Feature: Spain's Ebro Transfer - a major turnaround

The money grab

(Author: Saren Starbridge)

'We haven't seen a good analysis of water needs in this situation,' Schmidt observes. "If you ask “how much water do you want?" of course people are going to answer "as much as we can get". As long as you have water, you can continue performing badly. If you ask "how much water do you want at this price?" you'll get a different answer.'

At first glance, prices on Ebro water looked good, largely because the money was coming out of someone else's pocket. Project finances depended heavily on EU Structural Funds. Money from the taxpayers of the entire EU would have gone to fund a project which contravened EU directives and UNESCO's International Hydrological Programme (IHP).

Five IHP criteria specifically related to inter-basin transfers state that there must be no reasonable alternatives in the area receiving the water transfer, the resources in the area of origin must be adequate, there must be no substantial environmental damage or cultural disruption and the benefits must be shared equitably between the donor and receiver areas. None of these criteria were met.

Devastating enough as a local issue, the Ebro Transfer took on much wider implications. Allowing it to go ahead using EU funds would set a precedent that would spread the devastation well beyond Spain.

One of the earliest and most outspoken critics of the Ebro Transfer proposal and SNHP is Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, a physicist and economics professor at the University of Zaragoza. Winner of the 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize for Europe (the prestigious annual international award honours one winner per continent), Arrojo says the plan is 'cynically aimed at using public money to build a gigantic system which would only profit financial speculators, luxury tourist installations and industrial agriculture.'

Through the non-profit Iberian Congress on Water Planning and Management and the Foundation for a New Culture of Water, both of which he founded, Arrojo mobilised the scientific community and combined scientific credibility with dedicated campaigning, targeting everyone from local mayors to the Parliament of the European Union.