The Cost of Drought: What Science Already Tells Us About Switzerland

An econometric study by the Politecnico di Milano and the CMCC (Mastropietro, Daumas, Kotz, Tavoni, 2026) quantifies, for the first time on a country-by-country basis, the cost of multi-year droughts in Europe: Switzerland ranks among the hardest-hit economies in relative terms, with a GDP loss of 3.88% during the 2015–2018 period—nearly three times the impact in Italy, despite nearly identical nominal damage (24.3 billion euros). The summer just past provides an almost real-time empirical verification of this trend: the hottest on record in Western Europe and the fourth driest year in Ticino since 1900, with AET’s hydroelectric production falling by up to 70% between May and July, the Rhine at Basel was 66% below the historical August average—with the risk, as reported by the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine itself, of the navigable route becoming fragmented—and in the Po River basin, a new record-breaking drought in Cremona led to “cautious navigation” orders and over 3 billion euros in estimated damage to Italian agriculture. Against this backdrop, glaciological research by ETH Zurich and GLAMOS confirms that the Alpine “water peak” has already been reached: from this point on, glacial reserves can only decline, with consequences that the river basin shares across national borders—starting with Lake Maggiore, 51% of whose watershed lies in Switzerland and which, via the Ticino River, feeds the Po itself, which is currently facing a water crisis. The article concludes with a personal reflection by the author on the possibility of coordinating the release of water from Alpine reservoirs with support for commercial navigation — a possibility not yet part of the political and institutional debate — in a context where Italian-Swiss negotiations on the regulation of Lake Verbano remain, following the rejection of the Storni motion on August 26, 2026, postponed until 2027.

ITEN