“The problem is how it is shared out.”

The problem is how it is shared out. Much of Spain has a dry or arid climate, so water resources are naturally scarce. Demand, however, is very high, above all because of the expansion of irrigation.

Resources will keep shrinking, so cutting water demand is essential. But that cut must not be applied equally across the board. Drinking-water supply and the environmental needs of rivers and wetlands, which are priority uses under Spain’s Water Act, have to be guaranteed.

For all other uses, such as agriculture and industry, water needs to be redistributed, especially within irrigation. The aim is to protect small farmers and family farming, historic and traditional irrigation, and the kinds of agriculture with the greatest environmental and social value. That means reducing the allocations of large users, such as big estates and agribusinesses, which today hold a large share of water rights.

Irrigated agriculture accounts for around 80% of consumptive water use and around 90% of net consumption. During droughts, cuts are applied to the different uses. By law, drinking-water supply has priority and generally does not face drastic restrictions. Yet despite that priority, small towns are increasingly running into supply problems, either because of drought or because of nitrate pollution, mainly due to the pressure of abstraction for irrigation.

Within agriculture, the current distribution is highly unequal and favours large irrigated estates. In a drought, the same flat cut is applied to every agricultural user. Small farmers are the ones who lose out, because they have less financial capacity to withstand big cuts to their water allocation. Large companies that produce in several regions have more flexibility to shift production and keep meeting market demand.

The amount of available water is falling significantly. This may be one of the most serious impacts of climate change in Spain. Rainfall has declined somewhat, but above all there has been a very large increase in losses through evaporation and evapotranspiration.

It is not only about evaporation: all vegetation, whether natural vegetation, rain-fed crops or irrigated crops, now pumps more water into the atmosphere.

Because groundwater is largely ungoverned. There are illegal wells and abstractions above the authorised volumes. The law is not forceful enough in penalising this illegal behaviour. Inspection and monitoring are lacking.

And every level of government lacks the conviction and political will to defend the public water domain, in other words the general interest. Too often, the authorities prefer not to confront the powerful economic interests at stake.

Context: UNEVEN’s own GIS analysis in Issue 02 found 203 of Spain’s 804 groundwater bodies in poor quantitative status.

The Tajo–Segura transfer has created a high and inflexible agricultural water demand, built on water that the Segura basin does not have. It is not adapted to the drastic decline in water resources that climate change is causing across Spain, including in the headwaters of the Tajo.

It has also indirectly caused many environmental problems by expanding intensive irrigated agriculture, with major negative effects on the land, the landscape, biodiversity and water quality. It drove the eutrophication crisis of the Mar Menor. Now the irrigated areas that depend on Tajo water face an inevitable and severe reduction of that supply because of climate change, with all the socio-economic dilemmas that come with it.

Andalusia is a good example, because a highly unequal distribution of land and water has persisted there. It is also a region where data and analyses show that inequality with great clarity.

Applying indicators for the social allocation of water in agriculture, based on social, environmental and territorial criteria. One example is the set proposed by the FNCA and Andalusia’s Mesa Social del Agua (Social Water Roundtable) within the Tranagro project, “Just Water Transition in Agriculture”.

Read the FNCA report on the social allocation of water (in Spanish) →