The Region of Murcia joins the new alliance of 18 territories to place water at the center of the EU agenda
The Region of Murcia joins the new alliance of 18 territories to place water at the center of the EU agenda
The Region of Murcia has joined the new Alliance of European Regions for Water Resilience and Climate Change Preparedness. The president of the regional government, Fernando López Miras, signed the agreement today in Brussels during the alliance's launch event, which includes 18 regions from nine different countries.
López Miras stated that this is a “strategic” union created “to ensure that European regions are heard and taken into account in EU decision-making on water, to increase investment in water policies, and to provide a platform for sharing experiences and knowledge among European regions.”
The Region of Murcia will be a “leading” territory in this alliance, as “we are a region with a structural water deficit, but also the one that makes the best use of water and has the greatest efficiency in its use,” the president explained. Therefore, he affirmed that the Region “will share this experience” and its “accumulated knowledge.”
In this regard, López Miras noted that “with only 3 percent of Spain’s water, we are able to produce 25 percent of the fruits and vegetables the country exports,” and that “we are a region that, in recent years, has invested 1.6 billion euros to become the territory in the world with the highest and best urban wastewater treatment and reuse rates, reaching up to 98 percent.”
Proof of this commitment to innovation is the Regen-IA project, recently launched by the regional government with a budget of 7.3 million euros. This initiative incorporates Artificial Intelligence into wastewater treatment plants to optimize processes and improve water resource management.
The creation of this alliance is especially relevant in a context where water scarcity is increasingly affecting more European territories and where water resources are critical for food security, industrial development, and climate change adaptation policies. Against this backdrop, the EU recently launched the European Water Resilience Strategy.
Members of the alliance
Together with the Region of Murcia, the Alliance of European Regions for Water Resilience is made up of the territories of Emilia-Romagna (Italy), Andalusia (Spain), the Balearic Islands (Spain), the Basque Country (Spain), Catalonia (Spain), the Valencian Community (Spain), Carinthia (Austria), Lower Austria (Austria), Upper Austria (Austria), Styria (Austria), Flanders (Belgium), the Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace (Greece), Hesse (Germany), Nouvelle-Aquitaine (France), Occitanie (France), the South Moravian Region (Czech Republic), and Wielkopolska (Poland).
