A controversial plan that would have placed one of Europe’s most important and threatened wetlands in even greater jeopardy has been paused after an unexpected agreement was reached between Spain’s caretaker government and the regional authorities in Andalucía.
Water supplies to the Doñana national park in western Andalucía – whose marshes, forests and dunes extend across almost 130,000 hectares (320,000 acres) and include a Unesco-listed national park – have declined drastically over the past 30 years because of climate breakdown, farming, mining pollution and marsh drainage.
Environmental groups have long campaigned to protect the area, which sustains millions of migrating birds and is home to a major population of endangered Iberian lynxes, pointing out that the illegal wells sunk to feed the region’s numerous soft fruit farms are stressing the aquifer.
Despite such objections – and blunt warnings from Unesco and the European Commission – Andalucía’s conservative regional government announced plans last year to increase the amount of irrigable land around Doñana by 800 hectares, thereby introducing a de facto amnesty for the strawberry farmers who have sunk illegal wells there.
On Tuesday evening, however, the regional president, Juan Manuel Moreno, said an imminent vote on the plans would be suspended after a meeting with Spain’s acting environment minister, Teresa Ribera, during which a €350m (£303m) package of measures for the region was discussed.
Although details of the package have yet to be finalised, they are believed to include measures to further protect the area, diversify the local economy away from its reliance on soft fruit, and develop a regulatory scheme to guarantee the environmental credentials of the fruit grown in Andalucía’s Huelva province.
Speaking after the meeting, Moreno hailed the talks with Ribera as “a first step that could lead to solutions for situations that are often complicated”.
He added: “It’s also the right path to follow: when you have two administrations with different positions, you have the responsibility to do everything in your power to reach an agreement – that’s what our citizens ask of us.”
Ribera, who had previously accused Moreno and his People’s party of using the proposed amnesty as a means of pandering to the far-right Vox party in the run-up to May’s local elections, said she was confident the preliminary agreement would benefit everyone.
“I think this was important – obviously for the people of Huelva and for Doñana – but also for Andalucía and for Spain,” she told the state broadcaster TVE on Wednesday morning.
“Because of the international dimensions of the situation, the world was looking at what was going on in Doñana. I think this will allow us to save Doñana while also bringing territorial and social development. It will yield a future and progress by bringing greater diversification of economic activity without putting Doñana at risk.”
Environmental groups welcomed the deal but warned much more was still needed to be done to safeguard Doñana.
“We’re celebrating the withdrawal of the anti-Doñana law,” said Juan Carlos del Olmo, the secretary general of WWF Spain. “It’s time to work to bring about development that obeys the law and which, above all, allows for the recovery of Doñana. There’s a lot of work to do but this is a step in the right direction.”
Luis Berraquero, Greenpeace’s Andalucía coordinator, said that while the plan was a positive step, “we need to listen to all the voices – to the science, to the EU, to the environmental groups and to the hydrological plans – and we need to ensure that there is an end to the theft of water and to illegal irrigation in the area”.
The plan, he added, needed to guarantee a “fair water transition that takes into account not only the families who are affected but also guarantees the provision of water necessary for the park’s survival”.
A report earlier this year from Spain’s national research council noted that 59% of Doñana’s large lakes had not been full since at least 2013, and that the area was in a “critical condition”. For the past two summers, Doñana’s largest permanent lake dried up completely.
The proposed increase in irrigable land had also drawn criticism from a group of leading UK supermarkets, including Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Lidl, Aldi and Morrisons.
Last year, the chains wrote to Moreno, warning him that the move risked damaging “the reputation and the long-term development of the region”.
