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Drought and exceptional laws in Spain: the official water discourse

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Abstract

Only recently securitization research is exploring which mechanisms are used to securitize the water discourse and how securitization affects decision-making processes. In this context, legal texts convey messages and shape public actions, but have been rarely considered in the analysis of water securitization. Moreover, security is usually meant as the absence of violent conflict, while discourse securitization can exist also where there are only vaguely defined threats to the society. This may be the case of water scarcity associated with drought. This paper undertakes a policy frame analysis of nine exceptional laws passed in Spain during the 2005–2008 drought, to address the following questions: To what extent and how can the water discourse in legal texts be securitized? and What are the consequences of that securitization? The analysis shows that securitization is achieved using both linguistic and institutional mechanisms. Dry spells are presented as exceptional situations and using alarmist terms, even if drought is inherent to Spain’s Mediterranean climate. The sense of urgency is used to fast-track the approval of measures that could be part of ordinary water planning. The securitization of the water discourse contributes to consolidate an existing water paradigm, which, in the case of Spain, is based on State-subsidized, technical and legal measures addressing water scarcity (real or exaggerated). It is an example of a “creeping” securitization of the water discourse, meant as the dramatization of otherwise natural circumstances to spur projects and investments conceived for other purposes.

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Notes

  1. The donor and recipient areas of the transfer were of opposite political color, and the abrogation or continuation of the transfer was a political flag during the 2004 national elections campaign. The abrogation of the project was the second major act by the newly elected Government, after the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq.

  2. The AGUA Program, approved in 2005, emphasized the construction of desalination plants along the Mediterranean coast to substitute the water that the Ebro transfer would have contributed. The planned desalination capacity amounted to over 700 Mm3/year Today, many of the planned plants are operational, and desalinated water is heavily subsidized to make it affordable to farmers. However, plants are dramatically underused (working only at 20 % capacity for the most part), and farmers still rely on groundwater resources, aggravating the situation of many intensively used aquifers along the coast.

  3. Meteorological drought is defined as precipitation below average for a period of time; hydrological drought refers to the effects of dry spells on surface or subsurface hydrology; agricultural drought refers to a period with declining soil moisture and consequent crop failure; socioeconomic drought is associated with failure of water systems to meet water demands (Wilhite and Glantz 1985; Mishra and Singh 2010).

  4. Surface water reserves are used as the main indicator for characterizing drought. However, reservoir reserves are largely a result of the Water Authorities’ management decisions. For instance, if they (imprudently) decide to release a large volume of water for a given use despite the fact that the dry spell is forecast to continue, their decision could provoke a worsening of the drought.

  5. Referring to the idea of “psychological drought,” Castro and Guijarro (2004) argue that most of the news about water in Spain are negative and alarming, for instance when media report that surface water reserves decrease during summer time. As the authors remark, “this is no news in itself, as in summer, with no rain and a sustained demand, the stored water volume has necessarily to decrease. The contrary would be a miracle and that would be a real news” (Castro and Guijarro 2004, translation from Spanish by the authors).

  6. Works for the cleaning up of the sediments started in 2013, 6 years after the approval of RD-Law 9/2007.

  7. The transfer of surface water was used to bring temporary relief to those wetlands suffering from intense groundwater exploitation in their recharge area.

Abbreviations

DEP:

Drought Emergency Plan for cities of over 20,000 inhabitants

DMP:

Drought Management Plan

EU:

European Union

WFD:

Water Framework Directive

NIP:

National Irrigation Plan

NGO:

Non-governmental Organization

NHP:

National Hydrological Plan

NWC:

New Water Culture

RBD:

River Basin District

RBMP:

River Basin Management Plan

RBOs:

River Basin Organizations

RD:

Royal Decree

RD-Law:

Royal Decree-Law

UGSP:

Upper Guadiana Special Plan

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to Maria Bustelo, Ana M. Pérez Camporeale, and Carolina Garcés for their methodological advice; Mario Ballesteros and Mario Valle for their help with the graphic material; Jill Simon for her linguistic edits; and Itziar González Tánago for her useful comments. The manuscript benefited from valuable comments of two anonymous reviewers and the journal editor. The study was undertaken in the framework of the EU-funded project “Fostering European Drought Research and Science-Policy Interfacing” (DROUGHT R&SPI).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Geodinámica - Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, c/ José Antonio Nováis 12, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Julia Urquijo & Lucia De Stefano

  2. Observatorio del Agua, Fundación Botín, Madrid, Spain

    Lucia De Stefano

  3. Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua, Almería, Spain

    Abel La Calle

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  1. Julia Urquijo
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  2. Lucia De Stefano
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Correspondence to Lucia De Stefano.

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Urquijo, J., De Stefano, L. & La Calle, A. Drought and exceptional laws in Spain: the official water discourse. Int Environ Agreements 15, 273–292 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-015-9275-8

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