Spain begins a second consecutive month of August with the lowest dammed water reserve since 1995. According to data from the Hydrological Bulletin of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, the water reserve is at 44.7% of its capacity and each week decreases to 1.5% due to evaporation and growing consumption. Likewise, the reservoirs for human consumption and agriculture are at 36.7% of their capacity.
In this sense, the environmental organization Greenpeace said yesterday that “2023 is being especially dry, the dammed water reserves at the state level are at 42% and the forecasts, at least until the end of September, are not too optimistic in terms of to rains that serve to alleviate this serious situation ”.
In any case, Greenpeace believes that this situation cannot be attributed exclusively to the drought and that “mismanagement of water is wreaking havoc, not only in the country’s fields and ecosystems, but also among people.” According to ecologists, “Spain will experience droughts ten times worse than the current ones, and dry periods and heat will reduce the availability of fresh water and threaten human activities.”
And they insist that “we consume an amount of water much higher than what we can afford. An excessive consumption that is produced mainly by the change towards intensive and industrial agriculture and livestock that take 80% of the water. This in a country with 75% of its territory at serious risk of desertification and where more than a million illegal wells uncontrollably extract a fundamental resource for life. A recklessness on the part of our political leaders that could lead to the collapse of the country.
At this time, the areas most affected by the water restrictions are Andalusia, with 118 affected municipalities, and Catalonia, where 24 municipalities out of the 495 that were already in the “exceptionality” phase have entered a “state of emergency” (the most serious). ”.
