The president of the Regional Government of Andalusia, Juanma Moreno, who is participating in the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, COP28, an event taking place in Dubai, has asked for more funds from the State and the European Union to confront the effects of climate change in a region besieged by extreme drought. His speech has not taken long to be answered by the Andalusian left, who have regretted that the regional leader announces future water cuts and restrictions in the community instead of working on solutions.
That he “stop making a fool of himself” and that he go “from words to actions” by managing the “enormous resources” that he now has, the PSOE-A has asked, from where it is assured that there is a large amount of money that has not been executed. On the other hand, Adelante Andalucía has requested that, in line with the concern that Moreno Bonilla conveys at the Summit, the regional Executive adopt urgent measures, among which they have proposed the closure of the 109 golf courses in the south and that, As the political party has pointed out, they use “the same amount of water that one million” Andalusians consume.
It was during his speech this Monday at an event of the Committee of Regions of the European Union, an organization of which he is vice president, where Moreno Bonilla asked the European Union to recognize the water uniqueness of Andalusia, a region that wants to be a “ “referent” in environmental policies of the European community. The region is one of the “most vulnerable and affected” by climate change, he commented, a problem that is no longer “temporary but structural, and that is getting worse.” The Andalusian president has highlighted that the region, due to its agricultural capacity, feeds 500 million people in the world and, “without water, it is impossible to maintain that capacity to produce in quality and quantity”, which is why it demands extra help. with which to maintain levels of progress, well-being and protection of nature.
Thus, he wanted to highlight the lines of work undertaken by his Government in order to alleviate the effects of climate change, a work with which “we are raising the flag of a Green Revolution based on the commitment to renewable energies and a circular and blue economy.”
Adelante Andalucía did not want to stay away from the statements that Moreno made this morning regarding the drought that affects the region and the announcement that the leader made about future water cuts in the community. For political formation, urgent measures should be adopted now in view of the forecast of suffering severe supply problems next summer. The closure of the 109 goal fields spread throughout the Andalusian territory is one of the first steps to be taken in this sense, according to Néstor Salvador, head of the Organization.
“The Board is responsible for the lack of water evident due to climate change and cannot wait for it to rain to make decisions,” he warned, since he pointed out that these sports facilities are “wasting the same amount of water as they consume a million” Andalusians. According to this formation, what Moreno has to do is “stand on the side of the Andalusian population and not of the golf courses and the companies that are exploiting them.”
The president’s speech has also generated some perplexity in the PSOE-A, from where they have asked him to “stop making a fool of himself” asking that “the planet pays attention to Andalusia because of our uniqueness” when what is being debated at the summit is “What can each of us do to save the planet,” declared Rafael Márquez, coordinator of the Presidency of the Socialist Parliamentary Group. For Márquez, the president has made clear “the lack of commitments and clear policies” of the Board to “minimize the effects of climate change” and, in his opinion, he has gone to COP28 “to take photos” and “make projects his own.” of private companies like Cepsa with green hydrogen” and “to continue doing the same thing it does in Andalusia, which is to ask others for what it is not capable of executing with its own resources, with its own competencies.”
The socialist deputy was thus referring to the request that Moreno made to the Sánchez Government to design a Master Plan for desalination plants for Andalusia, when it has a “huge amount of economic resources to address this challenge” of which “only 24% has been executed.” ” that it provides in the “energy programs, in programs as important as those for energy savings, those for energy efficiency and those for the promotion of renewable energies.”
For his part, Moreno has insisted on the need to have a map of desalination plants in Andalusia to “correct those water deficiencies that we are going to have” and asked the central Executive to close a calendar as soon as possible with this plan.
As explained, the regional government would have, as of October 30, “more than 200 million unexecuted in this type of programs,” and is “boycotting the arrival of new funds to families, SMEs, and the self-employed to promote energy self-consumption” of the expansion of a fund with 500 million euros launched by the State Government.
On the other hand, according to the socialist coordinator, Rafael Márquez, the Board is not making an investment with the resources that come from Europe either. “It is not credible to ask for more funds” from the EU when “it has only executed 16% of the water policy budget this year” and, in its 5 years on the Board, “it has left one billion unexecuted in policies of water”.
For its part, Podemos proposes stricter surveillance of water ‘thefts’. It was the general secretary of Podemos in the region, Martina Velarde, who, echoing a complaint from Ecologists in Action, has demanded that the central government investigate whether the Sierra Nevada station is illegally extracting water from the headwaters of the Dílar River to produce snow.
As the policy has detailed, there is infrastructure in the area to convey water from the Las Yeguas lagoon reservoir to Cetursa, the company that manages the station and, although an inspection carried out on August 29 found that it did not was in use, Podemos demands that the Government monitor it within the “season” and verify through the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation whether there is infrastructure with the capacity to extract water. “We are going to continue working to protect our aquifers together with the environmental groups of Granada and with an eye toward preventing water from being stolen irregularly,” the deputy summarized.
On the other hand, the federal coordinator of Alianza Verde, Juantxo López de Uralde, has also spoken out after learning about the inspection carried out by the Government, and has considered that the use of water for snow cannons produced in a climate change scenario is ” unacceptable”.
