Irrigation in Spain: environmental organizations wind up

A borehole pump works on an irrigation field in Pampliega, near Burgos, in the Castile and León region, on July 26, 2017 (photo illustration).

AFP - CESAR MANSO

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

Despite the worst drought ever seen, which is continuing and forcing restrictions across the country, the Spanish government barely wants to touch the current level of irrigation for the next five years…until 2027. he executive has undertaken to maintain 29,000 hm³, which capture 80% of freshwater reserves, to be used for 3.8 million hectares of irrigated crops.

Environmental organizations do not believe in it, and speak of a suicide.

Spain is by far the country in Europe that uses the most irrigation.

Background: this intensive agriculture supports thousands of farmers, an important electoral force.

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With our correspondent in Madrid,

Act as if global warming did not exist.

This is essentially what several environmental organizations, Ecologistas en Acción, Greenpeace, and many others, criticize the government for.

The authorities have announced that for the next five years, intensive agriculture will undergo a water reduction of 1,000 cubic hectometres, that is to say only 3% of what is currently given.

And this, while global warming intensifies, that periods of drought are each time longer, more frequent and intense and that, very concretely, the reserves of large water reservoirs are only at 33% of their capacity. , the lowest figure since the great drought of 2008.

It is absurd to think that the less there is water and the more there must be irrigation, denounces the New Water Culture Foundation.

What is needed, she says, is to eliminate at least 1/5 of the intensive crops and thus save the same amount of irrigation water and allocate it to other higher priority uses.

Environmentalists say this amounts to turning a blind eye and caving in to agricultural lobbies.

For the time being, the socialist government refuses to modify its five-year plan and agrees with the farmers.

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