Spain and Senegal promote a global alliance against drought at the Egypt Summit

Pedro Sánchez, President of the Government of Spain, and his Senegalese counterpart

have proposed to the international community at the Climate Summit the creation of a new

.

Spain is, like other territories with a Mediterranean climate, one of the most vulnerable countries to water scarcity, which will tend to increase as a result of climate change.

In the Sahel strip, next to which Senegal is located, a significant increase in temperature is expected, which

and, therefore, a greater need to save water and adapt agriculture to the new climatic conditions.

The new Alliance will serve to

among participating countries, although it is less clear how much money will be available to help vulnerable regions experiencing water scarcity.

"The episodes of drought that we are experiencing are unprecedented, no country, no matter how high income it has, is immune," said the Spanish president.

Sánchez has promised

of the international alliance, which, so far, has been joined by more than 25 countries, including the United States, China and several Europeans.

"We trust that new countries will join. Together we must give a good response against climate change to improve and defend our way of life," said the President of the Government at the COP27 in Egypt, which started this Monday in Sharm el Sheikh.

"Only

can mitigate the risks that this threat demands," he added.

Sánchez has indicated that the objective of the Alliance will be to mobilize resources at the international level to combat the drought, reports

.

However, there is still

, aside from the five million that Spain will put up for the initiative to start.

The Alliance, promoted by Sánchez together with the president of Senegal, has been presented as "a specific solution for the United Nations", reports

.

"We are as resistant to climate change as our land is.

is the way to ensure the achievements we obtain in each sustainable development goal, in particular for the most vulnerable people," Sánchez and Sall in a joint statement.

The statement was made at

, where leaders from across sectors have pledged to drive change in the way the world deals with growing drought risks.

The International Alliance for Resilience against Drought had been presented as

, which hosted the Climate Summit in 2019 after Chile, the organizing country, could not host it due to internal political instability.

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Hundreds of elephants and zebras have died in recent months in Kenya due to drought

Hundreds of elephants and zebras have died in recent months in Kenya due to drought

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Climate change made extreme drought this summer in Europe 20 times more likely

• Drafting: CARLOS FRESNEDALondon

Climate change made extreme drought this summer in Europe 20 times more likely

Viewed from a national perspective, the new proposal for a global drought pact comes

in Spain, which is suffering one of the worst years in living memory.

Pedro Sánchez undertook in the fall of 2019, while still acting president, to promote a Water Pact in our countries, an old debt that different administrations have been dragging for decades.

Problems as devilish as the Tajo-Segura transfer, which has not satisfied neither the donors nor the irrigators, are causing the National Pact to fall into oblivion again, despite the fact that the problem has worsened during the last course.

According to all long-term forecasts, Spain and other Mediterranean countries will be

as climate change intensifies, something that will happen, to a greater or lesser extent, in any of the possible scenarios.

In fact, the crisis clearly affects the whole of the European continent, which could have lived in 2022, according to preliminary data from the Copernicus program, its driest course for at least 500 years, that is, since the time of the Catholic Monarchs.

At the peak of the continental drought, at the end of August, practically

, while 17% of the territory had also suffered potential damage to the vegetation.

Agriculture, transportation and power generation, among other sectors, have been affected.

Conservationist associations have celebrated the initiative of Spain and Senegal, while they have demanded

.

"We applaud that Spain is leading this alliance and we hope that it will promote a water management model that will serve as an example for other countries," said Alberto Fernández, a specialist in the WWF Spain water program.

WWF has asked the Spanish administrations for a "radical shift in water management", as well as "a new model that reduces the demands for water to the resources actually available".

It asks, in this sense, "

, such as reservoirs and transfers, and to bet on a production model that stops investing in intensifying and carrying out new irrigation", in addition to greater support for rainfed crops, "as a more sustainable option", and that "water theft" be persecuted.

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