Government and Junta meet to overcome the confrontation over Doñana after months of disagreement
“The drought in Andalusia It is structural, it is not something conjunctural“. The water that has fallen in recent weeks has served to fill the swamps somewhat, a little, but it has not alleviated the underlying problem. It should rain five more times of what rains to return to normality. This was explained by the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries of the Andalusian Government, Carmen Crespo, who warned that a year ago Andalusia had 220 more cubic hectometres of dammed water than the records now show. “Despite the recent rains, normalcy is far away,” Crespo warned.
The numbers indicate that there are 3,388 cubic hectometres of water with a reservoir capacity of 11,000 hectometres. 28.3%. “We have gone up 4% (526 cubic hectometres) but we are very far from normality and well below the 2020 record,” he pointed out. “It has to rain five more times to return to that normality & rdquor ;, concluded the head of the Andalusian Government. The Guadalquivir Basin is at 23.7%, the Mediterranean at 34.7%, the Guadalete-Barbate at 28.4% and the Tinto-Odiel-Piedras-Chanza reaches 83%.
The Andalusian Government held its last meeting of the year with a aid package focused on the field and the fishing. Crespo reported 9.5 million euros for Andalusian fishing and aquaculture, which will benefit 1,419 ships and 82 companies, another 18 million aid plan for agri-food innovation groups, one million euros for the promotion of food with a designation of origin and 11.4 million in aid to reduce energy dependence on irrigation. In addition, the counselor claimed the investments of the Andalusian Executive in hydraulic works, with 63 million destined for purification works in Córdoba and Jaén. “We have multiplied by six the investment of the water canon& rdquor ;, stressed the counselor, defending that the suppression of this final tax that was levied on water has not meant reducing investments but quite the opposite, as she defended in her appearance. Far from these data, the PSOE denounces that the execution of investments in water for the 2022 Budget remains at 20.8%, a provisional figure that the Board denied, calling on the definitive data that will be given at the end of the first quarter of next exercise.
The Ministers for the Environment, Ramón Fernández-Pacheco, and Agriculture, Carmen Crespo, will meet in two consecutive appointments this Wednesday with the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán. The meeting between the Board and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition will address the situation of the drought and will have as main dish the Doñana national park. “Let’s hope that the meeting is as cordial as possible,” said the Minister of the Environment, who hoped that it would serve “to build bridges, strengthen ties and create the right environment to work together for the benefit of Doñana& rdquor;.
Minister Teresa Ribera presented a few weeks ago in Almonte (Huelva) the Government’s plan for Doñana, endowed with 356 million euros to relieve pressure on the park at a critical moment due to the lack of water while the pressure of agricultural and tourist activity persists in the area.
In her appearance, to which the Board evaded sending any counselor on the grounds that they had not been previously informed, the Vice President of the Government met and listened to the economic and social agents of Huelva, affected in first person by the Doñana plan . The Government allocates 100 million euros for the purchase of farms and water rights to alleviate the pressure on the park, affected by the excesses of intensive agriculture with red fruits as protagonists. Water is the axis of the measures deployed by the Government, which aspires to recover both surface water and aquifers, closing illegal wells, purifying wastewater, providing alternatives to the consumption of the tourist center of Matalascañas, promoting hydraulic works and recovering the marshes that have traditionally bathed the most important wetland in Europe.
Minister Ribera has already shown her willingness to open a new chapter of dialogue with the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, with whom she confessed that she had met at the climate summit in Egypt, where she had the opportunity to exchange impressions on Doñana , ensuring that saw him prone to dialogue to save the park from a very complicated situation, accelerated by drought and climate change.
The government has always considered “an outrage & rdquor; the proposal they launched PP Y cs in the previous legislature, with the support of Vox, to pardon new irrigated hectares in the northern crown of the park. A bill that had the serious warning of the European Commission and that decayed at the end of the previous legislature. Only Vox has assumed it again after the June elections but now the PP avoids promoting it to the relief of the Ministry and environmentalists. Now both the Government and the Junta change their tone and bury, or so it seems, the hatchet to focus on saving a natural space that is a world heritage site and threatened by lack of water, climate change and the hand of man.