The Associação Natureza Portugal (ANP), which represents WWF, celebrated this Thursday the progress of the agreement between Portugal and Spain to review the Albufeira Convention on shared hydrographic basins, but regretted its manifest insufficiency.
In a statement, the ANP, a partner entity in Portugal of the international World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), states that one of the gaps in the agreement that justifies this insufficiency is that the exceptions regime has remained unchanged, which exempts countries from complying with agreed minimum flows in drought situationswithout safeguarding the guarantee of essential and non-negotiable uses, which are ecological flows and supply to populations.
Another gap arises from the agreed minimum daily flow regime does not correspond to the ecological flows of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Uniona, which the association remembers are essential for the conservation of ecosystems and the public services provided.
The association also criticizes that the minimum daily flow regime announced for the Tagus River is not implemented in the rest of the shared rivers, thus improving the currently agreed temporary regimes, which it considers clearly insufficient, especially in the Guadiana.
The ANP/WWF also regrets The Spanish seizure of Bocachanza, on the Guadiana River, was approved as definitiveauthorized by Portugal on a temporary and exceptional basis, in exchange for the new Portuguese capture of Pomarão for the Odeleite reservoir.
The association regrets that these approvals have been given before knowing the volumes actually available and defining the volumes necessary to comply with the ecological flows provided for in the WFD and in the Agreement itself, to guarantee the good condition of the final and border section of the Guadiana River. and its mouth.
This is a unique missed opportunity to implement the Permanent Technical Secretariat of the Commission for the Application and Development of the Albufeira Convention (CADC), affirms the association, recalling that it is about guaranteeing the transparency of information and the participation of all the interested parties. similar to good practices between European Union countries that share rivers.
Portugal and Spain signed a document on Wednesday on the flow regime of the Tagus and Guadiana within the framework of the 35th Portuguese-Spanish summit, in Faro, called “IV Conference of the Parties to the Cooperation Convention for the Protection and Sustainable Use of Waters of the Luso-Spanish Hydrographic Basins”.
The two countries committed to managing the Tagus reservoirs to avoid days without flow, ensuring that Spain releases at least one cubic hectometer of water daily from the Cedilho dam, among other commitments.
Source: Observadora
