To return to AGR, click here

To read an article, click on the headline.

To read ENVIRONMENT BRIEFS, click here

Desertification threatens a third of Spain’s territory

Chainsaws threaten nature preserve

Black rhino sets out on rocky road to recovery

 

back to top

Desertification threatens a third of Spain’s territory

By Tito Drago

Madrid, Spain, June 25 (IPS)— The government of Spain is investing heavily in restoring land and in other environmental efforts to fight desertification, which threatens 31.5 percent of Spanish territory.

Among the planned measures are reforestation, forest conservation, improved vegetation coverage, and demarcation of coastlines and riverbanks to prevent illegal construction activity that contributes to erosion, Environment Minister Cristina Narbona told IPS.

The high-water mark has been officially delimited for just one percent of the thousands of miles of riverbanks in Spain, and 60 percent of the seacoast, said Narbona.

However, merely delimiting the high-water mark does not solve the problem, says Ecologists in Action, an umbrella group of hundreds of non-governmental organizations. There are more than 40,000 illegal constructions — houses, apartment buildings, camps, sports fields, and even schools — in areas at high risk of flooding, according to the group.

Tourism is Spain’s leading source of revenue. This southern European country of 41 million attracts more than 55 million visitors each year, particularly in the summer months.

But it is tourism that has the greatest negative impacts on Spain’s shoreline, whether on the Atlantic in the north, the Canary Islands off the western coast of Africa, or along the Mediterranean Sea.

“Unregulated urban expansion has overburdened the capacity of the coastal systems and there is overcrowding of tourist locations,” says Fernando Prats, an urban planning architect and director of several environmental projects.

Narbona has planted the seeds in the government for a measure that could help stop unregulated growth and construction, by fighting the widely used trick of setting forest fires then applying to municipal governments for permits to build on the degraded land.

She is proposing a law that would establish a minimum 30-year waiting period before the official classification of a plot of land could be changed.

Another environmental problem facing the new government of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is widespread freshwater shortages in a country with a strong farming tradition. Eighty percent of Spain’s water resources go to the agricultural sector.

This level of consumption has made Spain fourth in the world in terms of the number of large dams, with more than 1,200. No river in this country runs freely from beginning to end.

The Zapatero government’s reversal of the previous administration’s decision to divert the course of the Ebro River is one of the most important and controversial steps it has taken regarding the question of water supplies.

The Ebro begins in the Cantabria mountains, along Spain’s northern coast, and runs 576 miles — with a watershed of 32,500 square miles — before flowing into the Mediterranean on the northeast coast in Catalonia.

The Ebro is the country’s second biggest river, moving 800 cubic yards of water per second, and its delta covers 120 square miles.

The previous government, of the center-right José María Aznar, gave the green light to divert the river as far as 620 miles to the south in order to bring water to Valencia and Murcia, two of the 17 autonomous communities into which Spain is divided, which are governed by Aznar’s fellow Popular Party members.

Narbona thinks it would be “absurd” to reroute the river to that extent, also taking into account that the water would have to be pumped to an altitude of 3,280 feet to get over a mountainous zone along the proposed route.

In addition to hurting the Ebro delta and the areas that currently use its water, and the cost of 560 miles of canals and pipeline, “it is a threat to Spain’s environmental health,” she said.

The alternative put forth by the Zapatero government is to build desalinization plants in order to produce potable water from the Mediterranean, to provide just over 1.3 billion cubic yards of water to Valencia, Murcia, Catalonia, and Andalusia, with an outlay of more than $3.7 billion.

Critics of the measure, with the Valencia and Murcia governments, say that the salt removed from the seawater would be dumped back into the Mediterranean creating highly toxic deposits.

The minister rejected that argument saying that the problem is being taken into account in the desalinization plans.

The aim, she said, is “to prevent the waste of resources and to ensure the stability of a more balanced and sustainable development agreed amongst all the territories that would have been affected by the diversion of the Ebro.”

The governor of Murcia, Ramón Luis Valcárcel, considers the construction of desalinization plants a positive thing, but only as a complement to diverting the Ebro, a plan he continues to pursue.

The dispute could be taken to the Constitutional Court on claims that the central government cannot by decree annul the law — although the law for the Ebro plan itself was a decree issued by Aznar.

 

back to top

Chainsaws threaten nature preserve

By Franz Chávez

La Paz, Bolivia, June 26 (Tierramérica)-- Residents of the town of Apolo, in northeast Bolivia, have been using chainsaws to open a path through Madidi National Park, while the government and defenders of biodiversity say the route would mostly benefit illegal exports of precious wood.

This nature preserve is seen as one of the most important in the world, and is now under threat since 140 people began to cut down everything in their path in a straight line to the neighboring town of Ixiamas, according to an official report.

The effort has been promoted by an alliance of community groups, farmers associations with highly politicized leaders, truck drivers from the region, and suppliers of food and consumer goods.

The creation of this route has been challenged by the government’s National Protected Areas Service (SERNAP) because it crosses a central swath of the park and would destroy the headwater areas of rivers and watersheds located in zones with high levels of precipitation.

The populations of Apolo and Ixiamas are 2,123 and 5,625, respectively.

A road in the area could trigger huge landslides and harm the water sources that supply the farmland and towns on the plains, SERNAP representatives told Tierramérica.

Along the road that the groups want to build, there are no other human settlements that would benefit from it, and conservation experts fear that illegal loggers would use it to get to valuable trees that are threatened with extinction, such as the “caoba,” or big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla).

Arturo Bowles, general manager of the National Chamber of Forestry, which represents logging companies, told Tierramérica its members respect conservation regulations and that none hold concessions inside the Madidi National Park area.

The government created the park in 1995 at the urging of environmental groups, including Conservation International (CI). It extends across 7,319 square miles.

It is set in the provinces of Franz Tamayo and Iturralde, in the northern department of La Paz, and is surrounded by other national parks, like Manuripi Heat, the Apolobamba Integrated Management Natural Area, and the Pilón Lajas Biosphere Reserve. To the west it is bordered by Peru.

It is an area of varied geography, with permanently snow-capped peaks, cloud forests, dry tropical forest, Amazonian rainforest, and savannah or pampas, says CI in a report.

Around a thousand bird species, or 11 percent of the world’s total, are found in these parts, as are big mammals like the jaguar (Panthera onca), spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), tapir (Tapirus terrestris), capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris) and several primate species, according to the international environmental watchdog group.

The Bolivian government has recorded 4,739 plant species. The fate of the park appears to be caught up in the common dilemma of “conservation or development,” but SERNAP director Oscar Loayza assures Tierramérica that it is “an undeniable and non-negotiable duty to protect the nation’s natural heritage.”

The reserve is an instrument for “supporting the sustainable development of populations that have lived in the region since time immemorial and of the peoples who historically have been associated with the sustainable use of their natural resources,” he says.

Loayza highlights the successful experience of community participation in the production of high-quality coffee varieties that are competitive on the international market.

Another project associated with conservation is ecotourism at the Chalalán Ecolodge, promoted by the community of San José de Uchupiamonas, in the central part of the park. It does half a million dollars in business annually, paying $30,000 in taxes.

The National Agrarian Reform Institute aims to grant land titles to the indigenous community in an area covering 189,000 hectares in the integrated management and reserve area of the Madidi National Park.

The residents of Apolo and Ixiamas say their road project will not hurt the forest’s natural wealth and they demand a transportation route between the two towns. SERNAP says their demand is unjustified because Apolo and Ixiamas produce the same things and engage in little direct trade with each other.

Loayza attributes the project to interests from outside groups, “which have diverse aims that are incompatible with the existence of the Madidi, unlike the populations that have traditionally inhabited the area but have so far kept quiet on the matter.”

Among the indigenous groups that have yet to take a stand on the issue are the Araona, with its 100 members, and the Tacana, who are 5,000 strong.

The Araona live under pressure from loggers and illegal nut gatherers in an area of 92,000 hectares recognized by the government in 1992 as community-held ancestral lands.

The Araona leaders are calling for an expansion of that territory in order to halt the ongoing threat from logging companies and lumber scavengers known as “cuartoneros.”

The Tacana suffer similar problems but also from the fact that its people are scattered across different territories.

Last week, to prevent the residents of Apolo from breaking off talks with the government, the authorities of La Paz department proposed, with the backing of SERNAP, an alternative route between Apolo and Ixiamas, passing through the towns of Machua, Tres de Mayo, Mamacona, and San José de Uchupiamonas — a distance of 118 miles.

The dialogue had come to a halt on June 5, when SERNAP issued a technical document stating that Madidi National Park would be endangered by a route through its central area, but now the agency says it is willing to return to the negotiating table.