“The Alpine Convention in small bites”: in this webpage we present, in a simple and dynamic way, the main topics in order to get to know the Alpine Convention. The dynamism stems from the fact that the described issues (" small bites") in this web page will be periodically updated in order to deal with all the important policies for the Alps.
Whoever would like to know about all the up-to-date "small bites" that are currently available can download the book -The Alps-Eight countries, a single territory (pdf, 9MB) published by the Permanent Secretariat of the Alpine Convention in March 2009, where meaningful photographic images can be found next to the texts .
5. Water
The Alps are rightly defined as Europe’s water reservoir. Large parts of the continent benefit from it since Alpine rivers transport every year on average an extraordinary 216 km³ of water to the nearby regions. In the middle of summer, a significant percentage of the European water balance comes from the water melted from the Alpine glaciers which, at the moment, store an estimated 75 km³ water. According to climate scenarios, in less than 100 years, the Eastern Alps, as well as large parts of the Western Alps, will be completely free of ice.
Precipitation in the form of snow will diminish, while it is likely that with the same overall quantity, the season’s distribution of rainfall will change in line with climate change. In the Alps an increase in floods is therefore expected (especially in the winter semester) but also in droughts (in summer). At the same time, the melting of permafrost above a height of 2500 metres will lead to landslides and rock falls more often than in the past. The protection of the population from nature hazards therefore requires new ideas and measures for adaptation.
At the moment, the tourism industry is trying to offset the reduced amount of snow by using artificial snow machines. Almost three quarters of ski runs in the whole Alpine region are already covered with artificial snow. This means higher energy consumption as well as an impact on landscape and the natural flow of water caused by storage lakes.
A core issue is the role of water in energy production. Globally, it has to be considered renewable and emissions free. At the same time, there are consequences regarding landscape and water ecology. The importance of that theme for the Alpine Convention is revealed by the fact that the 2nd Report on the state of the Alps, published in 2009, was dedicated to water issues; plus, in 2009, in order to deepen the work on those themes in the alpine territory, the Convention set tup the Platform “Water management in the alpine space” (Find in DE, IT, SL, FR pages).