Italy focused on its looming water emergency on Thursday as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) sounded the global alarm here on World Water Day.
"Italy has a water emergency and we have to respond by coordinating management of the resources," said Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio at FAO's Rome headquarters.
Italy has just had one of its driest and mildest winters on record and many rivers are well below their average seasonal levels.
The nation is bracing for a blazing summer which could bring water shortages and a crisis for the agriculture sector.
Roberto Passino, the president of the Water Resource Monitoring Committee (COVIRI), said Italy will probably suffer water shortages as early as May.
The nation is "very behind" in its preparations for a possible water crisis, he warned.
Pecoraro Scanio said he had asked COVIRI to carry out a series of operations to address the drought problem, including concentrating on reducing waste by farmers.
Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro, meanwhile, stressed that improvements were needed in Italy's water distribution network too.
"Sometimes the problem is not lack of water, but that the water does not reach the end user and in these cases the real problem is the infrastructure," De Castro said.
"The distribution network is technologically obsolete and not managed well, which means 50% of the resources available in Italy are wasted".
In some parts of southern Italy water supplies for domestic use are restricted all year around.
FAO SOUNDS GLOBAL ALARM ON WATER SCARCITY.
The FAO's theme for World Water Day 2007 is 'Coping with Water Scarcity'.
FAO Director-General Dr Jacques Diouf described this as the "challenge of the 21st century" and called for more local and international cooperation to meet it.
"Global water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population growth over the last century," Diouf said.
"Water scarcity already affects every continent and more than 40% of the people on our planet.
"By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world's population could be living under water stressed conditions".
He said it was up to agriculture to take the lead as this sector "accounts for about 70% of all freshwater withdrawn from lakes, waterways and aquifers around the world".
Diouf pointed out that water scarcity problems are being made worse by global warming.
On Thursday De Castro announced that Italy and Great Britain had agreed on joint efforts to address the problems of climate change and water at the European Union level.
Pecoraro Scanio argued that initiatives designed to make sure people have enough water can contribute to peace.
"Many of the planet's conflicts derive from the fight to have secure and permanent access to water," the minister said.
"Just think, that since the beginning, one of the major issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been water".
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano also expressed his concern in a message to a Rome conference on the issue.
"The processes of water impoverishment and desertification taking place on our planet make it obligatory for each country to pursue a common strategy".
A report presented earlier this week revealed that large areas of Italy are under threat from desertification - especially the south - because of climate change and declining rainfall levels.
The study, prepared by the Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment (ENEA), showed that a third of Italian territory is vulnerable to desertification (32%).
