Almeria, Spain.
Irrigated agriculture, “hasty” abandonment of the rural world and extreme waste of water are the origin of the problem.
More than 40% of Spanish territory is in a process of degradation due to human activity that can lead to desertificationaccording to the first “Atlas of Desertification in Spain”, prepared by scientists from several universities and published recently.
“In Spain, one of the European countries most vulnerable to land degradation, desertification is advancing in silence, but with palpable consequences: loss of soil fertility, regression of natural vegetation, increase in forest fires, decrease in water resources and abandonment of traditional uses of the territory“, reads the atlas, coordinated by the University of Alicante and the Spanish Superior Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), financed by European funds and which has contributions from dozens of researchers from across the country.
What is desertification?
The coordinators of the publication emphasize that desertification is not synonymous with desert or landscapes without vegetation and without green areas and that “to trigger degradation processes, inadequate human activity is necessary, that is, one that uses natural resources above their permanent regeneration rate”.
The United Nations, remember, defined desertification as “degradation of arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones as a consequence of climate variations and human activities”.
It’s our fault
In the case of Spain, according to this atlas, at the end of November, more than 70% of the territory “is at risk suffering soil degradation processes and a significant part already shows worrying symptoms”: 206,217 square kilometers (40.9% of the country) already suffer this type of degradation.
Spanish scientists draw attention to the effects of activities such as irrigated agriculturebut also the “hasty” abandonment of the rural world.
“The availability of renewable water in a specific region” is “one of the indicators that best shows this pressure”, in this case, on water resources, with Spain having “extensive areas with “extremely high water stress”being the 29th country worldwide with the highest value in this indicator (3.94 on a scale of 5).
“In more than 42% of the territory, this ‘stress’ is extremely high” (consumption of more than 80% of available freshwater resources) and in another 25% of the Spanish territory there is “high stress” (consumption of more than 40%), reads the atlas.
The authors of the study emphasize that “a large part of the water is consumed in the agricultural sector” (22,500 cubic hectometers per year) and 40% of underground water bodies in Spain “are degraded”.
“In some hydrographic demarcations the situation is even more worrying. In the Guadiana, 86% of the aquifers are desertified”, reads the study, in which the authors highlight that societies like Spain “are addicted to water” without adequate responses having been found to respond to such high consumption so far.
“We use increasingly scarce resources without much discretion, guided by short-term economic criteria that replace common sense. We trust that a new technological proposal will solve the problem, while we fall into patterns that, seen from the outside, are tragicomic: between 2018 and 2024, official records indicate that 483,624 tons of fruit and vegetables were discarded, which represents a water footprint of almost 36 cubic hectometers”, they emphasize.
At issue is a waste whose “main reason” is the low pricebecause of producing more than necessary, they add.
Scientists also draw attention to the increase in irrigated agriculture in Spain and how, for example, rainfed crops such as olive trees are being irrigated.
Regarding the abandonment of rural areas and concentration of the population in urban areas, the authors emphasize that “desertification is sometimes a consequence of the under-use of the territory”, which can have “as bad consequences as over-exploitation”.
“Rural areas were hastily abandoned after thousands of years” of human presence and “this transit” to urban areas “has its tolls”: “What is currently observed is a landscape prone to forest fires, where climate change favors the establishment of species that have never before inhabited this territory and in which, despite everything, the human impact is still relevant”, as is the case with the installation of wind or solar farms, the proliferation of roads and other infrastructure.
In forest areas that have expanded following the abandonment of rural areas, without forest clearing or any management, and again in alliance with climate change, increasingly larger and more uncontrollable forest fires are being produced, some with the capacity to change the weather conditions in the area and which also contribute to soil degradation that can lead to desertification.
In parallel, the atlas coordinators emphasize, arid areas of the Mediterranean, for example, suffer the negative impact in terms of consumption of water resources, for example, from the high population concentration combined with high tourism.
