Ebro River Basin

Background & Objectives

The Ebro Basin, located in Northeastern Spain, is one of the main European Mediterranean basins. It covers an area of 85,600 km2, a fifth of the Spanish territory, and its streamflow is the largest in the country (Figure 2). Natural ecosystems of great value cover 30% of the basin area. The main tributaries to the Ebro River Basin are the Aragón, Gállego, Cinca, and Segre rivers coming from the Pyrenees mountain range in the north. They provide 65 percent of the River flow and feed the canals of the main irrigation districts (Figure 2). Precipitation occurs mainly in the Pyrenees, where it exceeds 1000 mm/year, while it does not exceed 350 mm/year in the central part of the basin, where conditions are semi-arid.

The Ebro Basin sustains 3.2 million inhabitants and their economic activities from services (63% GDP), industries (33%), and agriculture (4%). Available renewable water amounts to 14,600 Mm3 per year, and water withdraws are 8,460 Mm3 divided between 8,110 Mm3 of surface diversions and 350 Mm3 of subsurface extractions. Water withdrawals for agriculture are around 7,680 Mm3 covering 750,000 ha of irrigated crops. Withdrawals by water companies supplying urban centers are 630 hm3, and direct withdrawals by industries are 150 Mm3. There are also non-consumptive withdrawals for cooling in thermal power plants (3,100 Mm3) and for hydroelectric production (38,000 Mm3). Water for agriculture represents 90% of consumptive water demand, and the main irrigated crops are corn, barley, alfalfa, wheat, and fruit trees.

The management of water is based on the Water Basin Authority (Confederación Hidrográfica del Ebro). The special characteristic of this institutional approach is the key role played by stakeholders. They are inside the Basin Authority and include water users from each sector (irrigation, urban, industrial, hydropower), federal and state governments, municipalities, farmers’ unions, environmental associations, business associations and workers’ unions. There are stakeholders’ representatives in all governing and participation bodies at basin scale, and they run the watershed boards at local scale. The Basin Authority is responsible for preparing the water plan of the Ebro Basin, which sets out medium-term management strategies. The plan objectives are to meet water demand, preserve water quality, contribute to regional development, and protect ecosystems in the basin.

The main water management issues in the Ebro Basin are related to water quantity and water quality problems. Water scarcity pressures are driven by the large extent of irrigation districts in the basin, especially during droughts. The impacts of droughts fall mostly on reductions of irrigation withdrawals and reductions of environmental flows in river streams. Water quality pressures come from point pollution of urban centers and industries, and from nonpoint pollution of cultivation and livestock agricultural activities. In recent decades, there has been a significant abatement of point pollution because of large investments in wastewater treatment plants in urban centers and industries. However, nutrient and salinity nonpoint pollution loads from agriculture remain high, coming from the 750,000 ha of irrigation and 2.8 million Livestock Units equivalent (including 13 million hogs and 2.4 million sheep). Current policy interventions focus on completing the construction of urban wastewater treatment plants, modernizing irrigation systems, dealing with agricultural pollution abatement, and protecting environmental flows.

Ebro River Basin Team

Encarna Esteban, Ph.D.

Encarna Esteban is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economic Analysis at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). Encarna holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Zaragoza and an MSc in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics from the University of Connecticut (USA). Her research interests focus on the field of environmental and natural resource economics, water resource management, and climate change. Her publications cover the management and control of groundwater resources, climate change impacts at global and regional scales, and the modeling of aquatic ecosystems. Her most recent publications are devoted to different aspects of political economy, institutional and behavioral analyses applied to natural resources, game theory applications in hydrological systems, and bioeconomy. Dr. Esteban has published numerous articles on environmental economics, water resources management, and optimal control, as well as book chapters. Her work has been presented at many national and international conferences such as the European and the American Associations of Environmental and Resource Economists, the Natural Resource Modeling Association, or the International Water Association.

For additional information see: http://encaresteban.wixsite.com/eesteban

Jose Albiac, Ph.D.

Jose Albiac is a researcher in Environmental Economics. He has been working as a researcher at the Agrifood Research and Technology Center (CITA, Spain) and professor in the Department of Economic Analysis at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Economics at the University of Zaragoza, and his Master's and Doctoral degrees in Agricultural Economics at the University of Illinois (Urbana). He has been principal investigator in many research projects from Spanish national and regional funding agencies, and he has collaborated with experts from universities and research centers in different countries. His research has been published in leading journals and books, specializing in environmental and natural resource economics, environmental and agricultural policies, water management, irrigation, groundwater, ecosystems protection, nonpoint pollution, water scarcity, droughts, and climate change.

Daniel Crespo

Daniel Crespo (Zaragoza, 1983) is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Zaragoza in the Department of Economic Analysis. He completed an MSc degree in Economics and a degree in Economics from the University of Zaragoza. He has a PhD scholarship at the Department of Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria, CITA-Government of Aragon. He is interested in investigating environmental and natural resources economics, environmental and agricultural policies, water modeling and optimization, water management, water scarcity and droughts, and climate change.

Daniel Crespo's research is focused on upstream-downstream conflicts, integration of ecosystems health and environmental benefits in water management, and the analysis of the reliability of water systems in the face of more frequent, longer-lasting, and more intense drought events.

Safa Baccour

Safa Baccour is currently doing her Ph.D. at the University of Zaragoza. Her research focuses on developing an integrated hydro-economic model for the Ebro River Basin, assessing the economics of water allocation and water quality under normal and drought conditions, and evaluating climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. She earned her engineering degree in rural economics from the University of Agronomy of Mograne in Tunisia (2016) and an MSc in Integrated Planning for Rural Development and Environmental Management from the University of Lleida IAMZ-CIHEAM (2018). She has been the recipient of several scholarships and awards, including the FPI-INIA Ph.D. scholarship of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Her research interests include water allocation and water quality assessment at the river basin scale, water policy analysis, climate change, environmental impact assessment, and economics of natural resources management, stochastic variables, and agent-based modeling.