Climate change is a reality. It impacts the availability of water resources, with increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as floods or droughts, among others. Water management is at a crucial moment. Now more than ever, it is necessary to give the definitive push towards a circular model that allows us to depend less and less on rain, diversify supply sources and save this irreplaceable natural resource for life and the planet.
World Water Day, celebrated on March 22, highlights this year, under the motto ‘Water for Peace’, the role of water as a fundamental element in the stability and progress of societies. Precisely, this cooperation between communities and countries is essential to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 6 established in the 2030 Agenda, access to water and universal sanitation for all people.
According to the United Nations, in the current context of population growth and also food demand, an increase in water resource needs of between 20% and 30% is expected until 2050. Spain is one of the countries where the most climate change severely affects, with Catalonia and Andalusia being the regions most impacted at the moment by water scarcity.
A new life for water.
Faced with this challenge, the need to promote regeneration is increasingly evident, that is, the advanced treatment of wastewater that allows it to be reused with all quality guarantees, in order to return it to nature or use it in new uses such as agriculture, irrigation of green areas and cleaning streets in cities or for industries.
Agbar, a company of the Veolia group—a world leader in ecological transformation with solutions in water, energy and waste—integrates the principles of the circular economy at the center of all its activities, with new technologies and digitalization as fundamental axes of your strategy.
The group’s commitment to water reuse has one of its most visible examples in the Barcelona metropolitan area, which is in a drought emergency. In this region, 25% of the total water demand is currently covered with regenerated water intended for agricultural, industrial and urban uses.
Ecofactory of Baix Llobregat (Catalonia), a benchmark in the circular economy at an international level.
The Baix Llobregat ecofactory (Barcelona), located on one of the main rivers that supplies the area, is now a true regenerated water factory that returns a large part of this water to the environment. Once reintroduced into the river as pre-drinking water, in an infinite cycle that allows us to leave the dependence on rain behind, a water treatment plant will collect it upstream to continue its treatment and send it to the distribution network.
It is also injected into wells in the area with the aim of minimizing saline intrusion and improving the quality of water in aquifers and is used for other uses, such as cleaning streets and irrigating parks and gardens in several surrounding municipalities, as well as such as agricultural irrigation. Now the company plans to replicate this model in the other river that delimits the city of Barcelona, the Besós, and take a new firm step towards sustainability to guarantee the water resilience of the more than 5 million people who live in the region. metropolitan.
Along these lines, in Murcia, one of the most important agricultural areas in Europe, the company Hidrogea, a company that is part of the Veolia group, treats more than 24,000 cubic meters of water per day in the Cabezo Beaza treatment plant, thereby More than 4,300 hectares of crops are irrigated in the Cartagena countryside. The water regeneration system of this treatment plant is focused mainly on the reuse of water in agriculture, and thanks to it, farmers in this region can produce more than 412,000 tons of vegetables annually and sustain production in this current context of drought.
Engine of social progress
In addition to promoting sustainable management of natural resources, wherever it is present, the Veolia group promotes measures to improve the quality of life of people, especially those groups in vulnerable situations. Thus, through the creation of educational opportunities or the improvement of employability, among other notable actions, Agbar specifically positions itself as a determining actor in the promotion of sustainable development and social well-being.
To achieve this, sustained collaboration with administrations and local actors has been key in the company’s trajectory, and, without a doubt, points the way. It is essential to continue promoting and promoting transformative collective actions to advance a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive water management model for future generations.
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