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Towards a new water management more sustainable and resilient.
Law 7/2021, of May 20, on Climate Change and Energy Transition, regulates how adaptation to climate change should be addressed in hydrological planning and management, with the main objective of achieving water security for people, biodiversity and socio-economic activities.
It gives basin plans a key role in the identification of risks and impacts, the adoption of prevention and resilience measures, the definition of financial needs and the monitoring of both risks and impacts and in the execution of said measures.
The hydrological plans of the hydrographic demarcations of the State’s competence, and the flood risk management plans, must be prepared under the approach and requirements of the Water Framework Directive, with a change of focus that involves the European Green Pact, and the European Recovery and Resilience Fund; the year 2027 marks the deadline for achieving the environmental objectives indicated by article 4 of the Water Framework Directive.
A new configuration must be given to the bodies of water, in attention to the regimes of ecological flows, renew the allocation and reserve of resources to attend the current and future uses of water, adopt measures to protect the bodies of water against hydromorphological deterioration. and point or diffuse source pollution. Promotion of sanitation, purification, reuse and security of infrastructures, restoration of river ecosystems, recovery of aquifers and mitigation of the risk of floods and the digital transition in the water sector.
The main result of the need to embrace adaptation measures to climate change for each river basin district, starting from a scenario of less water availability.
The guidelines established by the new Climate Change and Energy Transition Law, in accordance with the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change, will be developed for each hydrographic demarcation of state competence.
And the main objective of Law 7/2021, of May 20, on Climate Change and Energy Transition, is to ensure the achievement of neutrality of greenhouse gas emissions in Spain no later than 2050, It also sets the guidelines for the definition of the adaptation policies of the different sectors to the impacts of climate change, introducing important modifications in the regulatory regulations of sectors such as water resources, the management of the maritime-terrestrial public domain, forest policy, infrastructure, rural areas and biodiversity. In all cases, in order to promote the inclusion of the climate variable in the planning instruments of these sectors or to promote the capacity of natural resources as Co2 sinks.
The National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change is the basic planning instrument to promote coordinated and coherent action against the effects of climate change in Spain.
It prioritizes adaptation to climate change based on the ecosystem approach, on the development of green infrastructures and on nature-based solutions, it must include identification and evaluation of foreseeable impacts and risks derived from climate change for several possible scenarios, the evaluation vulnerability of natural systems, territories, populations and socioeconomic sectors, specific strategic objectives, with associated indicators and adaptation measures aimed at reducing detected vulnerabilities.
The Law provides for the creation of a Water Strategy for Ecological Transition, as a programmatic planning instrument for Public Administrations, in order to identify a series of risks derived from climate change, such as foreseeable impacts on hydrological flow regimes and the available resources of the aquifers, those derived from changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme hydrometeorological phenomena (floods and seams), those associated with the increase in water temperature and its impacts on the hydrological regime and water requirements by economic activities, those derived from the possible impacts of rising sea levels on groundwater masses, wetlands and coastal systems. To address these risks, the Law requires that hydrological planning and water management undertake, among others, actions related to the planning of the financing needed for its execution, and carry out its corresponding monitoring and continuous adaptation, as follows:
-It anticipates the foreseeable impacts of climate change, identifying and analysing the level of exposure and vulnerability of socio-economic activities and ecosystems, and developing measures to reduce such exposure and vulnerability. For this, special attention will be paid to extreme climatic phenomena, from the probability of their occurrence, their intensity and impact.
-Identify and manage risks to crops and agronomic water needs for irrigation, water needs for cooling thermal and nuclear power plants and other uses of water.
-Consider and include in the planning the derived impacts on the typologies of the masses of surface and underground water and their reference conditions.
-Determine the necessary adaptation of the uses of water compatible with the available resources and with the maintenance of the conditions of good condition of the water bodies.
-Include those actions aimed at improving water security by reducing exposure and vulnerability and improving the resilience of water bodies (including nature-based measures).
-Include the impacts derived from sediment retention in reservoirs and solutions for their mobilization, with the dual objective of maintaining the regulation capacity of the reservoirs themselves and restoring sediment transport to coastal systems to stop the regression of the beaches and the subsidence of the deltas.
-Need to adopt flood control measures through actions for forest hydrological correction and erosion prevention.
Ultimately, it is about addressing the incorporation of the climate variable in hydrological planning processes and flood risk management, preventing the impacts of climate change and reinforcing the resilience capacity of our ecosystems, our production system and our sustainable development model. All this in the face of the scenario of a foreseeable lower availability of resources, and the urgency of increasing demands for environmental protection, with efficient use of water, modernization of the management and monitoring of water resources, new incorporation of resources into the system ( reuse and desalination) development of new technologies, pollution prevention and adaptation to extreme hydrometeorological risks (droughts and floods); in short, a new, more sustainable and resilient water management.
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