Paris France is drying up – and the government is already being forced to take austerity measures. It has not rained for a full 32 days in a row, and the Météo-France weather service reports the driest period since records began in 1959.
President Emmanuel Macron said at the international agricultural fair in Paris (until March 5) France will have to implement drastic austerity measures immediately. Environment Minister Christophe Béchu called on the population to start saving water in the spring.
Béchu described the situation as catastrophic. “The situation is more problematic than at the same time last year and we are two months late in refilling the groundwater.” Last summer in some places in southern France there was no drinking water and fields could no longer be irrigated.
In the Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, Minister Béchu addressed the prefects who, as representatives of the central government, are responsible for implementing the policy in their districts. “Now decide on measures to save water. If restrictions need to be imposed now to ensure there is enough water for the summer, you should do it,” he said.
Since Monday, Béchu has been meeting first with the prefects of the particularly affected regions in the south, and later with all prefects. Later this week, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne will launch an inter-ministerial committee to assess the risks and propose measures to be taken in the event of a drought. It’s “unusually early” for the water shortage, she said.
The rain deficit was not only evident in the south of the country last year.
(Photo: Reuters)
There are already some restrictions in several southern regions, such as in the departments of Isère around Grenoble, Bouches-du-Rhône around Marseille, Var around Toulon and Pyrénées-Orientales around Perpignan. There it is officially forbidden to wash cars, use lawn sprinklers and fill private pools until the end of April.
Lack of rain affects groundwater levels
The soils, which are still suffering from the drought of summer 2022, are very badly affected in France. At the end of February it is as dry as usual in April. The situation is particularly dramatic in the south, where some rivers have already dried up completely. But the Loire further north also has little water, and numerous lakes throughout France only look like puddles.
For two years, the rain deficit has hit France even in the north of the country. The shortage also affects the groundwater level. In many regions it is only 40 percent of the long-term average for the season. In addition, it was warmer than usual this year in winter.
Some reservoirs are currently only 30 percent full, the Montbel reservoir in the Ariège department in the Pyrenees is reminiscent of a lunar landscape. Not much can be expected from the snowmelt either, because snow was scarce in France this winter.
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According to climate expert Jean-Marc Jancovici, it hasn’t rained enough in France for a long time. In the past twelve months, the situation had been particularly tense. He warned: “There will be a lack of water in all areas.” It will be problematic for agriculture, which has already suffered in the summer of 2022.
Last summer, fields in some regions could not be irrigated due to the lack of water.
(Photo: IMAGO/NurPhoto)
The lack of rain is also a risk for the energy sector, says Jancovici. There will be less energy from renewable sources because the reservoirs have less water. The nuclear industry also lacks the cooling water from the rivers. Already last summer, some nuclear power plants ran on the back burner because the rivers did not carry enough water and therefore heated up too quickly.
And the situation is likely to get worse: Environment Minister Béchu expects that between 10 and 40 percent less water will be available in the coming years.
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Not only France is affected by the drought. The situation in Spain has been tense for years, and numerous regions in Italy are also suffering from an early drought. The north of Italy has been badly affected, with gondolas almost touching the ground on the canals of Venice. The lakes in northern Italy have little water because there has been no rain for weeks.
This is particularly noticeable on Lake Garda. Islands in the lake that could otherwise only be reached by boat are accessible on foot. The Po River, the largest in Italy and the country’s main water reservoir, is also extremely dry due to significantly less rainfall. This becomes a danger for the Po Valley. The most important agricultural and industrial region of Italy already suffered from a very dry summer of 2022.
But there is also a shortage of water in many places in Central European countries. The Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig reports drought in northern and eastern Germany. The amount of rain was no longer sufficient to wet the soil, let alone replenish the groundwater. Nevertheless, Germany is not as acutely affected by drought as the Mediterranean countries of Italy, France and Spain.
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