11/0/05/2006 - Madrid,
Spain – Spain has over half a million illegal
boreholes used to irrigate agricultural land,
often supported by EU agricultural subsidies,
according to a new WWF report.
The report — Illegal Water Use
in Spain: Causes, Effects and Solutions — identifies
that this illegal irrigation is funded by subsidies
paid out through the Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP).
In a country that is suffering
severe water shortages (2004–2005 was the driest
year in the past 125 years), this high degree
of illegal water abstraction makes it impossible
for water to be used wisely and has negative effects
on the environment as well as urban and agricultural
water users.
“It is totally unacceptable
that CAP subsidies are granted to farmers that
are using water illegally," said Guido Schmidt,
head of WWF-Spain's freshwater programme. "This
means that public money is supporting the over-exploitation
of precious water resources.”
Spain receives more agricultural
subsidies than any other European country (with
the exception of France), with some €6.6 billion
distributed directly to olive, rice or cotton
farmers and indirectly to the modernization of
farming infrastructures. Over decades, these subsidies
have driven agricultural production and irrigation,
stimulating farmers to produce ever more and leading
to the drilling of more illegal boreholes.
The Spanish Environment Ministry
estimates that there is a total of 510,000 illegal
boreholes, many concentrated in southern Spain
and the Segura River basin in the southeast part
of the country.
In order to address the growing
criticisms and concerns of the CAP the EU introduced
a cross compliance mechanism in 2005, which links
the payment of direct CAP subsidies to the number
of good environmental agricultural procedures
practiced by farmers. In Spain, cross compliance
includes a reduction of the subsidy if irrigation
water is obtained illegally, but this requirement
applies only to aquifers that have been officially
declared as "over-exploited" — about
15 out of 411 in the entire country.
Only one case of a farmer being
penalized under cross compliance for illegal boreholes
was reported to WWF by the Spanish regional governments.
WWF is requesting that the Spanish
Agriculture Ministry and Spanish regional governments
urgently modify cross compliance requirements
and ensure that no more CAP subsidies are paid
to illegal irrigators.
This means applying water compliance
to all waters in Spain (and not only in over-exploited
aquifers) and to all direct and indirect CAP subsides,
as well as increasing the number of inspections
to verify compliance in the field.
END NOTES:
• The Water Framework Directive
(WFD) is the most substantial piece of EC water
legislation to date. It requires all inland and
coastal waters to reach "good status"
by 2015. It will do this by establishing a river
basin district structure within which demanding
environmental objectives will be set, including
ecological targets for surface waters.
• EU Member States define the
minimum requirements for good environmental and
agricultural practices, and the specific inspection
systems to ensure their correct application. In
Spain, compliance applies only to direct CAP payments,
which means that several sectors that receive
significant indirect payments are not controlled.
Compliance includes the requirement of having
a water use permit only in aquifers that have
been officially declared as overexploited.
• According to official data
published in 1998, there are 77 overexploited
aquifers in the river basins that are managed
by the Spanish Ministry for the Environment. Out
if these, only 15 have been officially declared
as ‘overexploited’.
