The president of the Portuguese Golf Federation (FPG) defended that “most golf courses have very modern irrigation systems”, which allow “not to waste any drop of water that is not absolutely necessary”.
This is because they are companies that have to have profitable operations and, therefore, have no interest in spending more electricity and water, when it is not necessary”, justified Miguel Franco de Sousa, in reaction to the statements of the Minister of the Environment. Environment and Climate. Acción, in an interview with Lusa, about the drought that the country is going through.
Duarte Cordeiro on Monday asked investors in golf course developments to look for alternatives to “irrigate” the fields and Miguel Franco de Sousa, despite acknowledging that there are still “some who need to requalify their irrigation systems”, “a tiny part”, guarantees that “the vast majority and, particularly in the Algarve, where the problem is greater, the fields already have very good irrigation and drainage systems”, and “water consumption is kept to a minimum”.
“This question arises not so much in the Lisbon and Porto region, but fundamentally in the Algarve. Now, it is important to understand how much water each of the sectors consumes and the golf courses in the Algarve consume only 6.4% of the total water consumed in this region. The sector that consumes the most is agriculture, with almost 57%, followed by urban consumption, which is 28.6%”, says Franco de Sousa, who assures that “golf is not the ‘elephant in the room'” .
In addition to advancing that in the “Algarve there is a much more modern and professionalized industry, implanting this type of system for the most part, as well as in the new fields of the Lisbon region and in the Alentejo coastal area”, the federative leader he says it remains relevant to understand “the importance of each of these sectors.”
“I’m not talking about residential, which is obviously a basic and fundamental sector, but what is the socioeconomic impact of golf in the region? Golf represents around 13% of the gross added value of the Algarve, as a result of the 500 million euros of direct impact induced in the economy of the region, it generates around 17 thousand jobs, which are maintained throughout the year, thanks to the entire golf ecosystem, and directly employs 2,000 people”, he stressed.
Regarding agriculture, says Miguel Franco de Sousa, it represents “only 3% of the region’s gross added value, some 115 million euros, and that includes sectors such as livestock, hunting, forests, fishing”.
“On the subject of agriculture there was a brutal growth, of the order of 50%, between 2012 and 2017, in which different projects and crops that require a lot of water consumption were approved, when there is no water,” he recalls. , arguing that “the State has to look at what its responsibilities are.”
“I see with some perplexity how a government official renounces his responsibilities, whether in the requalification of dams, lagoons, in the construction of ETARS and desalination plants. We look at countries like Spain and even Israel and we see that next door, for example, there are two thousand ETARS and here we have half a dozen”, he underlined.
The director shares the opinion that Portugal has to “bet on ETARS, desalination plants and it cannot simply be said that investors in golf courses have to be careful and spend less, because there will be no water. And then, what is the responsibility of the State in this process?
“Golf has invested a lot in requalification, there are courses that have done this work in an absolutely extraordinary way. What is requested is that the State also do its job, not abdicate its responsibilities and not find scapegoats when there is a lack of water. Golf courses, which consume 6.4% of water, are not the devil, they are not the elephant in the room and they do not leave the country dry”, he explains, also citing the 70 desalination plants in Spain as an example.
In addition to taking the opportunity to question the Minister about “the Government’s plans to better retain rainwater, better manage the irrigation systems that come from the dams, what type of ETARS and desalination plants can be built”, the official added that ” water losses in the public supply networks are enough to irrigate between 400 and 500 golf courses”.
Source: Observadora
