People in Costa Blanca, Spain, lined up for bottled water in August as a severe drought made tap water unsafe to drink. Hotter summers and a rapidly growing tourism business are compounding the problem.
What's happening?
A lack of rainfall in the northern part of Spain's Alicante province brought severe drought to the region. Last year, Reuters noted the area received only about half the normal rainfall, and only 10% of the average had been recorded up until August 22.
In late March, the Júcar River Basin authority declared an "exceptional situation of extraordinary drought" for portions of the Alicante province, as CNN detailed.
A massive influx of summer tourists is part of the problem, straining the country's water supply. A report from CaixaBank Research noted Spain's tourism sector is projected to continue growing rapidly this year, with tourism-related GDP increasing by 5%. According to the National Statistics Institute, cited by Reuters, the Marina Alta region has nearly 38,000 swimming pools, or about one pool for every five people.
A warming world is also exacerbating the problem. Extreme heat this summer in Europe shut down a popular tourist site in Greece and impacted the Olympics in Paris.
According to Climate Central, "climate change-fueled heat" is impacting the Mediterranean. More than 60 million people in June and July in the region experienced searing heat for 20 days or more, made at least five times more likely by the changing climate.
"We're already entering a climate emergency," said Joan Sala of the environmental group Accio Ecologista-Agro, per Reuters.
Why is drought in Spain concerning?
Some drought-stricken towns have declared tap water unfit for human consumption. When water levels get lower, the salinity rises because seawater has room to seep into water supplies. Costa Blanca had to set up bottled water distribution points to meet its inhabitants' basic needs.
Heat waves and drought also drive prices of popular food staples higher and can threaten food security. Drought conditions are also more conducive to wildfires, with major burning events occurring in Spain during a heat wave in July.
What's being done about the drought in Spain?
Spain's Council of Ministers is considering ways to mitigate the effects of drought, including investing in river basins to desalinate and reuse water, preventing leaks, and taking climate adaptation measures.
Our overheating planet, resulting from a build-up of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere, makes droughts more frequent, intense, and longer.
Personal efforts to cool our planet — such as installing a heat pump instead of an air conditioner, using induction cooking instead of gas, and upgrading to a tankless water heater — can help reduce the production of planet-warming pollution.
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