Quotes of the Day
In much of southern Europe, desiccated by one of the worst droughts of the last 60 years, wildfires are raging — and tempers are rising. All of Portugal, where fires are consuming an estimated 1,000 hectares a day, has been declared a severe drought zone. Spain, where rainfall in the first half of the year was 35% below average, is still in a political clinch over a July 16 blaze that killed 11 firefighters; the opposition Popular Party claims the Socialist government didn't act quickly enough to bring the situation under control. Such political battles could intensify, since experts warn that drier conditions are here to stay. Earlier this year European Commission researchers reported that while precipitation has increased in northern Europe over the past 100 years, it has decreased by as much as 20% in parts of southern Europe and the Mediterranean countries. The combination of diminished supply and increased demand for water is already causing scraps over who gets what.
Last week the environment ministers of Spain and Portugal agreed on how to mete out scarce supplies. Portugal said it would use 15% less water from the Douro River, which flows from central Spain into the Atlantic at Porto. But such comity was met with bafflement by some; Portuguese farmers complained that while their Spanish counterparts can profit from the recently completed Alqueva Dam in southern Portugal, close to the Spanish border, no irrigation system yet exists to get water to their own parched fields and livestock. "They are going to give the Spaniards water to irrigate their crops and then the Spaniards will sell their crops back to us," says Diogo Morgado, president of an agricultural association on the south bank of the river.
In the long term, consumption will have to be scaled back if water is not to become a flashpoint in Europe, where governments "still try to manage the supply rather than solving the demand problem," says Michael Scoullos, chairman of the Mediterranean section of the Global Water Partnership. Golf courses are an obvious target, but agriculture, which soaks up more than 70% of supply in the region, won't be spared.
- JAMES GRAFF and MARTHA DE LA CAL
- One of southern Europe's worst droughts leaves the region a tinderbox