Iberia’s Dam Problem: The Cost of Holding Back the River
In early February this year NASA’s Earth Observatory published an article bringing attention to a severe winter drought that commenced in November 2021 in Iberia. NASA’s satellite images illustrate the significant decrease in water levels between March 2021 and February 2022 of the Alto Lindoso reservoir, near the Portugal-Spain border. Indeed, Iberia witnessed a severe drought this year with both Portuguese and Spanish metrological institutes publishing alarming data regarding drought risk and decline in rainfall, respectively.
A report published by the European Environment Agency (EEA) demonstrates that these droughts are no anomaly; in an average year anywhere between a fifth and a third of Europe experiences some level of drought. For this reason dam removal has become salient in the environmental policy space of the European Union (EU). Although, a map of dams with reservoirs in the EU published by the EEA shows that there are a substantial number of dams in Iberia, especially along the Douro and Minho rivers in the North and the Tagus in the West of the peninsula. Naturally, the warm and arid Mediterranean climate of Iberia and Southern Europe in general make water a crucial commodity and an important infrastructure necessary to sustain local populations and fight wildfires, which are common in the region. As a result dams became an increasingly popular sight along the Iberian countryside.
Iberia’s dams, like dams elsewhere, are used to aid farming via evapotranspiration, storing water for local communities, and flood control – amongst other uses. For example, in Portugal reservoirs are often used to draw in tourism to small towns and villages near the many praias fluviais – translating roughly to ‘riparian beaches’ – in the interior of the country. A lack of rainfall in recent years has seen reservoir capacity decrease leading to some of the driest years ever on record in Portugal and Spain which limits the dams’ ability to aid crop growth and to provide to combat wildfires. Furthermore, the ecological damage caused by dams, like altering pH and oxygen levels in the water, is still being felt downstream; in Iberia the regions with the worst ecological water quality are also the regions with large dams along the Douro, Sado, and Tagus rivers. In Portugal these regions (otherwise known as districts) are Beja, Évora, Santarém, Setúbal, and Lisbon; and Castilla-la-Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Galicia, and Guarda in Spain.
Despite this, the construction of hydroelectric dams in Portugal was further endorsed by the government following the announcement of the Programa Nacional de Barragens de Elevado Potencial Hidroelétrico (PNBEPH). The public programme approved in 2007 was designed to increase hydroenergy outputs to 2,000MW/year by 2020. The PNBEPH commissioned 10 new hydroelectric dams that are similar to the famous Alqueva dam and is the home of Europe’s largest floating solar park, completed in 2002. Similarly, in Spain, there are 1,250 large dams in operation and a further 23 large dams are in construction.
The damage that Iberia’s dams and water stress problems are causing is not only ecological. In 2020, Deutsche Welle uploaded a documentary uncovering and explaining the issues caused by illegal boreholes used to irrigate farmland in Andalucía. Consequently, this placed greater stress on water availability and usage, resulting in a classic Tragedy of the Commons scenario. The impacts of these boreholes are not limited to water usage either. In January 2019, the Spanish authorities found the body of a two year-old child – Julen Roselló – who fell into a borehole in Totalán, near Málaga raising concern about the safety of the dam. Portugal has also had some social issues resulting from its dams. The filling of the Alqueva dam displaced te residents of Aldeia da Luz who moved to a purposely-built substitute village as their original homes were going to be submerged in the dam’s reservoir. According to local news outlets, former residents are still liable for property taxes on their now submerged properties.
As for the price of water, Portuguese and Spanish cities have some of the lowest prices for water utilities across Europe. However, this may not last into the near future, and even now, it is important to note that residents of both Portugal and Spain are amongst the least-earning and most-taxed in Europe and below average energy affordability and equality. Although water utilities are cheaper than the median EU prices, water stress and climate change could well burn through Iberian wallets at a faster rate than Iberian woodlands by the end of this decade. The inter-regional water price inequality in Portugal is already increasing substantially, according to a report published by the Associação Portuguesa de Famílias Numerosas.
Iberia’s dams were built with the intention of providing freshwater to sustain communities distant from the urban centres, as well as developing agriculture industries. And, to a large degree, this has been the case. However, the ongoing climate crisis and the innate ecological and social damages caused by the construction of dams are rendering the Iberian mega projects susceptible to redundancy. This redundancy will not be limited to the water infrastructure, but will affect the towns and villages on a larger scale. Population density in rural Iberia has been sharply decreasing due to emigration to urban centres and foreign countries, employment opportunities elsewhere, and an increasingly inhabitable environment. So whilst dams have helped to stem this migratory movement, climate change will eventually catalyse the downfall of dams and their adjacent communities. Consequently, as water stress worsens, the demand for water in urban centres and rural agriculture will stretch reservoirs thin and place governments under pressure to make difficult decisions of a potentially Malthusian nature.