16 July 2010
Cranes towered over an empty construction site near the coast of Alicante, Spain, last month. A building boom that had brought changes to Spain's coastline has more recently spread deep into the country's heartland. (Julio Aracil/ Bloomberg News)
MADRID - Every day in Spain more than 7.7 hectares of coast are destroyed by the violent urbanisation which, during the last 10 years, affected shores that in the past were well preserved, such as the ones in Cantabria, in Asturias or in Galicia. This is what Greenpeace has revealed in the report presented today.
According to the ecological association, 44% of the Spanish population live on the coast, which represents only 7% of the national territory. The result is a massive exploitation of Spanish shores and an ''attack on the last virgin spots'' that doesn't seem to stop. From 1987 to 2005, 50,504 hectares of land included in the first two kilometres of coast had been destroyed, the report says. And this figure doesn't count the Canary Islands.
''We all know that the attack on the coast has been uncontrollable in the past few years and that the destruction is going on, while politicians are trying to cancel the Coastal Law, the only law that protects the shores'', commented Greenpeace Spain's Head, Juan Lopez de Urialde. According to Greenpeace, in the last decade a massive urbanisation, similar to the one of the 1960s, took place.
''Today, we suffer from environmental repercussions and from the economic crisis, but politicians don't seem to have noted the causes of these problems.''
Source: ANSAmed.
Add your comment
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
