Last week, I inaugurated a water fountain in a village the square in Zurrieq.

It is not a grand piece of infrastructure. It will not stop temperatures from rising, prevent the next storm or solve Europe's climate crisis. Yet it gives people water.

On a hot summer's day, anyone passing through the square can stop and drink clean water, for free. A child playing nearby or an elderly person walking home. Someone waiting for the bus or a worker crossing the village in the afternoon heat.

It is a small thing. But perhaps climate resilience needs more small things people can actually see, touch and use.

For years, we have spoken about climate change through targets, percentages and dates. These are all necessary, but the climate debate is changing because the climate itself has already changed.

This summer, we watched wildfires tear through parts of Spain. Here in Malta and Gozo, we have endured weeks of excessive heat. Earlier this year, Storm Harry battered our islands, damaging infrastructure and disrupting businesses.

We still have a habit of treating each of these as an exceptional event. The reality, however, is that the exceptional is becoming less exceptional.

That is what climate resilience is actually about: accepting that while we must continue reducing emissions, we must also prepare our communities for conditions that are already changing. Now that preparation cannot exist only in European strategies or government documents. I strongly believe it must reach the village square.

The fountain I inaugurated last week has its own small European story. As the European Parliament's rapporteur on the European Water Resilience Strategy, I pushed for access to drinking water in public spaces because water resilience is ultimately about people. It is about whether families have reliable water supplies, whether farmers can grow our food, whether businesses can continue operating and whether our communities remain liveable as temperatures rise.

For me, this is also about rediscovering the value of the spaces we share. In Malta and Gozo, the village square has always been more than a physical space. It is where people meet, where generations mix and where community happens. Climate change forces us to ask whether those same spaces are still designed for the realities we now live in. Can an elderly person comfortably walk through a square in August? Is there shade for a parent with a young child? Is there somewhere to stop, sit and drink water? These may sound like simple questions beside the scale of the climate crisis. But resilience will ultimately be measured precisely on whether our towns and villages continue to be places where people can live, meet and belong, even as the climate around us changes.

People are right to argue that European policy can sometimes feel very distant from everyday life. But Europe should also be this: a decision taken in Brussels and Strasbourg eventually becoming fresh drinking water in a Maltese village square. That same principle should shape how we approach climate resilience more broadly.

It means shaded streets and more trees. Homes that remain bearable during extreme heat. Schools where children can continue learning safely. Hospitals and care homes prepared for prolonged heatwaves. Drainage, roads and electricity networks capable of withstanding weather conditions they were never designed for. It means ensuring that resilience does not turn into something you can afford only if you have enough money.

This is the biggest risk. Because if the answer to extreme heat is that those who can afford better insulation and air-conditioning will cope while everyone else struggles, we have failed. If some businesses can recover from the next storm while smaller ones cannot, we have failed. Climate resilience must be rooted in community politics.

A water fountain will not change the whole edifice of climate resilience. But it gives someone water when the temperature outside becomes unbearable. It makes a public square a little more liveable. Importantly, it reminds us what politics, including European politics, should ultimately be capable of doing: turning big ideas into changes people experience in their everyday lives.

The next heatwave will come and so will the next storm. The question is whether we will keep treating them as surprises or start building communities and spaces that fully prepared for them.

Sometimes that work can begin with something as simple as a drink of water.

Thomas Bajada is a Labour MEP