Facing Drought through Collaboration in Milan: a Lesson Learnt and Action Points for Designing Climate Resilient Water Management in European Cities

This document presents a case study on how the Municipality of Milan and a group of its territorial stakeholders successfully collaborated to face a drought crisis that affected northern Italy in early 2022. Through a collective decision-making process, these stakeholders/actors united against the emergency and asserted the city’s right to prioritise surface water use for food production. This mobilisation established a temporary collaborative water governance model that could identify and address the knowledge, regulatory, and operational gaps in urban water management exacerbated by the emergency. Called to look back at this experience, these actors supported the draft of action points for designing climate-resilient water management in European cities. These points are brought to the attention of future European Commission officials and local authorities as part of the following policy case study.