As this country grapples with the vexed question of how to revive the once mighty Murray-Darling river system, an increasingly dry Spain they're facing a similar dilemma. In the Spanish case, the river is called the Ebro and, as David O'Shea found recently, efforts to save the Ebro and to bring the public to recognise Spain's worsening water crisis, have brought angry crowds onto the streets of that Mediterranean land.

REPORTER: David O'Shea

WOMAN, (Translation): It’s not going well, it’s not good, so many empty shelves. I have never seen this before.

For the people of Barcelona, 2008 has been a difficult year. At the start of summer supermarkets are without fresh food because of transport strikes over fuel prices.

MAN, (Translation): It will be solved and this week too, because we can’t continue like this. People have to eat and that is a fact of life, it is not like clothing, you need food every day.


On top of that, some petrol stations have had to close because fuel deliveries are not getting through. But it's water, or the increasing lack of it, that's been causing the most concern. This year brought the worst drought in a century.

SUSANA ABELLA, (Translation): If there are no policies to manage and contain the demand and there are only policies to consume more and more water, then with climate change we face the same debacle we are experiencing with oil now.

Here in northern Mediterranean Spain, dam levels are watched as closely as petrol prices. Before May, there hadn't been a drop of rain for months, leaving reservoir levels at dangerous record lows. When Barcelona's famous fountains are turned off, it's clear the city is in trouble. In a desperate move, the local government has decided to ship in water at tremendous cost, but it's only a tiny fraction of the city's daily needs and clearly not a long-term solution.

SUSANA ABELLA (Translation): Continually consuming more of a resource will exhaust it or make it less readily available or the rain pattern can change.

Susana Abella is a member of a group called the Platform for the Defence of the Ebro River. Tonight she's going to a strategy meeting with other volunteers.

VOLUNTEER, (Translation): It is inefficiency that has caused the drought, the drought decree is in fact seeking to install a pipeline.

These people have led the fight against one of the government's other desperate schemes to fix the water crisis - a plan to pipe water from the mighty Ebro River north to Barcelona. It's not a new idea. The previous government wanted to lay pipes as far south as Almeria, 1,000 kilometres away. But these activists believe the Ebro is already stretched to breaking point and taking any more of its water will be the death knock.

JOAN ANTONI PANISELLO, EBRO RIVER ACTIVIST (Translation): The river is polluted and very low, politicians flout the agreed volume of ecological flow, all they want is to send the water to areas which are already rich and to finish off despoiling the Ebro basin.

They argue that the World Heritage-listed Ebro Delta is getting so little water in natural flow that salt water is pushing way upriver from the Mediterranean Sea, as far inland as the city of Tortosa, where they're having their meeting.

JOAN ANTONI PANISELLO (Translation): We need new systems to rationalise water use and for water treatment and recycling, but people lack awareness. They just turn on the tap and go on consuming water. They have no idea how it gets there, that is the problem.

I set off to follow the Ebro upstream. Spain's most important river weaves its way through some of the driest agricultural land in Spain. On hot summer days, sprinklers lose much of the water to evaporation. Incredibly, there is even talk of constructing a Las Vegas-style resort in the desert out here, with thirsty golf courses, hotels and casinos. But perhaps some answers to the Ebro's problems are at hand.

SPEAKER (Translation): Zaragosa aspires to be a permanent world forum for the exchange of knowledge on water management.

As it turns out, this year's International Expo is being held in the city of Zaragoza, on the Ebro's banks. The theme is water and sustainable development and at the opening ceremony Prime Minister Zapatero set a serious tone.

PRIME MINISTER ZAPATERO (Translation): We have to advance towards a new culture of water, we must understand the relevance of water to our past and above all the viability of our future.

The Expo has brought together experts and ideas from around the world. 105 countries have set up pavilions, as well as the UN and a host of companies and lobbyists, each of them interpreting the water and sustainability theme in their own way.

GIRL, (Translation): Do you want some Kuwaiti water, desalinised seawater?

REPORTER (Translation): Not very sustainable, water in plastic bottles?

GIRL (Translation): Well yes, but it is water from the sea.

Shipping these water bottles all the way from Kuwait seemed a dubious example of sustainability. While the event was great fun, I was starting to wonder if it would provide any answers to the world's big environmental questions. Of the exhibiting countries I saw, Germany took the theme the most seriously, starting with a boat ride.

GERMAN STORY: Follow my story and accompany me on my trip in groundwater through the powers of the earth. This treasure must never be allowed to dry out. We must never fetch more water out of the earth than is replenished by rain.

After the ride, I learn that Berlin's water supply is filtered through the ground and drawn untreated from a well.

REPORTER: Natural filtration?

WOMAN: Natural filtration.

REPORTER: Why don't more cities do this?

WOMAN: That's a good question. It's difficult, this system and it's also quite expensive because it has to be deep inside. It is without chemicals, the natural way, so it is good for the environment.

In the city of Wolfsburg, they turn sewage into energy.

WOMAN: With the help of this water, this sewage, we can also water fields where different plants are growing and you can use these plants for organic gas, biogas, and you can save water and produce more energy.

David Alonso is a water lobbyist working here who was initially sceptical about the event.

DAVID ALONSO, WATER LOBBIST: But then I saw how carefully they were trying to do things, especially teaching people that things must change, and I got right behind Expo. We all must, there is no choice. The world will collapse without water management. Expo helps attempt to create a new social consciousness, we want people to have fun, but we also want people to rethink how they use water. We can not go on using water at the current rate, especially in countries like Spain where desertification is occurring and where we are not sufficiently aware that water is a scarce resource and wars are being waged over it.

He believes Expo is about changing the mental landscape as much as the physical. But not everyone is convinced the Expo is worthwhile.

WOMAN: For people that really think in the sustainability line, all the people here in this city, this Expo is a waste of resources and has nothing to do with this.

CROWD (Translation): They call it sustainable and it’s not! They call it sustainable and it’s not! And no.... no, it’s not.

To many here, Expo is nothing more than commercialism and empty rhetoric. They say it's doing nothing to address Spain's water problems, let alone the world's.

WOMAN 2: I think the message of Expo is good but it is not the reality.

MAN, (Translation): It’s a pretext they have come up with.. it’s trendy and it sounds good because everybody is worried about climate change..and the evermore complicated state of the planet, with food and water shortages. It is a different vision of Expo

WOMAN 3 (Translation): Leave Expo alone, it’s on already.

While some locals aren't interested, others think the protesters have a point.

LOCAL, (Translation): 185 towns are without water in Aragon and the 2001 water pact that has not been honoured and water belongs to everyone. 12km out of town, they have got no water for drinking or livestock.

It's clear that sustainability is a subject that stirs Spanish passions.

PROTESTOR, (Translation): Expo will leave this city in debt for years, for decades, it is crazy extravagance. Over 10 complaints from environmental groups have met with silence as a response.

Just outside the Expo gate, locals also wonder about the sustainability of building on what was productive farmland.

MAN, (Translation): This used to be all fields here, they used to grow lettuce, onions.. melons, silverbeet, borage.. They supplied all of Zaragoza and the whole of Spain, trucks used to come and stock up, all around here, this whole area. They used to grow apples, pears, everything there is and now they don’t grow a single thing.

As if to highlight the extremes of Spain's climate problems, while I was filming, the drought broke dramatically. In Zaragoza, Expo organisers watched the Ebro rise to a 92-year high and flood part of the site. But while water poured into the reservoirs, the harsh truth remains that the Mediterranean is getting drier and any relief is only temporary. Susana Abella says she and her friends are celebrating a bigger win. Thanks to the rain and their campaign, the government has cancelled plans to pipe water to Barcelona, for now.

SUSANA ABELLA (Translation): For us, each small battle that arises and is won is a great small victory because it buys us time, and maybe one day technology will deter us from diverting rivers and let us get water in other ways.

That technology is being put in place here, just south of Barcelona. When it opens next year, this will be one of Europe's largest desalination plants, producing 20% of Barcelona's needs.

JUAN COMPTE COSTA, PLANT GENERAL MANAGER (Translation): The advantage of this new source, shall we say, is that the resource, the water, will be 100% available all year, irrespective of the meteorological conditions of the zone.

But the plant will consume an enormous amount of electricity in an era of uncertain and expensive energy supplies. For Susana Abella, who helped paint this tied pipeline symbol on the Ebro's banks, the worry is that desalination won't be enough to save the river from future pipeline plan

SUSANA ABELLA (Translation): We are worried that the government, after pinning on their medals at Expo and praising water management in Spain, catalonia..will revert to the usual policies of water transferring which is the old culture of water.

The river activists are convinced it will be a long-term battle.


SUSANA ABELLA (Translation): It’s a constant, if there is a river, people will always covet water, like other resources water is in great demand.

Reporter/Camera
DAVID O'SHEA

Fixer/Second Camera
ANABEL GUTIÉRREZ OTERO MORA

Editor
MICAH MCGOWN

Producer
AARON THOMAS

Subtitling
PILAR BALLESTERIOS
MARINA VIDAL PLA

Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN

Production Company