AFP UK

Iraqi Kurdish farmer Azad Muhamad, known as the Halabja model farmer, displays organic fresh produce at his farm near the Kurdish Iraqi town of Halabja

Kurdish Iraqi farmer Azad Muhamad has become a social media star by sharing tips on growing fresh fruit and vegetables in the sun-parched country that is highly vulnerable to climate change.  

The moustachioed 50-year-old with almost half a million Facebook followers posts weekly videos on topics such as protecting fruit trees, dealing with insects and helping people get more from their farms and gardens.

“They should make you agriculture minister,” one of his fans, Ahmed Hassan, commented on a recent video.

Muhamad also uses his popular online platform to raise awareness about protecting the environment and the need to support local farmers, in his native Kurdistan region and beyond.

“Developed-country farmers have government support and harvesting machines,” said Muhamad. 

“Our farmers do everything themselves with their own sweat — and when they lose money at the end of the year, they start over with the same passion and energy.”

He also has a message for authorities in Iraq, which the UN classifies as the world’s fifth most vulnerable country to climate change and where many are mired in poverty despite Iraq’s oil wealth.

“Our land is fertile, and our earth is like gold,” Muhamad told AFP.

Therefore, he said, the government should “focus on agriculture rather than oil, for a sustainable economy”.

– ‘Preserve environment’ –

From his farm near Halabja, Muhamad squats among grape vines and other plants, wearing traditional Kurdish clothing as a friend uses a mobile phone to film him.

Many of his followers, he said, are not farmers but people who “have transformed their roof into gardens — and that’s a way to better preserve the environment”.

He invites his Facebook followers to post their questions, and says some farmers have sent him videos of their crops, thanking him for his help.

“That makes me very happy,” he said.

In one video, he advises farmers to space their trees out by just two metres (six feet) instead of four to keep the soil shady and damp, protecting it from the scorching summer heat.

“With desertification, and low rainfall, we must change how we plant trees,” he said.

“Look at these tomatoes,” he added, gesturing at a group of plants. “Because they are in the shade, they are juicy and perfect — whereas these that are in the direct sun have been burned.”

Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region has been spared the worst effects of desertification, water scarcity and drought that have ravaged other parts of the country.

“The region has high rainfall precipitation compared to the rest of Iraq,” said a 2019 study involving United Nations agencies and the autonomous Kurdistan regional government.

But the report warned that “local agricultural production is in severe competition with foreign goods with largely lower prices” … “mainly from Turkey and Iran, whose products have flooded Iraqi markets”.

It urged “more investments” to improve irrigation, along with water management to promote sustainability, to ensure the efficient use of resources and “mitigate the effects of climate change”.

– ‘Fresh and organic’ –

Hamid Ismail Abdulrahman, a fellow farmer in Halabja, said low water levels in wells had impacted agricultural development.

Twice a week, the 47-year-old opens his farm to families who can buy “fresh and organic products”, from tomatoes to corn and eggplant.

He said climate change had greatly affected agriculture all over Iraq, though “southern Iraq has the lion’s share of this impact, while in the north the effect is less”.

With Iraq already witnessing record low rainfall and high temperatures in recent years, Muhamad warned that “if the government doesn’t act now and present a concrete plan… the damage will be done”.

Muhamad has recently opened a small educational area on his farm, and now also receives visits from university students.

He says he hopes his initiatives will have a longer-term impact.

“Some people leave behind a mosque” when they die, he said, but “I want to leave behind my agricultural knowledge.”

View of the Baikonur cosmodrome launch pad. Russia is due to launch an Iranian satellite from the Kazakhstan spaceport

Russia is scheduled to launch an Iranian satellite into orbit on Tuesday, but Tehran brushed off fears that Moscow might use it in the war against Ukraine.

Iran’s “Khayyam” satellite is scheduled to take off from the Moscow-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0552 GMT, three weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran.

Iran has sought to deflect suspicions that Moscow could use Khayyam to improve its surveillance of military targets in Ukraine.

Last week, US daily The Washington Post quoted anonymous Western intelligence officials as saying that Russia “plans to use the satellite for several months or longer” to assist its war efforts before allowing Iran to take control.

But the Iranian Space Agency said on Sunday that the Islamic republic would control the Khayyam satellite “from day one.”

“No third country is able to access the information” sent by the satellite due to its “encrypted algorithm,” it said.

The purpose of Khayyam is to “monitor the country’s borders”, enhance agricultural productivity and monitor water resources and natural disasters, the space agency said.

Khayyam is being taken into orbit by a Soyuz-2.1b rocket, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said last week.

As Moscow’s international isolation grows under the weight of Western sanctions over Ukraine, Putin is seeking to pivot Russia towards the Middle East, Asia and Africa and find new clients for the country’s embattled space programme.

– ‘Long-term cooperation’ –

Khayyam, apparently named after the 11th-century Persian polymath Omar Khayyam, will not be the first Iranian satellite that Russia has put into space — in 2005, Iran’s Sina-1 satellite was deployed from Russia’s Plesetsk cosmodrome.

Iran is currently negotiating with world powers, including Moscow, to salvage a 2015 deal aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The United States — which quit the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA under then-president Donald Trump in 2018 — has accused Iran of effectively supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine while adopting a “veil of neutrality”. 

During his meeting with Putin last month, Iran’s Khamenei called for “long-term cooperation” with Russia, and Tehran has refused to join international condemnation of Moscow’s invasion of its pro-Western neighbour.

Iran insists its space programme is for civilian and defence purposes only, and does not breach the 2015 nuclear deal, or any other international agreement. 

Western governments worry that satellite launch systems incorporate technologies interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, something Iran has always denied wanting to build.

Iran successfully put its first military satellite into orbit in April 2020, drawing a sharp rebuke from the United States.

A shopper fills their basket in a Tesco supermarket: scientists have studied the envirnomental impact of 57,000 products sold in supermarkets in Britain and Ireland

Eating fruits and vegetables is better for the planet than eating meat and cheese, but a new study by scientists released Monday showed chips and sugary drinks also have a very low environmental impact.

Scientists analyzed some 57,000 products sold in supermarkets in Britain and Ireland, in a large study published by the scientific journal PNAS. 

The researchers, who hope that their study may allow consumers to shop more sustainably without sacrificing anything to their health, also compared the results with the nutritional qualities of these foods. 

They found that juice concentrates, sodas or other fruit juices are among the products sold with the lowest environmental impact — because they are mostly composed of water — but their nutritional quality is poor.

Researchers believe that in general, the more sustainable a food is, the better it is from a nutritional point of view. 

The study confirms what other previous reports had already advanced by analyzing single ingredients, such as fruits or red meat. 

The novelty of the latest report is that its analysis relates to products made up of multiple ingredients, such as sauces, prepared meals, and others. 

That task was complicated by the fact that the quantity of each ingredient is considered a trade secret, and therefore no real details are disclosed: Only about three percent of the more than 57,000 products sold by eight food retailers had their composition fully disclosed. 

Scientists responded by developing an algorithm based on the few known pieces of information to evaluate the missing products — in Britain and Ireland, ingredients are notably listed in order of quantity used. 

To assess the environmental impact, four factors were considered: greenhouse gas emissions, use of limited water resources, land use, and eutrophication, which is when waterways are enriched with minerals and nutrients, mostly from fertilizers. 

Bread, but also certain cereals and prepared meals or desserts, have a relatively low or intermediate environmental impact. 

On the other hand, fish, cheese and meat — especially red meat — have a high impact.

“Replacing meat, dairy, and eggs with plant-based alternatives could have large environmental and health benefits,” the study notes. 

But “smaller” transitions can also help. For example, beef lasagna, with a high environmental impact, could be replaced by chicken or pork lasagna, or vegetarian. 

In the future, better knowing the proportions and origin of different ingredients would help to determine more precisely their impact on the environment, the researchers said.

The whale was first spotted on Tuesday in the river that runs through Paris to the Channel

Experts are looking at a plan to transport a malnourished beluga whale that has swum up France’s River Seine back to sea before its health deteriorates any further, officials said Monday.

Sub-prefect Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet of France’s northern Eure department said they were seriously considering the option.

“In the interests of this beluga it can be attempted,” she said. “We are working hard on it.” But she was unable to say when they might make the attempt.

Officials in the prefecture of the Eure told AFP that the whale could be transported on a barge, overland or even by helicopter.

But the challenges are considerable, given they would be transporting a creature that weighs some 800 kilograms (nearly 1,800 pounds) and is already sick and malnourished.

It would be a journey of 130 kilometres (80 miles) just to get to the north coast of France.

Members of environmental group Sea Shepherd monitoring the whale said Monday that it was no longer swimming up-river.

But it was still not eating, Sea Shepherd France president Lamya Essemlali told AFP in a text message. There was, however, “no worsening of its condition”, she said.

The whale was first spotted in the river that runs through Paris to the Channel last Tuesday. 

Since Friday, it has been between two locks some 70 kilometres north of the French capital.

– Marineland experts join operation – 

The last-ditch bid to save the animal is partly because of fears that the river’s warm water is harming its health.

Another alternative would be to open the locks in the hope that the beluga swims towards the Channel, authorities said.

But doing that runs the risk that it moves further upriver towards Paris, which would be even worse for it.

Several attempts to feed the whale have failed in the past days.

A three-person team from Marineland, Europe’s biggest sea animal theme park located in the southern French resort of Antibes, was due on site later Monday.

“We’ve been following the operations at a distance from the start,” said Isabelle Brasseur, in charge of education, research and conservation at Marineland.

“We are slowly making progress,” she told AFP. “There’s not an ideal solution, we must weigh the pros and the cons” of each option to rescue the whale.

One of the experts on the team is a specialist for sea mammals, she said, adding they were bringing a stretcher and other equipment to try and move the animal.

On Saturday, veterinarians administered “vitamins and products to stimulate its appetite”, said a statement Sunday by the police in Normandy’s Eure department, which is overseeing the rescue effort.

Belugas are normally found only in cold Arctic waters, and while they migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture so far.

An adult can reach up to four metres (13 feet) in length.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, specialised in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.

The plant has six of Ukraine's 15 reactors — enough to power four million homes

The Russian-held Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine, which is at the centre of international concern amid mutual accusations of shelling by Moscow and Kyiv, is Europe’s biggest nuclear plant.

Recent fighting around the plant has prompted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to warn of the “very real risk of a nuclear disaster”, while Kyiv has accused Moscow of “nuclear terrorism”.

Fears of a possible incident have brought back haunting memories of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in then Soviet Ukraine, which left hundreds dead and spread radioactive contamination across Europe.

Here are some key facts about the facility:

– History –

Located near the city of Energodar on the Dnipro River, the plant has six of Ukraine’s 15 reactors — enough to power four million homes.

The reactors were all switched on between 1984 and 1995, according to the Ukrainian state agency Energoatom, which runs the plant.

Before the war, the plant was generating around a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity.

The country, which has significant uranium reserves, is the seventh-largest producer of nuclear power in the world, according to the IAEA.

It began developing nuclear energy in the 1970s with the construction of Chernobyl, near the capital Kyiv, and has made major improvements in nuclear safety over the years since that cataclysmic event.

The Zaporizhzhia plant is “relatively modern”, Mark Wenman of Imperial College London told the Science Media Centre earlier, noting that its reactor components are housed inside a heavily reinforced containment building that can “withstand extreme external events, both natural and man-made, such as an aircraft crash or explosions”.

– Capture –

The power plant — located close to the Crimean peninsula which was annexed by Moscow in 2014 — was captured by Russian forces on March 4 following a battle in the early days of Moscow’s invasion.

The fighting caused a fire at a training facility. Firefighters said they were prevented from reaching the blaze for hours.

Energoatom initially shut off two of the reactors — and more recently a third — but the plant has continued to be operated by Ukrainian technicians under Russian control.

The IAEA has repeatedly said it wants to organise an inspection of the plant.

This was initially opposed by Ukrainian authorities but officials have sounded less adamant about the prospect recently.

– Renewed fighting –

Ukraine on July 21 accused Moscow of storing heavy weapons at the plant after Russia said Ukraine’s troops had fired on the facility.

Energoatom said Russia had moved over two dozen pieces of military equipment and ammunition into the engine room of the first reactor.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Moscow was using it as a “military base to fire at Ukrainians, knowing that they can’t and won’t shoot back”.

On August 5, Ukraine accused Russian forces of carrying out strikes near a reactor. Russia said Ukraine was behind them.

Following the attacks, Energoatom said it would have to shut down another reactor because of damage to a power cable.

Another reactor is being repaired, meaning only two reactors are now functioning.

Ukraine says there are around 500 Russian troops at the plant and has called for the establishment of a demilitarised zone.

Despite the tensions, Energoatom has said it is still in contact with the plant and receives data on radiation monitoring.

It said on Monday that there had been no change to radiation levels.

Climate-change deniers are still active online despite record temperatures across Europe

With Europe gripped by successive heatwaves, climate-change deniers are spreading scepticism by publishing data on social media on extreme temperatures allegedly recorded decades ago to imply scientists are exaggerating global warming.

But experts say the figures cited from the past are often incorrect or taken out of context — and even if accurate do not change the fact that heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense.

The posts typically include heat records from almanacs or newspaper reports from the past, arguing that they are similar to the record highs set during this year’s heatwaves in Europe.

One post that has gone viral on Facebook includes a screen grab of a brief article published in the New York Times on June 23, 1935, which said the mercury had hit 127 degrees Fahrenheit (52.7 degrees Celsius) in Zaragoza, in northeastern Spain, the day before.

That temperature is much higher than the record for the highest temperature in Spain of 47.6 degrees Celsius recorded on August 14, 2021 by national weather office Aemet at the La Rambla meteorological station in the southern province of Cordoba.

Contacted by AFP Fact Check, Aemet spokesman Ruben del Campo said the highest temperature recorded in Zaragoza that day in 1935 was just 39 degrees Celsius.

“The figure of over 52 degrees in incorrect. It is not a figure that is in our climate database, and in fact, there is no log of a temperature above 50 degrees Celsius,” he said.

And “even if the figure was correct, which I stress it is not, that is not proof that climate changes does not exist”, he added.

– ‘Warmer now’ –

Spanish daily newspaper La Vanguardia in 1935 also reported that temperatures had hit the low 50s in Zaragoza but explained that the measurement was taken “in the sun”.

Scientists recommend a series of strict criteria to ensure an accurate temperature reading.

“Sensors must be protected from the sun and the rain, and the temperature inside the weather station must be the same as what it is outside,” said Aemet meteorologists Ricardo Torrijo.

Another post that has gone viral on Facebook, Telegram and Twitter since last June shows a front page of Spanish weekly magazine El Espanol from August 1957 with the headline: “The hottest summer of the century”.

It referred to a reading of a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius in central Spain, which was also taken in the sun.

Isabel Cacho, a climate expert at the University of Barcelona, said that “in the hypothetical case” that the mercury soared above 50 degrees Celsius, “this would not be an argument to question that it is warmer now”.

– ‘Not change trend’ –

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk, length and severity of heatwaves and other extreme weather events.

“These figures of high temperatures (in the past) do not discredit the existence of climate change,” said Jose Luis Garcia, a climate change expert at Greenpeace in Spain.

“They are unrelated. One thing is one-off temperature data and another very different thing is the tendency towards an increase in the average temperature.”

Pedro Zorrilla, a Spanish expert in climate change, said the “anomaly” of a very high temperature recorded in 1935 would have a “very small effect” on average temperatures.

“It does not change the trend,” he added.

Records show heatwaves are occurring with greater frequency in the Iberian Peninsula, said Mariano Barriendos, a geography and history professor at the University of Barcelona. 

“It is relatively usual for a hot air mass to enter the peninsula from the Sahara Desert. What is worrying is that heatwaves are happening more often,” he said.

With a little over 1.1C of warming so far, Earth is already being buffeted by extreme weather

Scientists on Monday welcomed the passing of US President Joe Biden’s “historic” climate bill while calling for other major emitters — namely the European Union — to follow suit and implement ambitious plans to slash emissions.

The bill, which would see an unprecedented $370 billion invested in cutting US emissions 40 percent by 2030, should provide a launchpad for green investment and kickstart a transition towards renewable energy in the world’s largest emitter.

It passed the Senate on Sunday night after months of arduous negotiations and only after a number of tax and energy provisions were tacked on to Biden’s original proposal. 

Michael Pahle, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the bill was particularly relevant to EU lawmakers, who he said were on the verge of adopting “the world’s most ambitious climate policy” in the form of the bloc’s “Fit for 55” plan. 

“The EU’s policy can only succeed — economically and politically — when major emitters and trade partners take similar action,” he told AFP. 

“Especially in face of the changing geopolitical landscape, US-EU cooperation is key and the bill an important enabling factor.” 

The EU initiative — which envisages a 55-percent emissions fall by 2030 — has no set budget as yet. 

But a recent assessment found member states would need to spend an 350 billion euros more each year than they did between 2011-2020 in order to hit the climate and energy targets. 

Simon Lewis, professor of global chance science at University College London, said the US bill showed how lawmakers can advance climate legislation while responding to voters’ short-term concern over fuel price inflation. 

“It’s really important that the world’s largest economy is investing in climate and doing it as part of a package to generate jobs and a new, cleaner, greener economy,” Lewis told AFP. 

“Part of that is a package tackling inflation. I think that shows the world how to get climate policy passed, by hitching it to things that really matter to ordinary people, to make sure it’s part of an overarching package to make life better for people.”

– ‘Massive increase’ –

The independent Rhodium Group think tank said the “historic and important” bill — officially the Inflation Reduction Act — would reduce US emissions by at least 31 percent by 2040, compared with 2005 levels. 

However it said that with favourable macroeconomic conditions including increasingly high fossil fuel prices and cheap renewables, a 44-percent emissions drop was possible. 

“The cost of living is here partly because we didn’t get out of fossil fuels early enough,” said Lewis. 

“This bill means is that the transition away from fossil fuels is about to speed up.”

Eric Beinhocker, director of the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, said the bill would lead to a “massive increase” in clean technology and would drive the cost of renewables down even further. 

“This is particularly important when the world is suffering not just from the climate effects of fossil fuels but also from their skyrocketing costs,” he told AFP.

The legislation provides millions to help conserve forests and billions in tax credits to some of the country’s worst-polluting industries to accelerate their transition to greener tech.

It almost didn’t happen, however, with the bill delayed for months after Democrat Joe Manchin blocked Biden’s more expensive Build Back Better infrastructure plan.

Pahle said that a failure by the US to agree an ambitious emissions cutting plan would have been a “major drawback on the viability of the Paris Agreement”.

The 2015 accord enjoins nations to work to limit global temperature rises to “well below” two degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels and envisages a safer 1.5C heating cap. 

With a little over 1.1C of warming so far, Earth is already being buffeted by extreme weather such as drought and storms supercharged by rising temperatures.

– Just the start –

Although acknowledging that the bill represented progress, scientists were quick to stress that it was far from perfect. 

Michael Mann, director of Penn State’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, said the bill’s commitment to build new gas pipelines was “a step backwards”. 

“It’s difficult to reconcile a promise to decarbonise our economy with a commitment to new fossil fuel infrastructure,” he said. 

Radhika Khosla, from the University of Oxford’s Smith School, said that only action on a global scale could achieve the emissions cuts necessary to stave off the worst impacts of global heating. 

“The effects of climate change are being felt by all of us,” she said. 

“This summer alone parts of the globe as disparate as China, the UK and Tunisia all saw record-breaking, deadly heatwaves.

“Lasting change will require ambitious action from all of us as well,” she told AFP.

The whale was first spotted on Tuesday in the river that runs through Paris to the English Channel

A malnourished beluga whale that has swum up France’s River Seine is no longer progressing but is still alive, environmental group Sea Shepherd said Monday.

Hopes are fading to save the animal, which was first spotted on Tuesday in the river that runs through Paris to the English Channel.

“It is alert but not eating,” Sea Shepherd France president Lamya Essemlali told AFP in a text message.

There was, however, “no worsening of its condition”, she said.

Since Friday, the whale has been between two locks some 70 kilometres (44 miles) north of the French capital.

Rescuers are considering last-ditch efforts to extract the animal from the Seine as the river’s warm water is harming its health.

One alternative would be to open the locks in the hope that the beluga will swim towards the English Channel, authorities said.

Opening the locks would harbour the risk of the whale moving further upriver towards Paris, which would be even more disastrous.

Several attempts to feed the whale have failed in the past days.

A three-person team from Marineland, Europe’s biggest sea animal theme park located in the southern French resort of Antibes, was expected to arrive on site later Monday.

“We’ve been following the operations at a distance from the start,” said Isabelle Brasseur, in charge of education, research and conservation at Marineland.

“We are slowly making progress,” she told AFP. “There’s not an ideal solution, we must weigh the pros and the cons” of each option to rescue the whale.

One of the experts on the team is a specialist for sea mammals, she said, adding they were bringing a stretcher and other equipment to try and move the animal.

On Saturday, veterinarians administered “vitamins and products to stimulate its appetite”, said a statement on Sunday by the police in Normandy’s Eure department, which is overseeing the rescue effort.

Belugas are normally found only in cold Arctic waters, and while they migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture so far.

An adult can reach up to four metres (13 feet) in length.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, specialised in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.

The whale was first spotted on Tuesday in the river that runs through Paris to the English Channel

A malnourished beluga whale that has swum up France’s River Seine is no longer progressing but is still alive, environmental group Sea Shepherd said Monday.

Hopes are fading to save the animal, which was first spotted on Tuesday in the river that runs through Paris to the English Channel.

“It is alert but not eating,” Sea Shepherd France president Lamya Essemlali told AFP in a text message.

There was, however, “no worsening of its condition”, she said.

Since Friday the whale has been between two locks some 70 kilometres (44 miles) north of the French capital.

Rescuers are considering last-ditch efforts to extract the animal from the Seine as the river’s warm water is harming its health.

One alternative would be to open the locks in the hope that the beluga will swim towards the English Channel, authorities said.

Opening the locks would harbour the risk of the whale moving further upriver towards Paris, which would be even more disastrous.

Several attempts to feed the whale have failed in the past days.

On Saturday, veterinarians administered “vitamins and products to stimulate its appetite”, said a statement on Sunday by the police in Normandy’s Eure department, which is overseeing the rescue effort.

Belugas are normally found only in cold Arctic waters, and while they migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture so far.

An adult can reach up to four metres (13 feet) in length.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, specialised in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.

Spain relies on an extensive network of dams to supply water to its towns and farms

Faced with a historic drought and threatened by desertification, Spain is rethinking how it spends its water resources, which are used mainly to irrigate crops.

“We must be extremely careful and responsible instead of looking the other way,” Spain’s Minister for the Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera said recently, about the impact of the lack of rain.

Like France and Italy, Spain has been gripped by several extreme heatwaves this summer after an unusually dry winter.

That has left the country’s reservoirs at 40.4 percent of their capacity in August, 20 percentage points below the average over the last decade for this time of the year.

Officials have responded by limiting water use, especially in the southern region of Andalusia, which grows much of Europe’s fruits and vegetables.

Reservoir water levels in the region are particularly low, just 25 percent at most of their capacity.

“The situation is dramatic,” said University of Jaen hydrology professor Rosario Jimenez, adding both underground aquifers and surface bodies of water were running low.

The situation is especially worrying since it is part of a long-term trend linked to climate change, she added.

Parts of Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to a study published last month in the journal, Nature Geoscience.

Greenpeace estimates that 75 percent of the country is susceptible to desertification.

– ‘Overexploitation’ –

Spain has built a vast network of dams to provide water for its farms and towns.

During the 20th century, 1,200 large dams were built in the country, the highest number in Europe per capita.

This has allowed Spain to increase the amount of irrigated land it has from 900,000 hectares (2,224,000 acres) to 3,400,000 hectares, according to the ecological transition ministry’s website, which calls the country’s water management system “an example of success”.

But many experts say the system is now showing its limits.

The dams “had their use” but they have also encouraged the “overexploitation” of water and the decline in its quality by blocking the natural course of rivers, said Julio Barea, a water expert at Greenpeace Spain.

For the scientific council of the Rhone-Mediterranean Basin Committee, a French body which groups hydrology specialists, Spain is nearing the “physical limits” of its water management model.

Spain’s network of dams relies on sufficient rainfall to replenish its many reservoirs, it said.

But “the climate changes already under way, which will continue in the decades to come, will increase the risk of failures,” the body said in a recent report.

Experts say the way Spain uses water is also a major problem.

“Consumption has not stopped increasing while water is becoming increasingly scarce. It’s an aberration,” said Barea.

– ‘Europe’s vegetable garden’ –

Spain is the second most visited country in the world and significant amounts of water are used in tourism infrastructure like swimming pools and golf courses.

But agriculture absorbs the bulk — over 80 percent — of the country’s water resources.

It is sometimes used to grow crops that are not suitable for a dry climate — such as strawberries or avocados — for export to other European countries.

Spain’s use of irrigation “is irrational,” said Julia Martinez, biologist and director of the FNCA Water Conservation Foundation.

“We cannot be Europe’s vegetable garden” while “there are water shortages for the inhabitants,” she added.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government adopted a strategic plan last month to adapt Spain’s water management system to “the impacts of global warming”.

It includes measures to promote water recycling and “efficient and rational” uses of resources.

But specialists say that reforms remain timid, with many regions continuing to increase the amount of irrigated land.

“We need more drastic measures,” said Barea, who called for a restructuring of the agriculture system.

Martinez shares this view, saying Spain is currently the European nation “exerting the most pressure on its water resources.”

“Today there are decisions that no one wants to take. We can’t continue to blindly forge ahead,” she said.