Situacion y tendencias del uso agricola del agua en la cuenca del Guadalquivir

En octubre de 2000 entro en vigor la Directiva Marco de Aguas (DMA) que prescribe la utilizacion de principios y herramientas economicas para alcanzar sus objetivos ecologicos. Concretamente, el articulo 5 de la Directive promueve la realizacion de un analisis economico de los usos del agua para cada Demarcacion, que incluye el pronostico de los indicadores y directrices economico del sector agrario de la Cuenca del Guadalquivir realizado en este contexto. La agricultura es el principal consumidro de agua, con una tendencia al alza y en creciente competencia con el reso de los usos, para los que se esperan importantes crecimientos futuros. Estos resultados muestran la fotografia que debera tenerse en cuenta en el diseno de las politicas hidricas presentes y futuras en general, y en particular en la elaboracion de los Programas de Medidads prescritos para el ano 2009 por la Directiva...European Directive 2000/60/CE establishes the communitarian framework on water policy and it requires all inland and coastal waters to reach good ecological status by 2015. Water Framework Directive's (WFD) article five required river basin characterization by 2005 in terms of economic analysis of water use, as a previous step for river basins management plans to achieve the Directive objectives. This paper illustrates the methodology and results of agricultural water use for the Guadalquivir River Basin (Southern Spain), which extends over a surface of nearly sixty four thousand square kilometers (double of Belgium size), with a populations over five million people. It is a typical Mediterranean climate region with periodic drought phenomena and where irrigation consumes 85 percent of water resources. This economic analysis of current water uses offers a view on the importance of economic activity on pressure and impacts over resources at the present moment (baseline scenario 2001), clarifying the relation between technical and economics information. It also provides with the tendencies scenario (2015) based on the foreseen evolution of key drivers of agricultural water use. This analysis should allow stakeholders to identify the gap between predicted situation and the Directive objectives in order to elaborate River Basin Management Plans. It should also help to evaluate existing information suitability to Directive objectives and determine the need of new data. Following the DPSIR (driving forces-pressure-state-impact-response) scheme, this research identifies the main key factors for estimating the pressure on the resource, assessing the quantitative (water consumption) and qualitative (pollution) pressure for the resource and prognosticates the evolution of these key elements in the future, in which CAP reform is taken into account. Results indicate a contained future increase of agricultural water consumption (2 percent) and an increased competence with other water uses (urban and tourist), which should be considered for the future elaboration of the Program of Measures in the River Basin.