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Water wars hit Spanish lettuce patch
Spain
Wednesday 11 June 2008
Fields of lettuce and greenhouses of tomatoes line the roads. Verdant new developments of plush pastel holiday homes beckon buyers from Britain and Germany. Golf courses – dozens of them, all recently built – give way to the beach. At last, this corner of south-east Spain is thriving. There is only one problem with the picture of bounty: this province, Murcia, is running out of water. Spurred on by global warming and poorly planned development, swaths of south-east Spain are steadily turning into desert. Murcia, traditionally a
poor farming region, has undergone a resort-building boom in recent years, even as many of its farmers have switched to more thirsty crops, encouraged by water transfer plans, which have become increasingly untenable. The combination has put new pressures on the land and its dwindling supply of water. This year, farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting each other over who gets to water their crops. And in a sign of their mounting desperation, they are buying and selling water like gold on a burgeoning black market, mostly from illegal wells. Southern Spain has long been plagued by cyclical drought, but the current crisis, scientists say, probably reflects a more permanent climate change brought on by global warming. And it is a harbinger of a new kind of conflict. The battles of yesterday were fought over land. Those of the present centre on oil. But those of the future – one made hotter and drier by climate change in much of the world – seem likely to focus on water, they say. "Water will be the environmental issue this year – the problem is urgent and immediate," said Barbara Helferrich, a spokeswoman for the European Union's Environment Directorate. "If you already have water shortages in spring, you know it's going to be a really bad summer." Climate change means that creeping deserts may eventually drive 135 million people off their land, the United Nations estimates. Most of them are in the developing world. But Southern Europe is experiencing the problem now, its climate drying to the point that it is becoming more like Africa's, scientists say. For Murcia, the water crisis has come already. And its arrival has been accelerated by developers and farmers who have followed water-hungry ventures highly unsuited to a drier, warmer climate: crops such as lettuce that need ample irrigation, resorts that promise a swimming pool in the garden, acres of freshly sodded golf courses that soak up millions of gallons a day.
poor farming region, has undergone a resort-building boom in recent years, even as many of its farmers have switched to more thirsty crops, encouraged by water transfer plans, which have become increasingly untenable. The combination has put new pressures on the land and its dwindling supply of water. This year, farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting each other over who gets to water their crops. And in a sign of their mounting desperation, they are buying and selling water like gold on a burgeoning black market, mostly from illegal wells. Southern Spain has long been plagued by cyclical drought, but the current crisis, scientists say, probably reflects a more permanent climate change brought on by global warming. And it is a harbinger of a new kind of conflict. The battles of yesterday were fought over land. Those of the present centre on oil. But those of the future – one made hotter and drier by climate change in much of the world – seem likely to focus on water, they say. "Water will be the environmental issue this year – the problem is urgent and immediate," said Barbara Helferrich, a spokeswoman for the European Union's Environment Directorate. "If you already have water shortages in spring, you know it's going to be a really bad summer." Climate change means that creeping deserts may eventually drive 135 million people off their land, the United Nations estimates. Most of them are in the developing world. But Southern Europe is experiencing the problem now, its climate drying to the point that it is becoming more like Africa's, scientists say. For Murcia, the water crisis has come already. And its arrival has been accelerated by developers and farmers who have followed water-hungry ventures highly unsuited to a drier, warmer climate: crops such as lettuce that need ample irrigation, resorts that promise a swimming pool in the garden, acres of freshly sodded golf courses that soak up millions of gallons a day.
