Red gold turning wetlands dry - 17th June 2022

One of Europe's largest wetlands, located in southern Spain's Doñana National Park, faces a troubled future due to intensive farming.

Once teeming with flamingos and flocks of migrating birds, water levels in the park have been plummeting due to climate change, overextraction by neighbouring strawberry farms, and digging of illegal wells.

To compound the issue, Andalucia's regional government's proposing an expansion of irrigation rights for farmers.

The wetland's already threatened, illustrates Juan Romero of Save Doñana.

Juan Romero: "Doñana is characterised as a wetland, and a wetland is the mouth of a river with water. And what we can see here is a dry land. A dry land is a desert. Doñana has no water, we've had a series of years of drought, it is true that it is a drought, but the waters of the aquifer, which are at surface level, maintained the lagoons. Those lagoons no longer exist in Doñana."

Located in the Huelva province, the park sits alongside a farming industry which supplies the vast majority of Spain's strawberries. Dubbed 'red gold' since 100,000 people depend on them for employment, the fruit's spawned a conflict between environmentalists, politicians and farmers. The Andalucian proposal's also met with backlash from the EU, UN and European grocery giants.

The question of extracting groundwater comes down to a simple equation in the view of Juanjo Carmona from the World Wildlife Fund.

Juanjo Carmona: "Agriculture has been based on taking water from the ground. If the groundwater runs out, agriculture dies. The only solution that the administration has proposed is to bring water from somewhere else. So, what we have to do is rethink the model in Doñana."

The ruling parties in Andalucia, the conservative Popular Party and populist, far right party VOX, refuse to admit there's an issue, as VOX president Rafael Segovia states.

Rafael Segovia: "There is not a water problem. It's a lie, an artificial problem that has been created. Doñana is not in danger if we do these works."

With international supermarket chains already voicing their concerns to the Andalucian government, there's anxiety amongst farmers. Without a sustainable resolution to the dispute, they will bear the adverse impact of any supermarket boycott.