A scientific team warns of the impact in Doñana of the irrigation law: "It is about to reach a point of no return"

The controversial bill that will authorize the expansion of irrigation in the surroundings of the Doñana National Park has reached the scientific journal Nature Water this Wednesday. A team of researchers underlines the urgency of conserving the ecosystems of Doñana in the face of this irrigation law that, according to their complaints, will increase the overexploitation of an already badly degraded aquifer. If it goes ahead, it will legalize the establishment of intensive strawberry irrigation on land for forest or dry land use, for which it has been criticized by the scientific community and conservation organizations.

The new article, entitled How a proposed law on strawberry cultivation could put an end to Europe's most iconic wetland, is signed by the scientist Luis Santamaría, from the Doñana Biological Station (EBD-CSIC), and by Julia Martin- Ortega, from the Institute for Sustainability Research at the University of Leeds, both members of the European Waterlands project, which includes around thirty organizations from 14 European countries and whose objective is the restoration of European wetlands.

As Luis Santamaría pointed out in a telephone conversation, this law will mean a “turn in the wrong direction, just when the course had begun to change in 2021” and “reputational and economic damage to the strawberry sector, which is one of the main products exported in the area”. From his point of view, “removing such a law endangers an important economic sector without providing great benefit and causing great environmental damage.”

This new bill promoted by the PP of Andalusia and Vox is being processed by the Andalusian Parliament through an urgent procedure that allows the parliamentary debate to be avoided, but due to the call for general elections for July 23, the process in which Andalusian Chamber has been delayed again so as not to interfere in the electoral campaign. In Andalusia, the proposal therefore has the support of the PP and Vox, and the rejection of the PSOE, Por Andalucía and Adelante Andalucía. The central government is also opposed.

Specifically, the law will expand the irrigated agricultural areas in the Condado de Huelva region, whose owners were left out of the regulation in 2014. Although the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, estimated the number of hectares to be regularized at 700, environmental organizations estimate that it will be around 2,000 hectares.. Santamaría admits that they do not know how many hectares will be affected because the “ambiguous” bill does not specify them: “One may think that it is not specified on purpose, but what we want to reflect with this article is that the impact goes much further. beyond the fact that it may be 700 or 1,900 hectares, the greatest impact from our point of view is to give the go-ahead to an illegal change in land use,” he points out.

The PP argues that water from Doñana will not be required to irrigate these crops, but that surface water from the transfer of the Tinto, Odiel and Piedras rivers will be used, but the initiative has provoked the rejection of the central government, the European Commission, experts and environmentalists, who fear that it will end up affecting the Doñana park. In fact, Santamaría considers that these infrastructures mentioned by the Andalusian PP are not built and have been assigned other uses.

As the authors of this study review, the ecosystems of Doñana, a protected area, receive half a million migratory birds and maintain a rich biodiversity, which includes more than 50 species of aquatic birds and emblematic species such as the Iberian lynx and the eagle. imperial. Despite its protected status, they denounce, “the intensive development of its environment has caused the degradation of its vegetation and soils, the drastic reduction of its wetlands, serious decreases in the number of aquatic birds and the virtual disappearance of the rabbit (the prey principal of the lynx and the imperial eagle)”.

For this reason, they consider it nonsense that “instead of implementing the measures to save it, the new law marks the return of obsolete and unsustainable policies that will accelerate its destruction”, as Santamaría points out.. “What the public may not be as aware of is that we've had decades of progressive degradation and one more push could make the system unrecoverable, as it's about to reach a point of no return.”

More sanctions

Spain was already fined in 2021 by the European Commission for failing to adequately protect the Doñana aquifer, and Santamaría considers that “the Andalusian government has entered into an unprecedented confrontation with the European Commission, which has threatened Spain with new sanctions.”

In recent weeks, strawberry importers in Germany have shown their concern about the environmental impact of their products. Approximately 80% of the strawberries grown in the Doñana area are exported, the main buyers being Germany, France and the United Kingdom.. On the other hand, the CEOE employers and various agricultural organizations have asked that the campaign against Huelva strawberries promoted by a German association that collects signatures to prevent German supermarkets from selling imported strawberries from this Andalusian region not be used in Spain for electoral purposes. .

Julia Martin-Ortega, Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Leeds, warns in a statement that the possible boycott of strawberries from this area due to this issue “may compromise the work carried out by legal strawberry growers in the area, who They have been making an effort to reduce water consumption and the use of agrochemicals in their crops”.

'a fraud'

For his part, Fernando Valladares, a scientist from the Department of Biogeography and Global Change at the CSIC's National Museum of Natural Sciences, describes the legislative proposal to expand irrigation in Doñana as “great nonsense” and regrets the way in which it is being carrying out this process, including the veto initially imposed on Miguel Delibes de Castro, president of the Doñana Participation Council, from the list of those appearing in the Andalusian Parliament's Promotion Commission that will evaluate the law, a veto that was lifted before the criticism received.

Last Monday, representatives of various agricultural and conservation organizations showed their opposition to the bill in the Andalusian Parliament, frontal opposition to the bill, in a session convened by the parliamentary group For Andalusia as they had not been able to do so in the commission that processes the legislative initiative.

“I believe that Miguel Delibes de Castro, as a good scientist and a good connoisseur of the area, made it very clear in his appearance. First they vetoed him as an adviser to the scientific committee following the municipal elections because they knew that his voice was going to be critical. Then, as it was something so sad and shameful that they vetoed such a wise and prudent person, they reinstated him but surely they will not pay him any attention but his statements, which have gone around half of Spain, came to say that it was foolish to plan irrigate without water”, comments the researcher in a telephone conversation, unrelated to this study.

In the last 20 years, he details, “the water table in Doñana has decreased by half and it's not all due to climate change, much less. In this case, it is due more to unsustainable water extraction than climate change and that is something that studies clearly show. And we are only talking about the legal wells, only with the legal ones it is unsustainable. And then there are the illegal wells that they now want to legalize.”

The scientist stresses that “there really is no water, there isn't even any to maintain the biodiversity of Doñana or what there is allows it to be maintained with great difficulty. There is no water for strawberries or for irrigated agricultural production and, of course, there is no water for both”, points out. Likewise, remember that “a final ruling from Europe is pending that will impose a multimillion-dollar fine on us. And what is unfair and sad is that we will all pay for it, because it will be paid with public money, even if it is due to decisions that have been made with economic and political objectives that contravene regional, national, European and international directives and protection figures, because Doñana, which is an important space for half a million migratory birds, is in the Ramsar agreement [the main international organization dedicated to the protection of wetlands around the world] and is subject to European legislation.”

The CSIC researcher considers this bill a “great deception”: “Promising water when there is none is a great fraud because what the political leaders would have to do is plan the de-escalation of irrigation, which is going to find one day without water, but by then it will have caused a lot more trouble.