Drought forces water use rethink in Spain

Faced with a historic drought and threatened by desertification, Spain is rethinking how it spends its water resources, which are used mainly to irrigate crops.

"We must be extremely careful and responsible instead of looking the other way," Spain's Minister for the Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera said recently, about the impact of the lack of rain.
Like France and Italy, Spain has been gripped by several extreme heatwaves this summer after an unusually dry winter.
That has left the country's reservoirs at 40.4 percent of their capacity in August, 20 percentage points below the average over the last decade for this time of the year.
Officials have responded by limiting water use, especially in the southern region of Andalusia, which grows much of Europe's fruits and vegetables.

Reservoir water levels in the region are particularly low, just 25 percent at most of their capacity.
"The situation is dramatic," said University of Jaen hydrology professor Rosario Jimenez, adding both underground aquifers and surface bodies of water were running low.
The situation is especially worrying since it is part of a long-term trend linked to climate change, she added.
Parts of Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to a study published last month in the journal, Nature Geoscience.
Greenpeace estimates that 75 percent of the country is susceptible to desertification.

Spain has built a vast network of dams to provide water for its farms and towns.
During the 20th century, 1,200 large dams were built in the country, the highest number in Europe per capita.
This has allowed Spain to increase the amount of irrigated...

Continue reading on: