Nature and Water Scarcity: Leveraging One to Address the Other
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Introduction
“Water is life” opens the European Commission’s long-awaited European Water Resilience Strategy, published on June 4th, 2025. The text adds that “almost half of the world’s population will suffer water stress by 2030”. This is a warning and it justifies why this strategy is a milestone in the effort to future-proof Europe’s water systems against climate change, pollution, and increasing demand.
The new Strategy recognises water as a critical and limited resource and outlines a comprehensive plan around five key areas: governance, finance, innovation and skills, digitalisation, and preparedness. It places strong emphasis on ensuring Europe’s competitiveness through water innovation, smart regulation, efficiency, and infrastructure investment.
All of this is welcome. But when it comes to resilience - especially in cities - you might feel something is missing.
Where Are The Cities?
The urban dimension of water resilience is not given the attention it urgently deserves. And that is disappointing. One of the strategy’s three overarching objectives is to restore and protect the natural water cycle as the basis for a sustainable water supply. This is a critical ambition that aligns directly with the principles behind nature-based solutions and green infrastructure. However, while the strategy rightly highlights the role of healthy soils, wetlands, and forests, it falls short of recognising that urban areas must also be part of this restoration effort. Cities, too, are part of the water cycle and reintroducing nature into their fabric is essential to truly reconnect and regenerate it.
Three European union flags.
Yes, the Strategy mentions the idea of “sponge cities” - urban areas equipped with nature-based solutions to absorb and manage rainwater and flooding events - but it stops short of giving cities a central role in the broader water resilience agenda. It references the creation of a “Sponge Facility” to help increase water retention on land, but gives few meaningful details.
That is a missed opportunity. Cities are where most Europeans live today and will continue to live tomorrow. They are hotspots of risk: from urban flooding, heatwaves, prolonged droughts, and ageing infrastructure. Urban green and blue infrastructure, namely green roofs and walls, parks, wetlands, bioswales, permeable pavements, can play a massive role in mitigating these risks while restoring natural water cycles. Investing in these solutions also has an important role to play in developing the needed political support for the massive investments that are required.
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These are not add-ons. They are core resilience infrastructure. And in the face of growing water scarcity, we must admit that there is no serious alternative to prioritising nature-based solutions and re-naturing our urban environments. In dense cities, nature-based solutions help retain and detain rainwater, filter runoff, prevent flooding, and cool the urban heat island effect. They also improve air quality, bring people closer to nature, support mental health, and boost biodiversity. Why are they not at the centre of a strategy that is meant to build resilience?
A Closer Look: What Can We Build On?
To be fair, there are elements of the strategy that open useful doors, if seen in a new perspective. The strategy endorses the Water Efficiency First Principle, a key concept for urban resilience. It includes a recommendation on the application of the principle, inspired by experience with the energy efficiency first principle, setting out guiding principles for decision-making and investments based on a clear and predictable, yet flexible, prioritisation in the way water demand and supply are managed. Across the EU, the priority should be to curb demand and excessive withdrawals. This should be followed by efficiency by design and reuse, while increased supply should be the last resort option. Here nature-based solutions have a role to play because they provide decentralised rainwater management, reducing the impact on wastewater treatment plants which are increasingly under pressure due to fast changing rain patterns. This lowers energy use, associated bills and costly investments in treatment plants. Green infrastructure also delivers measurable co-benefits for improved human health, nature and energy efficiency in cities.
In order to guide action on water efficiency across the EU, the strategy encourages national water efficiency targets (though voluntary), aiming to increase water efficiency by at least 10 per cent by 2030. The Commission announced that it will work with Member States and stakeholders to develop a joint methodology for water efficiency targets, taking into account territorial and other differences between countries, regions and sectors.
The Strategy highlights the role of revised legislation under the European Green Deal - including the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive and the Nature Restoration Law - as instrumental to rebuild Europe’s natural water systems. Supporting the implementation of these laws across the European Member states will be key to reintroducing nature based solutions into the water cycle and mainstream green infrastructure in urban planning.
The Strategy proposes to organise regular exchanges with regions, cities and water authorities under the “Cohesion for Transitions Community of Practice.” This is an established platform that aims to support EU Member States and regions to make better use of EU funds for sustainability transitions. It aims to promote structured dialogue and share best practices on implementing water resilience measures, including “sponge landscapes” and transboundary water cooperation. If designed inclusively, this could become an important space to mainstream nature-based solutions, ensure that urban realities are better reflected in funding priorities, and empower local and regional actors with best practice examples of what works on the ground. For the green infrastructure community, this could offer an opportunity to actively contribute case studies, technical insights, and practical know-how to influence how cohesion policy supports water resilience going forward.
The Strategy points out that in the mid-term review of Cohesion Policy, the Commission has proposed a new specific objective on water resilience, offering Member States and regions a chance to reprogram existing EU funding toward water-related priorities. This includes investments in both grey and green infrastructure, with the option for up to 100 per cent EU co-financing and 30 per cent pre-financing, both representing strong incentive to act quickly. For urban areas, this change presents a real opening to scale up green roofs, permeable surfaces, water-sensitive urban design, and ecosystem restoration, provided that city-level needs and projects are well represented in the reprogramming process. This mid-term adjustment could help bridge the financing gap for nature-based infrastructure and build political momentum for making it central to long-term regional development plans.
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A significant element of the strategy is the mobilisation of investment to close the €23 billion annual funding gap in implementing existing EU water legislation.
Two financial tools stand out. First, the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group has developed a dedicated Water Programme, aligning with the Water Resilience Strategy’s goals. With over €15 billion in planned financing for 2025–2027, the programme aims to support projects that enhance access to water, improve pollution control, boost resilience, and strengthen the competitiveness of the EU water sector. Importantly, this includes financing for large-scale infrastructure and nature-based solutions. This presents a major opportunity for cities and regions to scale up urban green infrastructure, provided that these projects are ready to access and leverage EIB instruments.
In parallel, the European Commission will establish a Water Resilience Investment Accelerator, which will aim to implement 20 pilot innovative cases focused on natural water retention and water efficiency. These pilots are intended to bring together local water investors, solution providers, and stakeholders facing water challenges, with the goal of inspiring similar actions across the EU. For the urban nature-based solutions community, this could become a practical mechanism to demonstrate high-impact and replicable models such as sponge city design, green roof networks and rainwater harvesting.
On the skills front, there is acknowledgment of growing workforce needs in water management and a proposal for a Large-Scale Skills Partnership and a new European Water Academy. We must ensure that skills related to nature-based urban planning, ecological design, and landscape architecture are part of this future-oriented training effort.
Another promising element in the strategy is the Commission’s plan to launch a dedicated interactive spatial planning tool integrating environmental data with data related to the water and energy grids. This tool is intended to assist Member States in their spatial planning efforts, including identifying optimal areas for the localisation of water-intensive business operations. However, this spatial data platform could also be a powerful enabler for nature-based solutions. By making key datasets accessible and interoperable, it can help local and regional authorities identify the best locations for implementing urban green infrastructure — from restoring wetlands to deploying green roofs — based on water stress levels, land use, and climate risks. If developed with local needs in mind, this viewer could support evidence-based planning and strengthen the business case for scaling up nature-based solutions as part of a water-smart urban strategy.
The Strategy also foresees enhancing the European Drought Observatory and the European Flood Awareness System under the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. Strengthening these real-time early warning and monitoring systems will be crucial to anticipate and respond to climate-driven water risks, including in urban areas. For cities, improved drought data can support more proactive planning, identifying hotspots where nature-based solutions - such as increasing tree cover, restoring soils, or implementing permeable surfaces - can reduce water stress, improve retention, and cool microclimates. Making drought risk information more granular and locally accessible through the Observatory could be a key enabler for scaling up nature-based solutions in areas most exposed to heat and scarcity.
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An interesting idea is also the proposal to organise an annual European Water Resilience Conference. For us this could be a potential new platform to bring together cities, experts, and practitioners to shape the agenda and highlight urban nature-based solutions successes.
Finally, the Strategy also mentions a review process in 2027 and again in 2029. These are windows to reassess shortcomings and push for stronger recognition of nature-based, city-driven solutions.
Rainwater flowing over a highway storm drain.
Rolling Up Our Sleeves
At the European Chapter of the World Green Infrastructure Network, we have both ideas and hands-on experience to help this Strategy deliver real and lasting impact. We believe water resilience must start where vulnerability is highest and that is in our cities. And we know that the most powerful tool we have to tackle water scarcity is to reintroduce nature into the built environment.
We will focus on ensuring that urban green infrastructure becomes a key part of upcoming policy milestones, particularly the European Climate Adaptation Plan and the Affordable Housing Plan which promise to integrate sustainability and water resilience into housing policy. Both plans are expected in 2026. We will continue working with cities, EU institutions, civil society and private actors to scale up the use of nature to solve some of our most pressing water challenges.
Conclusion
The European Water Resilience Strategy is a step in the right direction. But now we need to build on it with a much clearer urban lens. If we want to create long-term, systemic solutions, we need to restore ecosystems, rethink how we plan to build, and bring nature back into our cities so that we can create places that not only survive the next storm or drought, but thrive.
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Luigi Petito, is the Head of the EU Chapter of the World Green Infrastructure Network. He is based in Brussels, cross-roads for international affairs and the European Institutions. In 2019 he was invited to establish and lead the European (EU) Chapter of the World Green Infrastructure Network. Since then, he follows EU policy and regulatory developments related to green infrastructure and advocates for a systematic integration of green infrastructure in urban areas.
Download a copy of the European Water Resilience Strategy.
