World Water Day is celebrated on March 22 and serves to focus people's attention on the importance of freshwater for people's lives, forcing us to think socially about the sustainable management we must do of it.
Currently, on Earth more than 663 million people live without drinking water near their homes. People who live in the First World are among the privileged who turn on the tap every day and have drinking water with all the guarantees of health. The fresh water of our planet is stored in the rivers, aquifers, springs, lakes, glaciers... that exist on Earth. People have the obligation to preserve these spaces in good condition, not to pollute them and to manage their resources well.
The Platform in Defense of the Ebro (PDE) has been defending the Ebro River and its delta for twenty-five years because we know the importance of preserving these spaces in order to achieve a healthier life for the people, animals and plants that live there. The Ebro Delta , as the most important wetland in Catalonia and the third wetland in the Mediterranean, is a place to protect due to the great biodiversity it contains. The more biodiversity there is in the environment, the healthier life we will enjoy as people.
The freshwater management model currently used is based on managing demand when what we should do, if we want to be sustainable, is manage it in accordance with the water supply we have in Catalonia by establishing the social priorities we have. According to the Water Exploitation Index that the European Union requires, in Catalonia we use 30% more water each year than we have , which indicates that we have an oversized demand problem. Politically, we prioritize demand over supply because behind the management of public water there is a big business for companies.
Experts have been warning us for years that droughts will become more frequent and longer in duration due to climate change that has been affecting us for years, and that our rivers will have less and less water in their flows. In the Ebro basin last year there were farmers who were unable to irrigate and their fruit trees died. In the same delta, the irrigating communities had to use half of the water in the rice fields due to the restriction imposed due to the drought that the Ebro basin was suffering.
Continuing to make industrial, urban, expansion or creation of new irrigation plans where it is planned to use water as if it were an infinite good is not the best hydrological policy of any government, and socially speaking, nor is it the most appropriate way to act. We appeal to political leaders to strive to make an efficient management of the water that surrounds us if we want a decent future for people and the environment. We must guarantee water for future generations, therefore, we are obliged not to waste it and not to pollute it, moving, if necessary, towards a decrease in its social use . We must manage more efficiently the supply of water that we have instead of managing the growing demand that we currently have on the table.
For the responsible use of water as a fundamental and scarce right, we celebrate World Water Day.
THE RIVER IS LIFE!
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