Applications of Life-Cycle Cost Analysis in Water and Wastewater Projects: Lessons from European Experience - Governing the Nexus: Water, Soil and Waste Resources Considering Global Change - page 128

2.2 Changing Demand and Future Challenges

Beside the maintenance of existing networks of the infrastructure system, water and
wastewater management faces currently a number of challenges particularly
resulting from implications of demographic changes and climate change.
In many European regions, water and wastewater systems react to the effects of a
stagnating or even shrinking population development. Figure 2 demonstrates the
spatial dispersion of the population dynamics in the countries of EU-27. Besides
areas of growing population there are regions, speci

cally in central Europe, but in
southeast Europe as well, which are confronted with a declining population. In such
cases, the cost-intensive, pipeline-bound water infrastructure reaches its limits due
to financial constraints, which appears particularly in rural areas. In addition, it

Fig. 2 Regional population projections, relative population change, by NUTS2 regions, between
2008 and 2030. Source Eurostat ( 2013b )