The examples, presented at a water scarcity roundtable at the III MED Sustainable Tourism Convention in Barcelona, include repairing historic underground rainwater cisterns on Pantelleria (Italy) and the Kerkennah Islands (Tunisia), stone reservoirs that once caught rooftop rainwater for irrigation and cleaning and are now being brought back into use to ease pressure on local aquifers. In Malta, the Chadwick Lakes valley has undergone restoration involving clearing silt, removing invasive plants and rebuilding small historic mud-and-stone dams, work that now helps prevent local flooding while creating usable green space. A third example, a green roof at Malta's Għajn National Water Conservation Centre, shows how vegetation-covered roofs can retain rainwater and cool buildings in tourist areas during peak summer heat.

The roundtable, moderated by Professor Fernando Nardi of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, also brought in the WATERISE project (represented by the Municipality of Pantelleria) on decentralised island water solutions, and Eurecat, Catalonia's technology centre, on advanced water treatment. Panelists were clear that infrastructure alone isn't sufficient: knowledge transfer, cross-border cooperation and stakeholder engagement between researchers, local government and the tourism sector were flagged as the actual determinants of long-term water resilience.

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