Much of Catalonia, including the metropolitan region with its five million inhabitants, is located on the verge of the drought emergency declaration, which would have a prologue next week (with a pre-emergency declaration that would entail greater restrictions on water use) and could arrive in full, with possible cuts to domestic supply, next January. The autumn rains have not arrived and the reservoirs in the swamps are not enough to safely reach those that should be expected for spring. As we have recalled on several occasions, It seems that there is no clear citizen awareness of how serious the situation is.. Having the desalination plants working at full capacity and having opened the door to the regeneration of wastewater has allowed drastic measures to be postponed. However, this availability has generated a mirage among the user (not among those who already palpably suffer from the water crisis such as the agricultural and livestock sector) that the Government of the Generalitat wants to undo.
In this situation, the Administration’s measures and messages have at least three different motivations and time horizons. Right now, emergency measures to reduce consumption (via restrictions or information to the citizen so that they adopt a saving attitude in their daily habits) or to increase available supply (water collection from the Besòs, regeneration, desalination, new wells where the aquifers are not showing signs of depletion). Drastic measures only when the situation is extreme and it is impossible to guarantee unlimited domestic supply and that certain economic activities can be maintained normally. And that scenario, after 36 months of drought, the worst since records exist, is beginning to take on a reality, as evidenced in the meetings between the Government and increasingly concerned economic actors. And finally, structural measures to maximize resources in the face of a future marked by more frequent and longer droughts: a major task that should involve redesigning the entire collection, distribution, consumption and purification system so as not to waste such a scarce resource and adjust the water consumption of the country’s productive fabric to a realistic forecast of its availability. Either by promoting the improvement of processes and technology, or by giving up activities that may no longer be sustainable.
In this sense, the lack of availability of water will increasingly be a criterion for limit urban, tourist or sports developments or the implementation of industrial and livestock activities (just as the availability of land is today, or the protection of areas of natural interest). Announcing limits on the approval of future activities while there is an emergency and, on the other hand, that veto is lifted as soon as it is out of it seems to have less to do with future planning than with the need to launch awareness messages.
There’s a price to pay for the climate crisis: if it is not in the form of efficiency and savings, it will be in the form of economic degrowth. And everything must be done to exhaust the first of these possibilities.