Repeated heatwaves, strained groundwater reserves, and water-use restrictions: Europe is entering a new era of water stress. In France, nearly 70% of the country is now subject to water-use restrictions, while 63% of groundwater levels are below their usual averages. Against this backdrop, water security is becoming a key component of environmental security. For many years, Veolia has been working to strengthen this resilience by developing water recycling and wastewater reuse solutions, as well as tools to anticipate water shortages.
Drought Is Taking on a New Dimension
The alert is now nationwide. According to AFP, nearly 70% of France is subject to water-use restrictions. As of August 1, 63% of groundwater levels were below average, while 94% of underground reserves were trending downward.
This situation follows an exceptionally hot and dry July. The problem is therefore no longer limited to a few rural or agricultural areas: it affects drinking water supplies, industry, agriculture, ecosystems and, more broadly, the ability of communities and regions to function in a warmer climate.
A Global Crisis
France is not an isolated case. Copernicus data show that in July, large parts of Western and Central Europe, as well as the United States, experienced significant drought conditions, with particularly low soil moisture levels in several countries.
Climate change is amplifying this vulnerability. Heatwaves increase evaporation, drive up water demand, and can accelerate declines in river flows and groundwater levels. Globally, the World Meteorological Organization estimates that 3.6 billion people already experience inadequate access to water for at least one month each year, a figure that could exceed 5 billion by 2050.
The water issue is therefore increasingly becoming a question of community and regional resilience.
From Crisis Management to Environmental Security
For a long time, water policy focused primarily on ensuring access to an available resource. Climate change now requires a different approach: securing a resource whose availability is becoming increasingly uncertain.
This is the context in which Veolia frames its work around water security. The Group is working simultaneously to reduce and optimize water consumption, particularly in industry; detect losses in water networks; treat wastewater; reuse it; and anticipate periods of water stress.
The goal is to move from a reactive approach—reducing water use once a drought is already underway—to a proactive approach based on anticipation and prevention.
“The cost of having no water remains largely invisible.” — Estelle Brachlianoff, CEO of Veolia
This approach has led Veolia to develop the concept of the “Cost of No Water,” designed to measure the economic, social and environmental consequences of an interruption or deterioration in access to water.
Recycling Water: A Reserve That Already Exists
One of the key levers of this new approach to water security is the reuse of treated wastewater. After treatment, some water can be reused for agriculture, irrigation, certain industrial processes, or other applications that do not require drinking water.
Yet the potential remains considerable: only 2.4% of treated wastewater is currently reused in the European Union. In other words, part of the solution to water scarcity does not necessarily lie in finding new resources, but in making better use of the resources we already have and anticipating the solutions that need to be deployed upstream.
For example, in France, Veolia enabled the reuse of nearly 21 million m³ of treated wastewater in 2025. For many years, Veolia has been actively working with local authorities and industrial companies to support them in reusing their treated wastewater. One notable example is Windhoek, Namibia, where the Group developed one of the first large-scale solutions for turning treated wastewater into drinking water. In this extremely arid country, the Goreangab plant produces approximately 21,000 m³ of drinking water every day, meeting up to 35% of the capital’s water needs and serving more than 400,000 residents. Thanks to a multi-barrier treatment process and rigorous water-quality monitoring, this technology helps secure water supplies over the long term, while turning wastewater into a strategic resource in the face of water stress and climate change.
Anticipating Rather Than Reacting
Water reuse is only one part of the solution. Water security also depends on better knowledge of available resources, reducing leaks, optimizing industrial processes, using water more efficiently, and being able to detect emerging water stress early enough.
Digital technologies and artificial intelligence can help monitor networks more effectively, identify anomalies, and target interventions. For Veolia, this evolution reflects a paradigm shift: water should no longer be managed simply as infrastructure, but as a strategic resource that must be secured.
This approach also applies to industry. A disruption in water supply can force production stoppages, with significant economic consequences. Anticipating the risk is therefore also a matter of competitiveness and industrial sovereignty.
Environmental Security: A New Definition of Resilience
The drought of 2026 ultimately reminds us that the challenge is not simply about figuring out how to save water during heatwaves.
It is about fundamentally rethinking the water cycle.
Anticipating Future Uses. Reduce withdrawals. Limit losses. Reuse wastewater. Restore the ability of soils to retain water. Adapt agricultural and industrial uses. Anticipate periods of water scarcity.
This transformation makes water management an integral part of environmental security: protecting ecosystems, safeguarding communities, and maintaining economic activity in a climate where water availability is becoming increasingly unpredictable.
For Veolia, the challenge now is to move these solutions from isolated projects to infrastructure capable of making communities and regions more resilient over the long term.
In a Europe facing increasingly frequent heatwaves, securing water is no longer simply an environmental issue. It is a prerequisite for collective resilience and a key component of environmental security.