Spain and Portugal agree to strengthen cooperation to deal with drought situations in shared river basins

This is one of the decisions taken at the 24th plenary session of the Commission for the Implementation and Development of the Albufeira Convention (CADC) held in Lisbon, which was attended by the Director General for Water of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teodoro Estrela, and the President of the Interministerial Commission for Portuguese-Spanish Hydrographic Boundaries and Bases of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Lénia Real.

At this meeting, and in fulfilment of the commitment made at the Portuguese-Spanish Summit held on 4 November in Viana do Castelo, the operating conditions of the Permanent Technical Secretariat of the CADC were established to facilitate ongoing cooperation between the two countries, especially in relation to the management of bodies of water and the hydrological planning of shared basins, which will be submitted to the governments of the two countries for consideration.

The mandate of the Working Group on Water and Energy created at the aforementioned Summit was also analysed and the timetable of the Convention's Working Groups actions for 2023 was presented.

In particular, it has been agreed that, as part of the analysis of drought and scarcity situations, the Competent Working Group will progress with work to harmonise the drought and scarcity indicator systems of the two states.

In addition, the operational tasks to be carried out for the implementation of the protocol for the exchange of information on hydrometeorological data for the management of extreme situations, which was agreed at the last meeting of the CADC held in February of this year, have been outlined, and an agreement has been reached to intensify the mechanisms for monitoring flow regimes and extreme phenomena.

In the framework of the joint assessments of the shared basins, it was also agreed to strengthen and continue the work already underway to address the challenges identified, in particular in the Tagus and Guadiana basins.

The meeting was also attended by, among others, the president of the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), the leaders of the water resources area and of the administrations of the hydrographic regions of the aforementioned agency, representatives of EDIA, and of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the hydrographic confederations and CEDEX.

Non official translation