The recent water shortages in Spain have become a severe and lasting crisis.

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  1. BCN 1582 Individual Paper Template

Please select a country from your assigned continent and select to report on either water or climate change issues within that country. This could include challenges that the country faces or initiatives that the country has started. Provide data to support the discussion and explain the implications of the data for sustainability.

The paper length is two pages using this template; do not change the font style, font size, or line spacing; leave this first page intact. Add a works cited page for a total of four pages. Please provide citations for your data in any consistent and complete format such as: end notes or inline. Papers must be submitted through the e-Learning/Sakai course web site. Emailed papers will not be accepted. A Turnitin report is generated for you to review before final submission.

Grading criteria include but are not limited to:

  1. Structure and formatting
  1. Spelling and grammar, sentence structure, and general writing.
  2. Whether the template and format were followed.
  3. Appropriate use of citations and formatting.
  1. Content
  1. Are there at least three data points from legitimate sources.
  2. Are the data points appropriate and meaningful for the purposes of this paper.
  3. Does the discussion of the data provide a thoughtful analysis in the context of material presented in class and having to do with concepts of sustainability.
  4. Content copied from sources will be penalized. Please review the Turnitin report before final submission of your paper.

The recent water shortages in Spain have become a severe and lasting crisis. Spain is at water exploitation levels greater 40% indicating extreme water stress and unsustainable usage (European Environment Agency 2012). Climate experts warn that climate change is causing the Sahara to slowly creep north into the Spanish mainland (BBC 2008). Tension is high as competition for the scarce water grows among regions of Spain. If it wasn’t bad enough, Spain is experiencing its worst drought in the last 60 years. This has caused vast areas in the southeast east to dry up even more quickly. The lack of action to help relieve this problem has caused the situation to become extremely threatening to cities such as Barcelona. Barcelona has 5 million inhabitants and it struggles to provide water to them on a daily basis. The water surplus is on the verge of collapse and could fail in the fall unless heavy rains replenish the water reservoirs. More and more stress continues to be put on Spain’s water supply due to growing demand by agriculture, tourism and city development. Rainfall is expected to gradually decline in the coming years and climate change is expected to continue and worsen. The demand cannot be sustainably met through the use of past methods to meet water demands such as dams and water transfers. Spain is investigating several possible ways to relieve this problem and reduce its demand to more sustainable levels.

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Albeit, not a solution, one of the most obvious ways to help ease the water shortage in times of crisis is it redistribute fresh water from water rich areas in the Northwest of Spain to the parched areas in the Southeast of Spain. Many in Spain feel that if there are areas with surplus water supply there should be no areas in severe shortage, a sharing mentality. As the problem grows worse there is an opposing faction in the Northwest that are afraid of their resources being used hastily and for non-vital practices such as watering golf courses catering ...

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