Water scarcity and droughts; coordinated actions in European regions
With agreement of their respective Ministers three of the leading regions in Europe in the field of sustainable water management, Aragon, Emilia-Romagna and Hessen initiated in 2007 in Bologna an interregional cooperation on the issue water scarcity and droughts resulting in WATER CoRe. This initiative has been consolidated in a continuous standing platform of ministers, that will meet once a year, follow the project and decide concretely on regional implementation of results.

Water CoRe intends to provide an exchange platform for water scarcity and drought issues on regional and local level for all European regions. It will function as a kind of market place for participating regions where good practice examples can be ‘bought or sold’ from one region in order to adapt these to the local/regional situation in another region. Special attention will be given to regions in central and eastern Europe by establishing a focal point on water scarcity and droughts in Hungary.
Policies and practical experiences related to management of water scarcity and droughts do already exist in Europe. Water CoRe will compile this knowledge and make it accessible for all regional and local actors in the EU in order to create their own tailor made approaches.

Topics covered in thematic working groups concern water demand-side management, handling drought periods, climate change effects and public awareness and participation. Each working group will follow the following project phases: collecting existing experiences, exchange experiences and match partners for transfer, transfer of best practices via e-learning and training sessions, evaluate 'lessons learnt' and formulate policy recommendations. 

Planned meetings and activities are an interregional kick-off event followed by opening sessions in each partner region, study visits, thematic workshops, bi-lateral contacts between 'buying-selling' partners, interregional mid-term event, >
> technical training sessions in each region, interregional evaluation and exchange meeting, interregional final event followed by closing sessions in each region.

Expected outputs are a digital exchange platform, good practice handbook, survey to specify 'buying/ selling' opportunities within the partnership, regional action plans to transfer experiences between regions, e-learning programme with thematic modules and policy recommendations.

Water CoRe leads to improved water scarcity and drought management policies and instruments in partner regions. Regional politicians of the partner regions underlined their commitment to this project in a Memorandum of Understanding. Via the project homepage the results are accessible to everybody. The good practice handbook and the e-learning course will also be spread via networks like ENCORE. The overall objective is to create tools for responsible authorities in order to improve water management in all regions of Europe.