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We're on the hunt for stolen water. In one of the driest regions in Europe. "It is so hot and so dusty." But this isn't just happening here. Around the world, groundwater is vanishing. With devastating consequences. And the culprit isn't who you'd expect. This is a story of a hidden fight for one of our most precious resources. We're going to the epicenter to find out what is going on. "It really looks like in a set of a Western movie. It looks like we've jumped back in time." For an epicenter, it's really quite sleepy.
We're in El Rocío, a 700-year-old village in Southwestern Spain. It sits right next to a UNESCO world heritage national park, one of the most important wetlands in Europe, home to threatened birds and mammals, as well as hundreds of thousands of migratory birds. But like a lot of the world lately, Spain has been cooking. And this is one of the areas most affected by the severe heat and droughts of the past couple of years. "It's gotten hotter, like, every year. It's even more hotter. And the water, like, dries up so quickly. There was like a summer where it was like 50 degrees and we couldn't go outside because of the heat."
"For me, day to day, the main issue is my animals. I have to draw water for them, but the well doesn't have enough water to provide it all at once." The town is very close to the Atlantic coast, at the very tip of southern Spain. This is what the national park looked like a couple of years ago. The left satellite picture is from 2021. The right is a year later. The greater area experienced water shortages and restrictions.
Surface water has recovered somewhat because of more rainfall. But that hasn't solved the core concern. Because rising temperatures and drought caused by climate change are only part of the problem. Doñana's wetlands and the region's water supply depend on an underground aquifer. An aquifer that's gradually being sucked dry. The cause of that can be found in our supermarkets. We can now get fresh produce all year round. And in Europe, a quarter of it is grown in one country: Spain.
It's the breadbasket, feeding the colder countries year-round, thanks to its ideal climate and cheap, often immigrant labor force. And this pattern is everywhere. Mexico, Brazil and Colombia grow food for the U.S. Countries in southeast Asia export a lot of produce to China or Japan. As economies mature, fruit and vegetable production starts being outsourced to places with cheaper labor, fewer restrictions and more sun. But with that, Northern or more wealthy countries also export the cost of such intense agriculture. "It's a bit hidden, but there are fields right and left of me and it goes on and on."
This area used to be royal hunting grounds, consisting of marshes and ponds. Then parts of it were used for dryland farming. Meaning farming in dry regions that heavily relies on rainwater. But then in 1971, Spain - still under the dictator Franco - declared the irrigation of the region to be of national interest. The Almonte-Marismas plan, named after the aquifer it tapped into, was part of a massive, state-sponsored effort to increase food production. And here, they decided to bet on what they called "red gold".
Strawberries turned out to be very, very profitable. According to calculations based on FAO data, they can yield up to 150,000 Euros gross revenue per hectar and year. Compared to roughly 20,000 for potatoes, or 15,000 for grapes. This is how they became the one of the biggest producers of strawberries in Europe. But this also meant using a lot more water. Authorities handed out quotas and allotments - very generously. Seemingly without really considering how much extraction the aquifer could handle. But even those legal quotas were not enough for the ever-expanding fields.
The solution? Illegal wells and reservoirs. In 2016, WWF Spain estimated that this region was home to over 1,000 illegal wells and over 1700 suspicious irrigation ponds illegally irrigating an area as big as 4,200 football pitches. Farmers were building illegal reservoirs to stock up, draining water from the locals and the UNESCO world heritage site next to it. Sparking outrage and international coverage. "Europe's most important Wetland is suffocating due to a lack of water." "The overextraction of water by neighboring strawberry farms, often through illegal wells."
"We're going to talk to a local farmer's union representative. It was quite hard to find someone to talk to us because there has been a lot of bad press recently." "There was extreme drought and lack of attention from the administration. And we found ourselves with a number of farms - or parts of farms - that fell outside the land classified as irrigable agricultural land." In 2021, the EU court of Justice ruled that Spain failed to protect the Doñana aquifer and violated EU law. But illegal water extraction isn't only a problem here.
The same is happening all over Spain, in agricultural regions supplying local and international markets. One of them being just two hours' drive south from Madrid. We'll be talking to a lieutenant from SEPRONA, a specialized task force of the Spanish police focused on environmental crimes. For safety and privacy reasons, we're not allowed to name him or his colleagues. I contacted SEPRONA wanting to know more about the water crisis and they asked to meet here, in another wetland national park called Tablas de Daimiel, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
"These are sprinklers that extract water and disperse it throughout the crop. As you can see, if you look here to the right, the park is here and the aquifer is beneath us." The story here is similar to the one in Doñana. The region also shifted from traditional dryland farming towards irrigated crops like different types of melons, onion, garlic and grapes. Illegal irrigation and overextraction, coupled with droughts and high temperatures, got so bad that an underground peat fire broke out in 2009.
A problem that still hasn't gone away. The lieutenants here are part of the bigger initiative from Spanish police to crack down on water theft. The effort was reportedly sparked by a tragic incident. In 2019, following many initial reports of unlawful wells, a two-year-old fell into a 110-meter deep, reportedly illegal borehole on farmland in Málaga, and died. "No signs of life since the toddler's fall." Following the news, the Guardia Civil instated dedicated units focusing on water theft. So how do they find water thieves?
First, police as well as NGOs like WWF Spain look at satellite images of the region. On the left you can see the blue encircled areas. Those used to be protected forests. On the right, you can see a later picture where the forests were cut down to make space for illegal cultivation. They also look at land rights maps and compare them with actual satellite images. The yellow parts are allotments with legal irrigation rights.
The red fields don't have those rights. "For example let's say we see an area that belongs to a dry farming crop. But the satellite image of that area shows greenness. Then it's possibly an area that is being irrigated illegally." Then they use drones to have a closer look at where that water might be coming from. "The well would be in that shed, and there you can see the pipeline that goes toward the crop, and that pipeline is the one that distributes the water so that the crop can thrive." A well can either be completely illegal, like these that the WWF found back in Doñana a couple of years ago. Or the well itself can be legal but extract more than it is allowed to. That could be the case
with this very green parcel of land right next to the park we just saw through the drone. So it needs closer on-site inspection. "So this section here is where the water volume measurement element is located, which we normally verify during our inspections - the flow meter, which is this section here. First, we check that it has the seals from the River Basin Authority and that they haven't been tampered with. It's like a normal meter in a house. So this is the element where most of the tampering is directed - manipulations aimed at extracting
a greater flow than what is permitted without it being recorded. The simplest, the most traditional method, is to place a very powerful magnet in there. It's normally placed here in this area. The magnet holds back the internal mechanism of the flow meter. The water passes through the flow meter, but the mechanism doesn't move." In the case of this well the flowmeter is working correctly, without being tampered with. The field is not using more water than it's allowed to. But that's not always the case. "The natural conditions right now are not favourable. That's why we see a greater number of illicit extractions."
This lieutenant coordinates the efforts across Spain. "There is a nationwide directive called Operation Serie. Every year, authorities carry out around 4,000 inspections and issue some 1,000 administrative penalties related to these offenses. There is an enormous environmental impact. And the economic damage can reach millions [of euros]." The farmers can be charged with crimes against the environment and fraud. They usually have to pay fines but can also be sentenced to prison for up to five years. But the problem doesn't stop there.
"Apart from damaging the aquifer in terms of water quantity, it is also being contaminated. That contamination means this water is full of nitrates and fertilizers." What's happening in these hotspots is a symptom of a bigger, worldwide problem. How do you balance a new reality of climate change with increasingly intensive, thirsty agriculture? It's complicated. Especially in the regions that rely almost entirely on agriculture, like back in Doñana. Well, in 2023, the local ruling conservative party had an idea. In the middle of the most severe drought in history, they proposed a law to legitimize
many of the illegal farms in the area. Which, to no one's surprise, was hit by a lot of backlash. From the EU, UNESCO and NGOs, as well as the national government. Which led to the conservative party ultimately shelving the bill. Instead, the local and national government negotiated a 1.4 billion Euro joint plan. First, they agreed to continue the shutdown of illegal wells. Almost 300 illegal wells have been sealed in the Doñana region alone. Secondly, they started buying up farmland, rewilding it and turning it into protected areas. Then, they set up funds to create jobs in other sectors like tourism and renewable energy.
Farmers also had to change the way they water their plants. This is how they used to do it. "We also have black plastic to prevent evaporation and to prevent large water losses. The irrigation works with a drip system. Each plant has its own dripper and it's much more efficient. We also have moisture sensors that report through a computer system where water is needed and what exact amount of water the plant needs so as not to overuse water or fertilizers." According to Pedro, they also started planting less water-intense crops and moving the growing season into the colder months, which is why everything is currently dead.
This doesn't mean the water problem is solved entirely. NGOs are pushing for more personnel to enforce the plan and higher penalties for water theft. "Things are constantly improving and continue to move forward. We're still making progress, and there's still a lot left to improve." Other countries are introducing similar measures. Morocco is using satellite comparisons to monitor irrigation and is giving out subsidies for farmers to switch to drip irrigation.
India is attempting to move farmers towards less thirsty crops. The Californian government has paid farmers to stop this type of irrigation and has introduced legislation to monitor and allot water more sustainably. For the longest time, water was treated as an unlimited resource. Any type of growth was seen as good. But we need to face a new reality. It will need coordinated efforts from all parties to figure out how to make the most of the limited, precious water we have. "Is anything similar happening close to you? Please, let us know in the comments and subscribe for more videos like this."
