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Russia

Fresh water resources

Water resources in numbers - Russia

Russia possesses one fifth of the world’s fresh water reserve but this water amount is rather unevenly distributed within Russia’s territory. Thus, the central and southern regions of European Russia, where 80% of the country’s population and industry is concentrated, have only 8 % of water resources (3).

Vulnerabilities - Russia

A number of global-scale studies project an increase in water availability across Russia as a whole with climate change in the 21st century. These studies show that the west of Russia is the most vulnerable region of the country to water stress. For the rest of the country and particularly the east, vulnerability is presently low (11). There is consensus across models that the Russian population exposed to increased or decreased water stress will change little due to climate change (12).

On the whole, renewable water resources may increase in Russia by 8–10% in the next 30 years. Their distribution will become more even (2). This change will bring certain positive impacts—including for hydroelectric generation. However, managing the increased flows will pose other problems, especially when these increased flows coincide with extreme weather events such as downpours, or springtime ice-clogged floods. In addition, increasing water shortages are predicted for southern parts of European Russia, areas that already experience significant socioeconomic and sociopolitical stresses. Moreover, a number of densely populated Russian regions that are already subject to water shortages are expected to face even more pronounced difficulties in decades to come (2).


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Europe: five lake categories

There are almost one and a half million lakes in Europe, if small water bodies with an area down to 0.001 km2 are included. The total area of lakes is over 200,000 km2; in addition the manmade reservoirs cover almost 100,000 km2. The response of European lakes to climate change can be discussed by dividing the lakes into five categories (10):


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Adaptation strategies

A number of measures exist that may potentially reduce the use of publicly supplied water. These can be broadly grouped into the categories of water saving devices; greywater re-use; rainwater harvesting and the efficient use of water in gardens and parks; leakage reduction; behavioural change through raising awareness; water pricing; and metering. Since treating, pumping and heating water consumes significant amounts of energy, using less publicly supplied water also reduces energy consumption (8).


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References

The references below are cited in full in a separate map 'References'. Please click here if you are looking for the full references for Russia.

  1. Alcamo et al. (2007)
  2. Eisenreich (2005)
  3. EEA (2009)
  4. EEA, JRC and WHO (2008)
  5. Environment Agency (2008a), in: EEA (2009)
  6. EEA (2007), in: EEA (2009)
  7. IEEP (2000), in: EEA (2009)
  8. Roshydromet (2008)
  9. WWF Russia and OXFAM (2008)
  10. Kuusisto (2004)
  11. Vorosmarty et al. (2010); Smakhtin et al. (2004); Shiklomanov et al. (2011); Rockstrom et al. (2009); Fung et al. (2011), all in: Met Office Hadley Centre (2011)
  12. Met Office Hadley Centre (2011)
  13. Faunt (2009), in: Taylor et al. (2012)
  14. Scanlon et al. (2012), in: Taylor et al. (2012)
  15. Sukhija (2008), in: Taylor et al. (2012)
  16. Pechlivanidis et al. (2017)
  17. Prudhomme et al. (2014); Roudier et al. (2015), both in: Pechlivanidis et al. (2017)

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