|  Leading ecological organisations have warned that Spain is still one of the European countries with the most serious desertification and that it is starting to affect the National Parks, the jewels in Spain's biodiversity crown.
As part of the 2009 World Day to Combat Desertification, ecologists are pushing the theme 'Conserving Land and Water = Securing our Common Future' and hope to draw attention to the problem of desertification, which is already affecting 30% of Spain.
The main causes of desertification are climate change, intensive farming and over-exploitation of natural water resources.
Despite the fact that Spain already has an anti-desertification plan in place, Julio Barea, Greenpeace's spokesperson for pollution , is pessimistic about the effectiveness of measures currently being taken.
According to United Nations data, desertification is already affecting some 1.2 billion people who live off the land, and 200 million of them suffer such extreme effects of the phenomenon that they are forced to abandon their land and migrate to other areas.
Ecologists believe that parts of Spain, like the Doņana National Park in Andalucia, are in grave danger of disappearing if people continue to build and over-exploit resources as they are doing at the moment. |
