Julia Martínez, biologist and technical director of the Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua, considers that it was essential to set the ecological flows in the Tagus, although she points out that the minimum range that the methodology allows to increase them has been applied. She warns that the great problem of the Transfer is climate change and not ecological flows. During the inauguration of the XII Iberian Congress on Water Management and Planning, which opened yesterday morning at the University of Murcia, the scientist was in favor of the alternative desalination plan offered by the Ministry, with alternative energies, and He pointed out that the tariff subsidy should be intended primarily for small farmers and not for large agricultural companies that can bear the costs of this resource.
He stressed that the values of ecological flows “are technically fixed.” «The important thing is to realize that the great problem of the Transfer is already taking place. It will continue to worsen in the future; not so much because of ecological flows, but above all because of climate change. Up to now, the natural contributions to the headwaters of the Tagus have been reduced by around 45%. It is a reality that we cannot ignore and that forces us to open a serene reflection to see how we adapt.
Desalination aid
Julia Martínez maintains that this situation forces us “to reconsider the demands in the basins benefiting from the Transfer and to propose a water transition, a roadmap, for example, in the line of reducing agricultural demands, eliminating illegal irrigation and betting on other models of quality that allow to maintain the agricultural income, even with less surface, but with greater added value».
He considers that desalination “can play an important role in this roadmap for a water transition that must be fair, to minimize the socioeconomic effects as much as possible and, above all, so that we protect small-scale farmers.” In his opinion, the subsidized price should go “to those farmers who really need it.” Regarding the high energy consumption of desalination plants, he pointed out that production must be linked to the use of renewable energy. He gave as an example the desalination plant of the Virgen del Milagro de Mazarrón Irrigation Community.
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