Mitigating Vulnerability of Water Resources under Climate Change 
Water resources are under increasing pressure originating from land use and climate change. Accompanied with economic changes in the SEE region the land use pattern is expected to change, too. Both processes will have severe impacts on water resources in general and drinking water resources in particular. CC-WARE aims at developing an integrated transnational strategy for water protection and mitigating water resources vulnerability which builds the basis for an implementation of national / regional action plans. The strategy for national action plans transfers the achieved and developed knowledge and resulting measures into the regions and on local level to strengthen the institutional capacity and human resources at national, regional and local level. A framework will be setup on national level in regard to legislation and national / regional institutional structures to be able to implement the strategy developed on transnational level smoothly after project duration to assure a long term impact of CC-WARE project. The promotion of implementing national activities for mitigating vulnerability of drinking water supply based on a jointly developed transnational strategy will be extended to the entire SEE area with special regard to preaccession countries. Through consultations, workshops and publications; gained knowledge will be transferred to relevant policy makers and stakeholders particularly of pre-accession countries the reach the upmost dissemination. Moreover, the present and future vulnerability will be assessed based on a jointly elaborated methodology. Necessary vulnerability indicators representing the SEE area will be defined to evaluate water vulnerability concerning as well quantity as quality and to assess and classify drinking water availability under changing climate and socio-economic conditions. This enables to generate a transnational SEE vulnerability map considering present and future regarding water quantity and water quality. Different water management options for water supply systems with special regard to ecosystem services (ES) of various ecosystems will be evaluated and land use regulations analysed to define their impact on drinking water resources and propose improvements of land use regulations to assure a safe drinking water supply. The main ES which will be assessed in the course of the project is the supply of pure drinking water in appropriate quantity in different climate regions and homogeneous areas (forestry, agriculture, wetland and urban areas) to get a framework which has relevance for drinking water source protection management. Furthermore a common catalogue of recommendations for economic incentives for water management will be jointly elaborated based on experiences from water suppliers and best practice examples. Lastly, communication and dissemination activities and measures are applied on various different levels such as on different policy levels including different target groups and stakeholders and covering different spatial areas and scales within the SEE area.