Spanish Environment Minister Arturo Gonzalo Aizpiri yesterday called for a
40 percent expansion of the country's protected areas, saying that Spain will be
particularly badly hit by global warming in the coming decades.
"Global warming is a fact ... and Spain and southern Europe will be the worst
affected in the short term by the phenomenon that is directly linked to the
atmospheric emission of greenhouse gases," the minister told a news conference
here, citing a recent UN report on the impacts of climate change.
Jose Manuel Moreno, a Spanish professor of ecology, told the same press
conference that Mediterranean ecosystems are among the world's most sensitive
and will be among those hardest-hit by global warming.
By 2070, between 16 and 44 million Europeans are projected to be suffering
from water shortages as the region's rivers may lose up to 80 percent of their
summer volume, said the professor, who coordinated a group of scientists who
wrote the chapter on Europe in the report issued Friday in Brussels by the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The chapter on Europe has not been released formally, but Moreno discussed
data from it at the news conference in Madrid.
The sea level will rise dramatically in the coming decades, in Spain's case a
rise of 0.4 of meter, resulting in a retreat of thecountry's beaches of 20 to 40
meters and putting 20 percent of thenation's coastal wetland at risk, Moreno
said.