Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Water players and decision makers
- A range of players are involved in any issue relating to water resources and their use.
- There are supporters and opponents, villains and victims, ‘Davids’ and ‘Goliaths’.
- However, for almost all players, the conservation and sustainable
development of water resources is an increasingly important priority.
- The process of weighing up the motivations and perceptions of players is called values analysis.
- It is an important factor in the evaluation of issues and in decision-making.
- Political
- International organisations (e.g. UN), government departments (e.g.
DEFRA), regional and local councils, lobbyists and pressure groups
- Economic
- World Bank, governments, developers, utility companies (e.g. Thames Water), agriculture,
industry (esp. chemicals and food), TNCs and businesses (including energy companies)
- Social
- Individuals, residents, indigenous
groups, landowners, farmers,
consumers, health officials,
scientists and NGOs (e.g. Water Aid)
- Enviornmental
- Conservationists, scientists, planners, international organisations (e.g. FAO) and NGOs (e.g. WWF and People & Planet)
- Water futures for India and its neighbours
- The Indian subcontinent has an insecure water future because:
- it has considerable supplies of
water provided by three of the
world’s major rivers, but its
monsoon climate creates extremes
of flooding and drought
- rapid population growth and
urbanisation, the existence of a
large rural population and
recent industrialisation are
creating an unsustainable
demand for water
- the political division of some of its
major drainage basins does not help
water management, and disputes
with neighbouring countries over
water are ongoing
- The Ebro River in Spain
- In July 2001 the Spanish government approved a scheme
to divert water from the lower Ebro valley to supply cities,
farmers and tourists in the parched southeast of the country
- Three years later, the newly elected government cancelled the
diversion project and replaced it with cheaper, I more localised
schemes, including desalination plants.
- This decision was the outcome of a hotly contested debate between
players in favour of and opposed to the diversion project.
- The case for
- Big international investors were concerned because they had marketed the south-
east of Spain as the ‘new Florida’.
- Vast tourist developments between
Alicante and Almeria costing billions of
euros, many based on new golf courses,
were to be sited in areas supplied with
Ebro water.
- People in Murcia and Almeria saw the Ebro scheme as the beginning of a new future, allowing the
development of holiday homes, golf resorts and Europe’s biggest tourism complex at Cabo Cope.
- The head of the Murcia regional government claimed desalination was unproven and expensive.
- EU funding was available, but may not be in the future.
- The case against
- Environmentalists in the north protested that the diversion scheme was a misuse of a
scarce resource and that it would have a drastic impact on the Ebro and its fragile delta.
- The Environment Minister claimed that the desalination plants would provide the same amount of water sooner and more cheaply.
- The new national government
also promised to improve water
recycling and make irrigation
systems more efficient.
- Environmentalists claimed that the aquifers of the Ebro basin
were already drying out because of over-extraction.
- They, and other critics, felt that the subsidies
offered to farmers for irrigation encouraged the
use of unsuitable land.