A UN study carried out by the University of Vienna criticises the amount of water tourists visiting the Malaga province use.
Titled ‘Water management in tourism’, the report signals an urgent need to quantify and control the amount of water given over to entertaining tourists on the Costa del Sol. The results of the findings were presented on Tuesday, September 17 in Malaga by one of the authors of the report, Günter Langergraber, who highlighted that incentives were needed to measure consumption as well as the need to reuse grey water from tourist zones and attractions in agricultural irrigation.
Hotels and leisure waste too much water
Statistics drawn from the study show that between 3.5 percent and 5.8 percent of global water consumption is used in tourism, and approximately 80 percent of that water is indirect, such as in food preparation, transport, and infrastructure. This means that 1% of all water consumption in the world goes to accommodation and leisure activities.
The UN’s director of sustainable development, Dirk Glaesser, stated that sustainable water management is essential to anywhere in the world wanting to develop its tourist industry. He went on to point out that the water use behaviours of tourists contrasted strikingly with those of local residents.
Currently, the reservoirs that the Costa del Sol relies on contain just 10 more months of usable water, and fingers are crossed throughout the region for a change in recent weather patterns this autumn and a return to substantial rainfall.
