The Mayor of Monchique is today, the 21st of November, taking part in a meeting in Brussels as a member of the European Committee of Regions, and part of the Committee on Environment, Climate Change and Energy, which discusses the implementation of a European Ecological Pact in partnership with regional authorities.
For Rui André, “the situation in the Algarve is really one of the most worrying in recent years, and just as the problem is extreme, the answer and the measures to be adopted must be extensive, and will have to be structural and with the certainty that similar situations can be fixed in the future.”
Therefore, the mayor is advocating for "the creation of a contingency plan to deal with this drought situation, and “the need to implement some emergency measures”. The most notable of his suggestions is the creation of a “seawater desalination plant, as is used in the neighbouring Spanish region of Andalusia, or in Porto Santo, in Madeira, the only one in Portuguese territory”.
"More and more frequent extreme drought phenomena and continued desertification of the country will continue to cause the loss of biodiversity and the disappearance of some species, which makes this a multifaceted issue” argues Mr. André. For this reason, the Mayor pointed out how his presence at the Commission meeting, where the co-president of the United Nations International Panel of Resources, Janez Potocnik, was present, is “instrumental in changing European public policies on land use, focusing on forests and their multiple uses and habitats'.
“The necessary repopulation of rural areas needs clear and objective community plans and support, otherwise the fundamental balance will be lost and it’ll become more difficult to fight these issues,” concluded the mayor.
Comments
Good luck with that.
But repopulate an area with a water shortage? That’s putting the cart before the horse.
There is one primary requirement for human habitation anywhere; access to ample and affordable water. The water comes first, not afterwards.
Desalination is not an option for this area; the cost [excluding plant] of the energy to break the salt from the water is in the area of 50 cents per ton.
With renewable energy costs added, it’s considerably higher.
The vast majority of water use is agriculture at a rate of around 5 cents per ton. Households pay between 10 cents and a euro.
At 15 cents, profitable agriculture stops; farmers will grow things in other places cheaper, and we’ll buy it from them for less than the cost of the water required to grow it here.
That’s desert economy, and that’s what we get if it doesn’t start raining like it used to.
There’s really no problem with tourists having showers and flushing their toilets, that water is mostly returned to the water table. Pumping deep groundwater [with discounted electricity] as the water table drops for agriculture is madness. Agricultural water evaporates into the atmosphere and blows away.
In some places, water is piped for long distances; that’s unlikely to work here either, as there is no ample supply within a reasonable distance. Pumping water is very energy intensive.