“Don’t neglect to take water with you, because our future has many droughts in store,” the poet Michalis Katsaros once wrote prophetically.
Indeed, the news from Europe and its rivers is not encouraging.
The danger is ever present and it is once again threatening the flow of life and normalcy, but the issue of the environment, and especially of water adequacy, is not a fleeting item on the agenda.
It is unconscionable for political parties, governments, and institutions to remember it only when we have measurable data that reflect the magnitude of the threat.
On the contrary, the environmental issue, the climate crisis, steps toward a swifter green transition, and a comprehensive overhaul of the model of behaviour of states and citizens are urgently needed, and they presuppose an institutional and political maturity.
Very soon, the basic functions of human life and of the entire planet will lie in the balance.
We barely have enough time to place high on the agenda a new policy that will address climate shifts as glaring realities that must be urgently confronted, rather than be handled with rhetorical descriptions in political programmes.
All international reports stress the looming dangers of climate change: drought, fires, and the rises in temperature are just some of the facets of the new, harsh reality.
Yet, collectively, we have the experience and technological know-how to reverse the trend and shape a new circumstance that will at once be viable and permit economic growth.
