Spain’s troubled waters

 

 

Today, 22nd March, marks UN World Water Day 2013, its theme - ‘cooperation around water’.  However, as the Spanish Government repeals coastal protection rules and potentially revives controversial hydrological plans, water is not so much forging cooperation but a divisive element threatening to resurrect old divides.

 

For the Los Reyes public holiday in January this year I visited Osuna in Andalucía.  Whilst chatting to the hotel receptionist Maria, she said, for the first time ever during the fiesta, she’d been swimming outdoors as temperatures soared well over 20°C; and over the last decade she’d noticed winters becoming much hotter and drier.  It turns out she was right.

Last year Spain suffered its driest winter in 70 years; by summer 2012 the country was desiccant, its trees tinder; the consequence - a catalogue of forest infernos that rampaged through regions from Catalonia to Andalucía.  I myself witnessed first hand the eerie smog and grey ash rain from blazes in the Guadarrama Mountains.  Malaga suffered what officials described as ‘the worst fires in living memory’ with over 12,000 hectares obliterated.

Barely a month later in September 2012, Andalucía suffered its worst flood in a decade.  Torrential rains and violent storms led to flash deluges of biblical proportions killing ten people.  Yet, EU Joint Research Centre (JRC) research showed that with less than 200mm of fresh water available annually and consumption at least three times this, Spain is facing a serious problem.  The European Environment Agency (EEA) has warned that Spain is highly vulnerable to climate change.  It’s already lost 90% of its glaciers - the remaining expected to disappear within decades, leading to further water shortages as rivers depending on ice-melt shrivel up.  The Centre for Climate Adaption says the average temperature in Spain is predicted to rise 4°C by 2080 and extreme summers are likely to increase fourfold.  Precipitation is projected to decrease 5% in most of Spain - and by a staggering 10% in the southwest by 2040.  This combination will result in creeping desertification and water scarcity. 

Water and the economy

Spain is starting to count the cost of climate change which has already impacted Spain’s €2 billion wine industry; vineyards are being moved to cooler and moister climes.  Olive Oil Times reports that Spain is going the same way as Greece and Italy which have both seen production of olive oil halve since the early 2000’s.  2012 saw Spain’s harvest drop 40% due to drought.  Manuel Vargas Yáñez, author of the book Cambio Climático en el Mediterráneo Español says: ‘Sea level in the Mediterranean has risen by between 1 and 1.5mm each year since 1943, […] it now seems that the speed at which it is rising is accelerating’.  The sea is consuming Spain’s beaches and this could have serious consequences for the tourism industry.

Exploitation of water sources

As Spain seeks new water sources it’s encountering water exploration side effects.  It’s thought massive extraction of groundwater had helped unleash the deadly earthquake in Lorca in May 2011 that killed nine people, left hundreds injured and homeless and decimated priceless monuments.  Depletion of the water table by illegal wells is shrinking Spain’s irreplaceable wetlands - vital habitats for millions of the region’s indigenous birds as well as countless migrating species.  Birdlife’s Manuel Mendez has said that Spanish wetlands are endangered yet there is no commitment to ensure their conservation.  Another key problem is the salinisation of Spain’s rivers.  Research by the Department of Ecology at the University of Barcelona found that high levels of salinity in Spain’s waterways caused by industrial waste discharges and farming residues has led to excessive salt concentrations with huge ramifications for Spain’s potable drinking water.

Mismanagement and corruption

However, some regions have implemented policies that exacerbate the water problem.  Farmers in arid areas such as Murcia are planting water-thirsty crops like tomatoes and lettuce; and land has been transformed into golf courses and resorts that guzzle billions of gallons of water daily with farmers buying and selling water on a growing black market.  Many believe overexploitation has been spurred on by the bribing of local officials.  Chema Gil, a journalist who exposed such a plot has faced death threats: ‘The model of Murcia is completely unsustainable […] We consume two and a half times more water than the system can recover.  […] All the water we’re using to water lettuce and golf courses will be needed just to drink.’

Reckless development

Despite this, the Government is controversially repealing the Coastal Act to free up 8,000km of coastal land for development with the capacity to build about 40,000 homes.  Detractors say this makes no sense economically speaking given Spain’s property industry is in meltdown with some coastal property values dropping 75%.  From an environmental perspective, there’s simply not enough fresh water to sustain any further construction and this will impact UNESCO protected wetland sites such as Doñana, threatening their status and the tourism associated with it.  Moreover, given sea levels are rising as well as the risk of coastal flooding, this is downright reckless.  Critics are incredulous that the Government is promoting construction just as Spain has gone cap-in-hand to Europe for a bail out of its banking sector which failed due to the construction crash.  As the recent expose by El Pais shows, corruption amongst the political classes is rife in Spain - many commentators believe it’s this that’s at the root of such unworkable policies.

Juan Carlos del Olmo, Secretary General of WWF, said: ‘The decision [to repeal the Act] is setting the situation back 40 years, when Spain endured the worst urban development on the coast […] the reform was made without adequate public participation’.  Meanwhile, the WWF conservation director, Enrique Segovia, insisted that corruption ‘which is out of hand’ defines how it worked Spain and was one of the reasons there was a feeling that you can use natural resources with impunity.

National Water Plan

The demolition of coastal protection is not the only major controversy emerging over water.  On 21^st December 2012, Miguel Arias Cañete was appointed agriculture and environment minister - the same minister, who in 2001, under José María Aznar’s Popular Party (PP), approved a National Water Plan (NWP) to divert water from the Ebro River in the north to zones such as Valencia, Almeria and Murcia in the south.  This was shelved in 2004 under PSOE party leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero due to mass opposition in Catalonia; and because the EU refused to finance it given it was contrary to European environmental policy.  In Catalonia storm sirens are sounding.  Catalan News Agency reports suggest Cañete has mentioned carrying out a form of the NWP that many had believed was dead in the water; and though he has not directly referred to the Ebro River diversion, Catalan Minister for Sustainability and Territory, Lluís Recoder, believes that new water plans might be worded in a way that could allow river diversion to leak through the back door.  Indeed, Cañete’s reappointment has been a viewed as a boost for supporters of the water plan.  The national irrigators’ federation FENACORE described Cañete as ‘a guarantee for the sector’.  Antonio Cerdá, Murcian minister for agriculture and water, compared his appointment to ‘winning the lottery’.  

Luis M. Jiménez Herrero, executive director of Spain’s Observatorio de la Sostenibilidad said to me that the danger of the water plan has largely passed ‘because of the country's economic crisis and because it would entail a considerable impact on the territory, with huge environmental costs.  Furthermore, as Spain is a very vulnerable to climate change, developing a project of this calibre might not work at all in some years.’

However, given the repeal of the Coastal Act, a mechanism put in place 25 years ago to protect the coast, it’s not so difficult to believe the Government might not dredge up its water plan and forge ahead despite the huge wave of opposition.  Sadly it seems that calls for cooperation this World Water Day are likely to be drowned out by the decrees of power politics.

 

Photography: Charles Ansdell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Publicado por: Warrants_1X2]

In Spain in some areas, they have already the structure for saving water that arabs made in XII century... Spain needs good politicians, ... http://www.warrantsyquinielas.blogspot.com
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[Publicado por: rss noticias]

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[Publicado por: yepi]

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[Publicado por: Juan]

Dear Sirs,
Water shortage is a common issue faced by nearly every country in the world. From all European countries, looks like Spain is the most vulnerable among all.
However, something could be done, and that is the forestation. Spain is a large country with few forests, except the North, such as Costa Verde.
Forestation implies huge cost and the government should have a plan for short and long term.
Spain is a wonderful country, with "maravellos" culture, kind people. They have to be preserved. Future generations must not suffer because of our indolence to do all we can to save the environment.

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