Philosophy of water. Aragon Water. Nature of Aragon. Spain.

Philosophy of water. Aragon Aragon

Nature of Aragon in English > Water.

Water is part of our emotions, our childhood memories, our rivers and our towns. It is associated with the sense of beauty, the sense of your land, your people, the quality of your life.

AESTHETIC VALUE OF WATER

A component of the landscape, an emotional element

Rivers are associated with kilometers of coastline, close to our lives.

Water is the soul of landscapes. And the landscape is one of the natural riches we have. We are faced with the aesthetic value of water.

Water, in addition to being a resource, is a value; it is part of the natural heritage. We do not perceive the issue of water only in technological and economic parameters. Water is part of the emotional, and therefore, the response to questions related to water does not have to be only rational.

It is legal to want to enjoy the rivers that flow through our territory, to hope that these rivers are maintained, to say "these rivers are beautiful", "we want to protect the scenic rivers, the wild rivers", "we want the water to continue forming part of the landscape."

ETHICAL VALUE OF WATER

Property of all living beings on the planet

Not only do we drink, men and women borrow water, interest-free of course. Water is also for the other billion Spaniards who are plants and animals.

Water follows a cycle in Nature in which, however, we constantly intervene.

Water cycle

You can't always go against nature. Spain is a Mediterranean country, mostly dry, with and without drought, whether we like it or not. The Monegros, like Antarctica or the Sahara, are not an environmental disaster. Nature has not been wrong with them. They are like this because their soil, their climate, their history, that is how they have been constituted. And thanks to this they guard their own natural treasures.

Our country is subject to climatic conditions that are not very prone to waste. Mediterranean species and habitats are adapted to these premises, it is part of their uniqueness. But we have not been satisfied with that, we have built reservoirs and transfers, we have taken water to irrigate pastures, steppes, and semi-deserts. We have drilled the earth until it is dry. We have even placed millions of tourists where they could find more sun (and less water), and to convince them that "Spain is different" we have planted golf courses in the driest regions of the continent.

Annulling the water cycle on the continents is the result of that unfortunately widespread awareness that any drop that reaches the sea is wasted and lost.

Intervention in anthropic action in this cycle has a lot, although not all, of wrongly thinking that Nature is poorly made.

The rationality of its use involves assuming the rules of sustainable development: knowing the limits and adapting to them. We are faced with the ethical value of water.

Countries cannot afford certain luxuries, they must adapt to their natural conditions.

In our Ebro basin, there are three ecosystems that must be preserved. One is the Pyrenees, which constitutes a biodiversity reserve, it is the great regulator of the hydrological cycle.

The other is the middle course of the Ebro in which the last meandering river of variable course in the European Union is located, with its galachos and thickets.

Finally, the Ebro Delta, one of the richest ecosystems in all of Europe, which needs an ecological flow for its maintenance.

EFFICIENCY VALUE

A scarce natural resource that we must know how to take advantage of

We have lived in a part of the world where if we turn on the tap, we find abundant water at any time of the day. We have no direct feeling of scarcity. And that makes the educational process very difficult, since nothing educates as much as scarcity.

As you know, water makes up 80% of our body. Our first food is oxygen, we need about 15 liters a day. Our second food is water, we need between 2 and 3 liters of good quality water daily. But we have changed a lot, in just a few years the needs for water have grown spectacularly, while the availability has not.

We need too much water, approximately 150 liters per person per day. (In New York, the average consumption per inhabitant per day even reaches 500 liters. At the opposite pole is Madagascar, with 5.4 liters - the survival limit -).

Spain is the third country in the world in water consumption per inhabitant. We are among the most wasteful humans on the entire planet. It is not strange, since water here is almost free. And most of the country is subject to climatic conditions that are not very wasteful. But abuse has a price. Water is a limited natural resource, and as such we must think about it.

We are faced with the value of efficiency. Efficiency as the value of water means doing more with the same or doing the same with less. It involves distinguishing between demand and desire.

Water as a resource can and should be used, reused and recycled. For example, the water resource in a spaceship is infinite because it is continually reused. Planning based on efficiency increases cyclability in the use of the water resource. To achieve this, it is necessary to invest in modernization and efficiency, in efficient techniques such as desalination, desalination and savings, compared to other measures such as reservoirs and transfers.

The value of efficiency also forces us to distinguish between use and consumption. Consumption is what we need, use is what we can modify and decrease or increase. We can manage well, look for double or triple uses, maximum savings in direct consumption and clean all the water we use.

QUALITY VALUE

Maintain your cleanliness as a guarantee for life

We expect the water that comes out of the tap to be clean and healthy.

The change in habits in our society is not only manifested in an increase in consumption, but also in relation to the quality of water. In many places in Europe the water is more of a liquid mixture of chemicals. Laboratory analyzes have long demonstrated that water intended for human consumption contains residues of pesticides, nitrates from fertilizers, aluminum and lead from pipes, etc.

We are faced with the value of water quality. Altering the quality of water is a serious attack on people's well-being, against their health and against their own lives. It is also an attack on the dignity of Nature and everything that exists in it, because it affects the survival of a multitude of species that populate the Earth. Water is not only ours, as we have already mentioned, there are many living beings to which water also belongs. However, some data show that water pollution is a real fact:

Water is the food that we need in the greatest quantity. In one form or another, several hundred liters pass through our body each year, where the smallest anomalous chemical constituent is detected, not always in the short term.

It is clear then that we need clean water to live. However, sometimes, with our exaggerated obsession with cleanliness, we contaminate the atmosphere of our own homes with air fresheners and insecticides, and the water of our rivers with inappropriate detergents. Whiteness is not synonymous with cleanliness. Radiant whiteness is, sometimes, synonymous with the dirt and death of rivers. It is the environmental cost of the wrong cleaning. Because some cleaning products use large amounts of toxic chemicals that pollute the air and water.

World Water Day.

March 22, 1997
AYERBE HUESCA (SPAIN)

Organization of events:

The Biscarrués-Mallos de Riglos Coordinator arose due to the imminent possibility of construction of the Biscarrués-Riglos reservoir, with the consequent irreversible impact on the social, environmental and landscape structure not only of the area flooded by the reservoir, but of the entire the lower course of the Gállego River. It brings together a group of associations and people interested in a rational and demystifying debate on water management and in the presentation of alternatives to current regulation proposals through the construction of reservoirs.



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