Environmental Groups and Civil Society Organizations
Aigua es vida is a non-dominant NGO and a platform that promotes a public management of water and its re-municipalization.
During his interview, Quim Perez, member of L’aigua es vida, argues:
“In Catalonia, we have a situation of high urbanism on the coast where the rivers are drying up. However, we are aware of the effects of desalination : brine, CO2 etc ... But you have to think "it’s this or we dry up the river."”
“In Catalonia, many aquifers (strategic reserves) are contaminated, then comes a point where you had to choose between river water through transfers or desalination: in the face of this dichotomy there was a consensual solution that made the desalination serves as an emergency solution. The desalination plant gives a supply guarantee while also respecting environmental flows.”
The Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua (FNCA) is made up of professionals from different fields (academic, business, cultural, social ...) from Spain and Portugal that promote a change in the water management policy called "New Culture of Water".
During his interview, David Sauri explained:
“An NGO that opposed the transfer of the Ebro river is the “Fundación para la nueva cultura del agua”. It has many scientists who opposed the transfer of the Ebro and people from civil society, and were very favorable to the desalination plant, it was an alternative to the transfer. With a philosophy of growth at this time and of increasing supply, which is questionable, we see only two solutions (drainage or desalination; or one thing or another, an alternative had to be given). Many people from the Ebro mobilized. 2003-2004 urban boom of the Mediterranean coast, is built in a crazy way, something disproportionate, without restraint, paradigm of growth without restraint. Evil for evil, desalination may be the solution. Many of the planned plants were not made.”
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“Now many NGOs, such as the Foundation for the New Water Culture, have shifted their discourse to reuse and not desalination, they have fewer problems, although they lack social acceptability. Now, desalination is not an object of imported debate”.
The Plataforma en Defensa de l’Ebre (PDE) is a social movement for the dissemination of the new water culture denouncing the consequences that new transfers would have for the natural park of the Ebro delta.
It was created in 2000, in the assembly held in rejection of the transfer policy projected by the Spanish Government of the Popular Party.
In 2016 in Amposta, the most crowded rally of all that had been held so far against the Hydrographic Basin Plan was held. Under the slogan 'The Ebro without flows is the death of the Delta' more than 50,000 people demonstrated. The demonstration strongly challenged Europe, considering that the next day, six MEPs visited the area to analyze the extent of possible damage. The aim of the PDE is to write a new National Hydrological Plan that protects the Ebro Delta. They have therefore promoted desalination as the alternative solution to Ebro waters transfers.
Civil society protests about the Ebro against the National Hydrological Plan