Seven Greek islands in the Aegean Sea have declared drought emergencies this year, and the timing says everything: the water crisis lands right as the tourist season does. Authorities are now wondering if it will rain next year to sustain the thousands of tourists who strain water supplies just when locals need them most. The islands are being asked to absorb the costs of climate change, mass tourism, and a water system patched together with emergency decrees and expensive technical fixes.
Water for Visitors, Rationing for Locals
Astypalaia, the butterfly-shaped island east of the mainland, relies on bottled water for drinking. It did not benefit from rain in northern and western parts of Greece that gave the country its wettest winter since 2022. For Astypalaia in the southeastern Aegean, it was the second driest season since 2020, according to data by local authorities. The numbers are blunt. The island’s sole water reservoir, built in the mid-1990s, sits among dry hills with sparse low scrub, and Mayor Nikos Komineas described the scale of the shortage with a line that needs no embellishment: "If we collected all the water dropped throughout the year in a bucket or in a washbowl, it would be 2.5 cm deep."
The burden falls hardest on people who grow food. Authorities cut off farmer Evdokia Palatianou from a man-made lake in April to save water. The vegetables she grows in her orchard withered as she was forced to rely on brackish water pumped from her well. Standing next to a dead tree once full of mandarins on the coastal village of Livadi, the island's main fertile region, she said, "Unless it rains, I won't plant anything." That’s what drought looks like when the state decides who gets water and who doesn’t.
Emergency Management, Island Style
The lake supplying water for household use and irrigation in Livadi and to the main tourist town of Chora, the island's capital, now contains some 150,000 cubic metres, a sixth of its storage capacity. With daily consumption at about 900 cubic metres in the summer, it would last around five and a half months. That’s the arithmetic behind the crisis: a finite reservoir, a seasonal population spike, and a political order that treats tourism as untouchable while farmers are told to wait.
Authorities declared a water emergency in May to fast-track a temporary desalination plant with a daily output of 600 cubic metres for Chora, and blocked irrigation for farmers in Livadi to safeguard the lake's reserves until autumn, Komineas said. "We did it with a heavy heart, but anyway, thankfully there's this alternative for them," he said, adding that if rain replenishes the Livadi reservoir, they will reconnect the farmers. The language of necessity is doing a lot of work here. So is the machinery of emergency rule.
A map compiled by the Copernicus European Drought Observatory marked Astypalaia in orange in June, an early sign of emerging drought. At the seaside village of Analipsi on the island's east, sheep and goat farmers carry in water to fill up tanks or use low-quality water from boreholes. The island’s residents are left improvising around a system that can always find money for a temporary fix, but not enough for a stable one.
Desalination, Security, and the Brussels Script
A desalination plant that supplies tap water there was unable to cover a population that swells to 7,000 from 1,400 in midsummer, so a second, temporary facility was set up in Chora pending construction of a permanent one planned for the end of the year. Dozens of energy-intensive desalination plants are installed on Greek islands. Komineas said the temporary plant was a fallback for drought, while admitting it was costly. "A major worry for me was what will happen if there is no rain once again this year," he said.
Some hoteliers on Astypalaia have already taken action to save water. Carolina Alkalai, 42, who operates a hotel on a hillside in Chora with views of the castle and the Aegean Sea, offers a €5 voucher to guests who skip the daily cleaning service. "Clients have embraced it," she said. She envisioned a second hotel on the island that would incorporate a cistern able to retain rainwater instead of a pool or a jacuzzi. Even here, the burden of adaptation gets pushed downward, into the routines of workers, farmers, and small operators, while the tourist economy keeps its place at the center.
Environment Minister Stavros Papastavrou has approved €15 million ($17 million) for desalination, grid upgrades and water tanks on nine of Greece's more than 200 inhabited islands, including 1.5 million euros for Astypalaia. In June, he briefed other environment ministers in Luxembourg on water resilience. "For Greece, water isn't theoretical- it's about security, economic growth and the protection of local communities," he said. That sentence lays out the state’s priorities in plain language: security, growth, and managed scarcity, all wrapped in the vocabulary of protection.
The Athens-based National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos" says drought could get worse by 2049 as global temperatures rise, exacerbating water scarcity on the vulnerable islands. The future, in other words, is being prepared as a permanent emergency. The islands get drought declarations, temporary plants, and ministerial briefings. The tourists get their season. The farmers get cut off from the lake.