October 31, 2007
· Filed under consumer choices, politics · Tagged , spain, sustainable, water
The Iberian peninsula is geographically extremely diverse. A land of mountains and deserts, high plateaus and humid coastlines, the southern portion is chronically short of water. The Romans and then the Moors addressed the problem by building aquaducts and reserves. More recently, Franco’s fascist government used forced labour to build the Guadalquivir canal through Andalusia.
Water in Spain is a big concern and yet consumer prices are the third lowest in Europe, at €1.28/m3. Municipal water costs nearly three times as much in Sweden or Denmark, where supplies are plentiful. How can this be? Spain spends €6.330 million annually on the capture, transport and extraction of underground water, plus water distribution and sanitation, yet most Spanish households spend less than €15/month on water.
One thing is certain – most people wouldn’t think of drinking the tapwater. Nearly everyone buys bottled water, a spectacularly unsustainable and wasteful activity that involves mountains of plastic bottles spilling out of bins everywhere, not to mention the transport costs of moving, say, Lanjaron from Andalusia to Catalunya or Veri from the Pyrenees to Madrid. After rainstorms, the water almost always comes out of the tap filthy and full of grit. This suggests that the low consumer price of water either isn’t enough to care for the municipal water supplies or that resources are poorly managed and are not being used where needed (ie: in the maintenance of sanitation equipment).
A recent poll of 2000 Spaniards conducted by the BBVA Foundation and reported at Ambietum reveals attitudes about water: that price should not rise and that the means of finding more water resources (ie: canalization, river diversion, desalinization) should take priority. This unsustainable attitude amounts to solving the problem not by reducing or discouraging demand, but by increasing supply. It is the same attitude that most consumers take regarding hydrocarbons: don’t let the price go up, go out and find more oil/gas/charcoal etc.)
The sustainable solution to water shortage is to reduce consumer demand by using more efficient technologies in the home and to improve and modernize water delivery technologies so that they don’t lose water to leakage. Water is privatized in Spain. In my region Aquagest Levante is the supplier. They state that they rigorously test the water and that is conforms to all European standards. However, with the price so low and the habit of drinking bottled water, when the water runs brown, no one bats an eyelid. Until people pay the right price for a precious resource such as clean water, they will not demand improvements from the their suppliers.
October 30, 2007
· Filed under construction, news, politics
The Ministerio de Medio Ambiente (Ministry of the Environment) made news today when it announced a toughening of the implementation of the Coastal Law of 1988. The law states that all beaches are public and that a margin of 106 m upon which houses cannot be built must be left by any developers. Of course, the law is poorly implemented and the Spanish coastline is replete with examples of selfish and unsustainable building projects. So the minister of the Environment, Antonio Serrano, is getting tough and talking about revoking building licenses and removing structures covering over 8,000 km of coastline. He estimates that this measure will cost 5,000 million euros and inconvenience a few for the sake of the many. The minister also proposes the construction of 782 km of coastal pathway that can be used by cyclists and pedestrians, not just cars. The plan takes into account the predicted loss of 15m of beach due to rising sea levels and is especially concerned with urbanised areas that are predicted to fall within this area of loss.
Photos of 418 houses illegally built and thus demolished.
October 30, 2007
· Filed under consumer choices, food · Tagged food miles, organic produce, spain, sustainability
One of the good things about living in Spain is that you don’t accumulate many food miles, if you’re careful. There are weekly farmers’ markets where fresh produce from the local area is sold by the producer. You can eat well all year round, and if you eat seasonally, there is no need to buy products shipped from South Africa or New Zealand or the Caribbean. However, it is rare to find organic produce: much is grown in Spain, but 98% is shipped out of the country. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find a stall selling organic vegetables and fruits today. They had lettuce, carrots, avocado, tomato, broccoli, apples, lemons, grapes potatoes and a few other basics. Only the carrots were imported – they are Italian. The prices were twice those of the other stalls and the guy wasn’t exactly doing a roaring trade, but it’s heartening to have seen him there.
October 29, 2007
· Filed under news, politics · Tagged climate change, mariano rajoy, partido popular, politics, stupidity
The leader of the Partido Popular Mariano Rajoy was deservingly jeered this week for his ridiculous comments about climate change. He said:
no se puede decir a la gente que el mundo va a desaparecer y que aquí estamos en una situación de catástrofe ciertamente peligrosa”
One cannot say that the world is going to disappear and that we are in a certainly dangerous or catastrophic situation.
It appears that Sr. Rajoy’s cousin remarked that meteorologists are unable to predict with certainty tomorrow’s weather, so how would they be able to predict the weather 100 years from now. Obviously, the man is not familiar with probabilistic modelling, commonly used by scientists. Alternatively, he is just following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar, staunch supporter of the Bush government’s invasion of Iraq. The fact is that Aznar presided a period of stupendous economic growth in Spain (1996-2004), and hence similarly spectacular period of environmental degradation, the results of which are coming to light now as the country copes with built-up shorelines and illegal building of all kinds.
Whatever the motivation of Sr. Rajoy, his comments are asinine. In the month in which Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel prize for Peace, those who persist in misinterpreting or denying the danger of climate change are becoming increasingly isolated and out-of-step. Spanish people use their vote when provoked – they voted Aznar out of office because they did not believe that Spanish soldiers should be in Iraq. They are unlikely to support a politician who discredits the country with ill-conceived statements such as this.
October 29, 2007
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged spain, sustainable
Hello and welcome. I have decided to blog on the sustainability movement in Spain. There is quite a lot happening here, and I think it’s worth translating into English some of the more interesting tidbits. I am going to begin by citing sources – it seems appropriate. So here is a list of links to (mostly Spanish) sites that I use to gather information:
http://www.ecoestrategia.com/ – Foro economico y ambiental
http://www.naturalicante.com/
http://www.caecv.com/ – Comite d’Agricultura Ecologica de la Comunitat Valenciana
http://www.insnet.org/ – internetwork for sustainability
