Spain outlines its new 2050 water strategy

摘要

Spain's horticulture and tourism industries, the EU's largest and second largest respectively, need to adapt radically to climate change-induced water shortages, according to a long-term national strategy drafted by a multidisciplinary panel of 100 experts and published last month. Even if global warming is kept to a 1.5-degree rise in temperature, as envisaged in the Paris Agreement, within 30 years 27 million people could be experiencing water shortage, according to the Spain 2050 report, presented by the Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez. The document's headline recommendation is for a gradual reduction in water demand of 5% by 2030 and 15% by 2050, which it hopes will provide a respite for the 40% of Spain's surface water resources and 45% of groundwater resources which are currently defined as not achieving 'good status'. To this end, the report calls for investment in desalination and reuse technology to make the price of water from these sources competitive when compared to traditional sources such as reservoirs.