Bitter fruit: strawberry boom water plan raises fears for Spanish wetlands
Opponents say proposed amnesty for illegal tapping in DoĂąana national park threatens disaster for one of Europeâs green lungs.
Juan Romero shakes his head as looks out across the lake at the wading spoonbills, the pipe-cleaner silhouettes of the flamingos and the glossy ibis that flash against the AndalucĂan sky.
âThis is an illusion,â says the ecologist, a retired teacher. The birds are real enough, of course, and so too are the tufty-eared Iberian lynxes that will be sniffing out a breakfast of rabbit in the quieter, wilder reaches of the huge DoĂąana national park in southern Spain.
The illusion is what the water level in the lake before him says about the health of the reserve. Although there is far less water in the Charco de la Boca than there should be at this time of year, it is faring better than many parts of the sprawling wetlands known as one of Europeâs green lungs.
Water supplies to DoĂąana, whose marshes, forests and dunes extend across almost 130,000 hectares in the provinces of Huelva, Seville and CĂĄdiz, have declined drastically over the past 30 years because of climate change, farming, mining pollution and marsh drainage. A fresh crisis now looms as regional authorities consider granting an amnesty to the farmers illegally tapping its aquifer to feed the booming strawberry sector.
Nine years after Unesco warned that the areaâs world heritage status was being jeopardised by such illegal tapping, the regional branch of the conservative Peopleâs party (PP), which has governed AndalucĂa for the past three years, has announced a proposal to regularise the illicit farms and wells that stretch across 1,460 hectares near the protected natural space. On Wednesday, the AndalucĂan parliament will vote on whether to begin the legislative process.
The PP, whose bid is backed by both the far-right Vox party and the centre-right Citizens party, claims the move would help âsafeguard historic rights and a traditional activity [practised] since time immemorialâ.
Opponents fear it will spell further disaster for the local environment, and point out that the areaâs love affair with strawberries, known locally as âred goldâ, began in the 1980s. Between January and June last year, Huelvaâs exports of soft fruit â almost 20% of which are to the UK â were worth âŹ801.3m (ÂŁ678m).
The campaign group Ecologists in Action describes DoĂąana as âa hostage to agricultureâ and says the aquifer is already being stressed by irrigation demands. SEO BirdLife, the Spanish Ornithological Society, sees the plan as âa new assault on the DoĂąana natural space that favours a proliferation of irrigation and runs contrary to regional, national, European and international legislationâ.
Unesco, which declared the DoĂąana national park a world heritage site in 1994, has asked the Spanish government for an urgent report on the issue âbefore any decisions are taken that might be difficult to reverseâ.
The mooted law comes eight months after the European court of justice ruled that Spain had not fulfilled its obligations on preventing illegal water extraction around DoĂąana and had failed to take the measures needed to stop âsignificant alterationsâ to its protected habitats. The European Commission says it is âdeeply worriedâ at the possible impacts of the proposed changes and has not ruled out taking Spain to the court of justice once again.
For Felipe Fuentelsaz of WWF Spain, the environmental importance of the region cannot be overstated. âDoĂąana is a unique place that sits between the south of Europe and north Africa and itâs the main migration route for all the birds in Europe,â he says. âMore than 6 million birds â and 200 or 300 different species â come through it each year. Itâs mainly a wetland, but it also has a very important coastal dune zone and lots of surrounding forest. So itâs three ecosystems in just one place and itâs the lung of Europe.â
Romero, a spokesperson for Ecologists in Action who has lived in the area all his life, dismisses the PPâs plan as a naked attempt to win the votes of legal and illegal farmers before a possible early regional election. âIf people havenât been obeying the law, then the Peopleâs party canât come along and tell them â for electoral gain â that theyâre going to [get their] land legalised,â he says. âItâs a trick and a ruse.â
The plain truth, he adds, is that DoĂąana simply cannot cope with the water demands of any more fruit farms.
Drive around the area, where huge white polytunnels break in plastic waves across a landscape of pine and prickly pear, and the feelings of many local farmers are plain to see.
Not far from some of the many decommissioned illegal wells â 420 have been shut down in recent years but others soon spring up elsewhere â are signs graffitied with a slogan that demands âno more harassmentâ from the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, an agency of Spainâs ecological transition ministry.
While the local small farmersâ union, UPA Huelva, supports the PP-led proposal, arguing it will help those who missed out on their âhistorical rightsâ under a 2014 moratorium that banned any new cultivation or well-sinking, it says it will not âdefend those who have invaded forest areas to turn them into agricultural lands without the correct authorisationâ.
Not all the local farmers approve of the plan. At the end of January, 300 farmers from nearby Almonte walked away from a regional group that backs the amnesty, complaining that the move would âonly serve the interests of a minority of irrigation usersâ.
One local fruit farmer, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, says the new plan is neither fair nor sensible.
âI think itâs just madness,â he says. âDoĂąana is something we all love and respect. But thereâs a political party that are proposing something â supported by two other parties â that I simply canât understand.â
The farmer says the planned amnesty is fundamentally flawed and dangerously short-sighted.
âYou have to start with the water and not the land,â he says. âIf you hand out the land, then everyoneâs competing with each other, the aquiferâs suffering and awful things happen. We canât kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. But thatâs what theyâre trying to do and itâs bad for everyone â bad for the park and for the farmers.â
