Severe water crisis in southern Spain under expanding irrigated agriculture: A multidimensional drought analysis and ontological & epistemological reflections

The Axarquía region in southern Spain is a hotspot of avocado and mango production in Europe. The region underwent a severe water crisis in 2019-2024 that caused the near-depletion of its large reservoir, a drop of groundwater to sea-level in many parts of the main aquifer, and large socio-economic impacts. Our work examines the causes of this crisis and contrasts the dynamics and management lessons in Axarquía with other regions facing similar challenges. We also reflect on the process and challenges associated with conducting multidisciplinary research on droughts.

Central to our analysis was the examination of water use, demand, availability, accuracy of official estimates, and water management during normal vs. drought periods. We analyzed hydro-meteorological time series (dam inflows and outflows, reservoir and groundwater levels, pluviometry) to identify the duration and intensity of droughts in 1996–2024 and trends and temporal relations between variables. We conducted an in-depth review of drought management plans, land-use regulations, and all water management plans since 1998, verifying the water balance with own estimates based on irrigated area and water permits.

We show that the Axarquía water crisis was caused by a confluence of shorter and long-term dynamics. An unusually severe multi-year meteorological drought directly impacted reservoir and aquifer levels. At the same time, water demand for irrigation has steadily increased over the last two decades because of expanding irrigated avocado and mango plantations, diminishing the resilience to meteorological drought and exacerbating drought propagation.  We present evidence of significant management shortcomings, including large uncertainties around water use and availability, lack of extraction metering, permit overallocation, and likely significant irregular freshwater extraction.

We conclude that water management must go beyond traditional supply-side (increase water availability) and demand-side (increase efficiency) measures and impose stricter limits on demand (e.g., caps on irrigated area) combined with a more accurate assessment of water availability (improved models and monitoring) and use (real-time metering at all extraction points), flexible permits based on available water resources, and effective enforcement. These measures combined would reduce the likelihood of future crises under meteorological drought conditions.

Water crises and other extreme events (e.g. floods, wildfires, famines) are almost always the combined result of human–environment interactions and responses. This makes it important to analyze them from a multidisciplinary perspective. In our work, we adopted an explanation-oriented methodology that entails constructing causal histories of interrelated social and biophysical events through abductive reasoning, which seeks to identify the best or most plausible explanations (e.g., Walters & Vayda, 2020).

The challenge of such an analysis is that it is difficult to know a priori what variables are relevant among the many processes involved. Data gathering and analysis were iterative processes, as new insights generated new lines of investigation. Another challenge is that the resulting work does not fit neatly in existing disciplines and journals’ ontological stances. We argue that a causal explanation of the “why” and “how” of social-ecological crises necessarily must adopt a historical and systemic perspective such as a causal-history methodology.