying degrees of restrictions depending on the gravity of the situation.

25But over and above industrial users, it is the water footprint of agricultural activities that will need to change drastically. Accounting for 44% of water use in France, agriculture and livestock are by far the largest users of water resources.

  • 14 Courrier International. (2022, July 14). Comment la sécheresse détruit le made in Italy alimentaire (...)

26In 2022, water shortages had a significant impact on farm yields in France and neighboring Italy, whose northern regions were particularly affected. There was, for example, a 30% fall in olive oil production and a 7.4% drop in the harvest of the durum wheat essential for pasta. These decreases cost transalpine agriculture an estimated €6 billion in lost revenue.14

Toward individual and collective solutions for cross-border basins

27The facts indicate that entire sectors of the economies of France and its European neighbors must adapt to increasing resource scarcity, requiring better planning for the impacts of extreme climate events as well as changes in how resources are used. This proactive approach involves measures at both the individual and collective levels.

28Individual, because water users need to accelerate their shift towards efficient water use, a transformation driven by awareness-raising campaigns, technologies for reusing wastewater and digitizing networks, and new techniques for reducing leaks.

29However, these approaches must also be collective, ensuring that needs are understood on all sides and analyzing the downstream and upstream interdependencies that arise when water becomes scarce.

  • 15 Rhône Mediterranean Corsica Water Agency (2023). Minimum flow rates in the Rhône are falling becaus (...)

30Further, there is likely a need to think collectively about building new hydraulic reservoirs to support low flows and secure usage. Severe low flows are expected to be more common in France, with flow rates falling anywhere from 14% to 40% in some areas.15 For the Villerest and Naussac dams, managed by Etablissement Public Loire, which played such a crucial role during the summer of 2022, this will entail more frequent demands and the release of two to three times the usual amount of water.

31Then comes the need for stronger cooperation within river basins, including across borders. Take the River Meuse, which obviously does not stop flowing the moment it passes the French-Belgian border. Meeting the water needs of stakeholders in France, Belgium and the Netherlands is becoming a critical challenge. It is essential for drinking water supplies, agricultural water, and water for what we could term “convenience” uses since it is needed for home and industrial air-conditioning systems or cooling data centers. Regional energy security must also be taken into account by ensuring continuity of activity at nuclear plants in Belgium and France, as well as navigability on the Meuse with the rise in importance of the Liège river port, already Europe’s third largest after Duisbourg on the Rhine and Paris on the Seine.

32In this way, the Meuse example imposes a new framework for strategic dialogue between the river’s users, one that could equally be applied to the Moselle, Doubs, Rhine and Rhône rivers.

Conclusion

33As we have seen, extreme weather events resulting from climate change are causing widespread disruption to water resources. Extended droughts, dry waterways, and devastating flooding not only have an impact on drinking water supplies but also on many sectors that use and/or consume water. Projections agree that many more events of this type will occur in the years up until 2040, highlighting the growing severity of these issues.

34While the effects of such disruption to our water resources can sometimes only be seen indirectly (via increased pressure on production and treatment systems, interruptions in supply, etc.), they can also pose a direct threat to human health (usage restrictions, outright bans on consumption, etc.). These disruptions call for the development of solutions that guarantee the well-being and resilience of our societies in the face of such environmental challenges.

35It is through individual water-saving measures by users and collective resilience efforts at the river basin level – such as the creation of new infrastructure, the use of shared forecasting data, the renegotiation of cross-border cooperation agreements, and the strengthening of regional dialogue bodies – that we will mitigate the consequences of extreme climate events on water-consuming human activities.

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Notes

1 Ministère de l'Agriculture et de la Souveraineté Alimentaire. (2023, April 12). Retour d’expérience sur la gestion de l’eau lors de la sécheresse 2022 [Overview of water management during the 2022 drought]. https://agriculture.gouv.fr/retour-dexperience-sur-la-gestion-de-leau-lors-de-lasecheresse-2022.

2 BRGM. (2024, July 12). Groundwater reserves on July 1, 2024. BRGM. https://www.brgm.fr/fr/actualite/communique-presse/nappes-eau-souterraine-au-1er-juillet-2024.

3 Infoclimat. (2023). Climatologie de l’année 2023 à Boulogne [Climate data for 2023 in Boulogne]. https://www.infoclimat.fr/climatologie/annee/2023/boulogne/valeurs/07002.html.

4 Bureau d'informations et de prévisions économiques. (2019). Les services publics d’eau et d’assainissement en France [Public water and watsewater services in France]. https://economiev2.eaufrance.fr/sites/default/files/2020-10/doc408-fp2e-bipe-2019-eau-assainissement-.pdf.

5 State caused by an overabundance of organic matter in a waterway, lake or coastal area.

6 Lowest average level/minimum waterway flow rate.

7 Series of bores and wells used to extract water from underground. These installations are often used to supply drinking water or for agricultural and industrial uses.

8 Directive 2022/2557 of the European Parliament and the Council.

9 Ministère de la Transition Écologique et de la Cohésion des Territoires. (2023). Les prélèvements d’eau douce : principaux usages en 2020 et évolution depuis 25 ans en France [Freshwater abstraction: main uses in 2020 and changes in France over 25 years]. https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/les-prelevements-deau-douce-principaux-usages-en-2020-et-evolution-depuis-25-ans-en-france.

10 Water abstracted is not the same as water used. Water abstracted is “freshwater taken from underground or surface sources to meet the needs of human activities.” Water used is “water abstracted and not returned to the aquatic environment: this is mainly water that has evaporated or been incorporated into the soil, plants and products.”

11 As defined above, lowest average level/minimum waterway flow rate.

12 Launched in 2008 this is a project unlike any other in Europe, with the Aqua Domitia network drawing water from the Rhône to provide a long-term supply to the Gard and Hérault departments.

13 Abstractions from the Rhône (2024). Compagnie d’aménagement du Bas-Rhône et du Languedoc (BRL).

14 Courrier International. (2022, July 14). Comment la sécheresse détruit le made in Italy alimentaire [How drought destroys Made in Italy foods]. https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/climat-comment-la-secheresse-detruit-le-made-in-italy-alimentaire#:~:text=En%202022%2C%20la%20production%20d,euros%20aux%20entreprises%20agricoles%20italiennes.

15 Rhône Mediterranean Corsica Water Agency (2023). Minimum flow rates in the Rhône are falling because of climate change. Hydrological study of the River Rhône and climate change. https://www.eaurmc.fr/upload/docs/application/pdf/2023-03/aermc_plaquette_rhoene_reugime_hydrologique_v9_bigbang_web.pdf.

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List of illustrations

URL http://journals.openedition.org/factsreports/docannexe/image/7773/img-1.jpg
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Title Pathways through which drought impacts human health in the context of climate change
Credits Source: Yusa, A., Berry, P., J Cheng, J., Ogden, N., Bonsal, B., Stewart, R., & Waldick, R. (2015).
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References

Bibliographical reference

Franck Galland, “Climate change and water resources: Excess, shortage, and pollution”Field Actions Science Reports, Special Issue 27 | 2025, 80-84.

Electronic reference

Franck Galland, “Climate change and water resources: Excess, shortage, and pollution”Field Actions Science Reports [Online], Special Issue 27 | 2025, Online since 15 December 2024, connection on 13 February 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/factsreports/7773

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About the author

Franck Galland

CEO at Environmental Emergency & Security Services

Former director of safety at the Suez group and a specialist in security issues relating to water resources, Franck Galland heads Environmental Emergency & Security Services (ES), an engineering consultancy specializing in urban resilience. An associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research, he has recently authored a book titled Guerre et eau – L’eau, enjeu stratégique des conflits modernes [War and Water – Water, the strategic issue behind modern conflicts], published in March 2021 by Robert Laffont. An officer in the military reserve for the past two decades, he currently holds the rank of lieutenant-colonel and is an accredited water expert to the Ministry of the Armed Forces.

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Copyright

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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