Are March rains the solution to the drought?
March finally brought rain across the country. This is tremendous news, both for reservoirs and for forests and soils, which have suffered a lot in recent years. However, we must be cautious when talking about the end of the drought in Catalonia, because we are facing a long-distance race in which caution must come first.
To understand the context, the first point to keep in mind is what we mean by "being in drought." Generally speaking, we talk about drought when it refers to a meteorological drought, that is, when there is less rain than expected over a long period of time. However, meteorological drought is not the only type of drought. There is also hydrological drought: a water shortage due to many factors besides a lack of rainfall; for example, water consumption—not only for domestic use, but also for agricultural or industrial uses. In this sense, when we talk about the lack of water in Catalonia, we are referring specifically to two types of drought: meteorological drought (which the recent rains alleviate somewhat) and chronic hydrological drought, where we consume much more water than we have available.
The solution in neither case is easy. First, because climate change exacerbates the problems associated with meteorological drought; and second, because regulating and managing the water the country consumes to reduce hydrological drought is a complex and delicate task. In this sense, from a scientific perspective, we insist on the need to implement a hydrological transition. Just as we think about implementing an energy transition and changing the way we generate energy, we must implement it for water and change how we relate to this increasingly scarce common good. To give you an idea, to recover the water that has been rapidly consumed during the last four years of drought, we would have to wait at least two years of above-average rainfall to recover aquifer volumes; a timescale we cannot afford. Thus, the hydrological transition will obviously involve reducing water consumption to balance it with available water, but it will also involve placing the health of river ecosystems at the center of the debate and adapting to their recovery periods.
If we want to better manage the water we have, we will need to build technological infrastructure to help us, such as desalination plants and treatment plants, or minimize water losses in pipes. But only doing this will shortchange us, and doing so on a large scale will increase social inequality, because it will impact the price of water. We must be aware that we will never be able to replace the volume, timing, price, and quality of the water that nature provides us. Therefore, the important thing is to take care of our natural water sources—rivers, aquifers, and riverbeds—and to have a coastline in good condition to supply us with water in times of drought, while also helping us cope with storms. Two phenomena that will increase according to climate predictions. To achieve this, it is important to focus on the so-called nature-based solutions, which are transformative proposals that focus on improving nature as a corrective, protective, or human well-being measure. Examples include removing buildings from riverbeds so the river can rise and fall during floods, preserving and promoting riparian forests, restoring natural dunes on beaches, and ensuring that river sediment ends up in the sea.
On the other hand, we will have to rethink the territory, because some areas may have to curb industrial and urban growth if they don't have enough water to cope. Or integrate more flexibility into water use where possible. And this is economics, not engineering. Similarly, we are already seeing how some regions are removing channeling from some rivers to allow for less violent flooding or removing old reservoirs to restore the river's ecological flow. Along these lines, the key word is adaptation. We will have to adapt to an increasingly dry territory, where it makes no sense to continue increasing the demand for water with new mega-infrastructures such as airport expansion or large data centers. Instead, we should retain the water we have for uses that are essential for life, such as organic and local agriculture. We will have to improve the implementation of the special drought plan and establish reductions for different users with room to avoid continued overconsumption in the midst of a drought and increasing the degradation of aquatic ecosystems.
In short, we are at a time when we are crying out for change, when we are rethinking how we relate to water and how we can cope with the droughts we are experiencing and will continue to experience. It is a time for adaptation and renaturalization.
