Spain can help the rest of Europe learn how to tackle the water crisis

Greece is being inundated with devastating floods, a development which has intensified concerns about extreme weather patterns caused by climate change across Southern Europe.

Deadly deluges have also hit eastern parts of Libya, with the coastal town of Derna's death toll reaching at least 11,300 by Friday, causing further anxieties over the ever-growing risk from extreme flooding across the Mediterranean.

Floods have long been seen as a northern European problem, and many countries in this region are innovators in the civil engineering projects needed for flood defences. 

Indeed, the Netherlands is exporting much of its flood defence technology to Middle Eastern countries that are seeking to reclaim land back from rising seas.

While northern European flood technology will certainly be able to help southern Europe, the north of the continent has this summer been increasingly suffering from drought and extreme heat. 

Northern European countries will therefore need the water conservation technologies which southern European countries have been pioneering, as Europe begins to face new water challenges such as seasonal water stress.

While countries such as the Netherlands or the UK may be a leader in flood defences, it is Spain which is at the cutting edge of technological advances relating to greater water efficiency. 

Just in the region of Murcia, in southern Spain, more than 90% of water is reused, compared to an average of 5% across the rest of Europe.

As blisteringly hot summers become the norm, it is quickly going to become unviable for countries not to reuse water. 

What Spain is doing now in terms of reusing water is what all of Europe may need to follow over the next decades, a fact that has been recognised in the recently