Klimaatverandering 128

'In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground
Tuesday 03 June 2008

by: Elisabeth Rosenthal, The New York Times

Fortuna, Spain - Lush fields of lettuce and hothouses of tomatoes line the roads. Verdant new developments of plush pastel vacation homes beckon buyers from Britain and Germany. Golf courses - 54 of them, all built in the last decade and most in the last three years - give way to the beach. At last, this hardscrabble corner of southeast Spain is thriving.
There is only one problem with the picture of bounty: this province, Murcia, is running out of water. Spurred on by global warming and poorly planned development, swaths of southeast Spain are steadily turning into desert.
Murcia, traditionally a poor farming region, has undergone a resort-building boom in recent years, even as many of its farmers have switched to more thirsty crops, encouraged by water transfer schemes, which have become increasingly untenable. The combination has put new pressures on the land and its dwindling supply of water.
This year farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting one another over who gets to water their crops. And in a sign of their mounting desperation, they are buying and selling water like gold on a burgeoning black market, mostly from illegal wells.
Southern Spain has long been plagued by cyclical drought, but the current crisis, scientists say, probably reflects a more permanent climate change brought on by global warming. And it is a harbinger of a new kind of conflict.
The battles of yesterday were fought over land, they warn. Those of the present center on oil. But those of the future - a future made hotter and dryer by climate change in much of the world - seem likely to focus on water, they say.
"Water will be the environmental issue this year - the problem is urgent and immediate," said Barbara Helferrich, a spokeswoman for the European Union's Environment Directorate. "If you already have water shortages in spring, you know it's going to be a really bad summer."'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/article/global-warming-africanizing-spain