Nuria Hernández-Mora

Interbasin Water Transfers in Spain: Interregional Conflicts and Governance Responses

Semiarid and drought-prone Spain has managed to meet ever-increasing water demands for more than 50 years through the construction of publicly funded hydraulic infrastructure. Interbasin water transfers are the most expensive and complex supply-side tool used. They are also the most controversial, often associated with such unintended consequences as deteriorating freshwater ecosystems, disappearing recreational opportunities provided by aquatic ecosystems, and the loss of development opportunities for downstream communities. This situation has become increasingly unstable over the past decade due to the scarcity of new supply augmentation alternatives, political changes involving European Union (EU) environmental legislation, new political power in upstream regions, and the appearance of new stakeholders at the decision-making table. As a result, competing demands over available resources and interregional conflicts are delaying water planning efforts, signaling the end of an era and demanding a shift from a competitive “using water” toward a “sharing water” risk and trade-off governance approach.

Multi-level interactions in a context of political decentralization and evolving water-policy goals: the case of Spain

Spain is a highly decentralized country where water governance is a multi-level institutional endeavor requiring effective intergovernmental coordination—in terms of objectives and actions. The paper revisits the evolution of vertical and horizontal intergovernmental interactions in Spain, with a special focus on four interregional river basins. We build on a historical analysis of the evolution of water governance institutions, a mapping of existing interactions over water, careful document analysis, and interviews with selected public officials that are at the interface between the political and the technical spheres. Intergovernmental interaction occurs through different mechanisms that are slowly evolving to adapt to new challenges posed by changing power dynamics and water policy goals. Since the start of political decentralization in 1978, key institutional reforms within and outside of the water sector have opened windows of opportunity for regions to seek new spheres of influence and power. Disputes over water allocation, environmental flows, inter-basin transfers, and even basin boundaries delineation emerge as an expression of a struggle over power distribution between the regions and the central government. The physical and institutional geography of water and diverging visions and priorities (over water and beyond) are among the factors that contribute to shape conflict and cooperation in intergovernmental relations over water.

Ongoing dialogues with Erik Swyngedouw about desalination in Spain

For the past several years we have engaged with Erik Swyngedouw in a productive discussion about the role seawater desalination plays in Spanish hydropolitics. The 2016 publication of his most recent paper on the subject in Water International (with Joe Williams) has animated this discussion (Swyngedouw, 2013, 2015; Swyngedouw and Williams, 2016 – we will refer to this last paper as ES&JW). Our goal is not to engage in a global debate on desalination; even less is it a defence of desalination per se. Rather, it is a discussion about the different visions we hold of the role desalination is playing in the specific socio-ecological, political and historical context of Spain at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In spite of its context-specific character, the debate has significant epistemological and theoretical implications. How can we apply general categories and a global perspective without distorting our understanding of specific historical-geographical processes? How can we apply theoretical frameworks without misinterpreting context-specific data and processes? In this communication, we particularly disagree with some key theses proposed by ES&JW: