Posidonia, another victim of the unsustainable Balearic model

PalmaFor years, scientists have strived hard to make society in general, and especially the ruling class, understand that environmental protection was not a whim, nor a trend, but an inescapable necessity. Obviously, the little success they have had is attributable to many factors, but in the case of the Balearic Islands, it basically has to be attributed to a production model based on land consumption. The sustained growth for more than half a century has always been based on breaking records of people. More tourists and more inhabitants.

This system has forced us to pay a very high price as a society, in many aspects, and one has been the direct impact on natural resources. Posidonia, the plant that oxygenates and keeps the waters transparent, which the tourism sector and institutions like to promote so much, has seen how its health has begun to deteriorate between uncontrolled anchoring, sewage discharges, and the progressive warming of the sea.

The work of the Pact Government with the Posidonia Decree must be recognized, as it laid the foundations to tackle the easiest, but no less important, issue: the ships that dropped anchor without a second thought. Today, the results of having regulations and control actions that have managed to reduce, but not eliminate, the actions of irresponsible sailors, who are a minority, are visible.

At the other extreme, however, is the warming of the water. An unstoppable phenomenon in the short term that has already set off all the alarms. Halfway there is an action that the Administration can and must take, and which for the moment is characterized by significant neglect: the improvement of wastewater treatment.

Between the years 2000 and 2025, the resident population of the Islands has grown by 45%, and the number of international tourist arrivals by 57%. There are few territories in the world that experience these numbers, and that can assume them in every sense. Of course, the investment of public resources to improve purification and water treatment has been infinitely lower. It has been more important, for rulers of all colors, to go to the United Kingdom and Germany and spend public money to ask for more tourists to come, and with photos of crystal-clear waters, rather than investing in maintaining them.

Posidonia is much more than a particle filter. It is the lung of the sea, the guarantor of biodiversity that we islanders demonstrate we do not know how to conserve. It is curious that in this case its fundamental role for tourism has not even served. We must demand from the public authorities an urgent investment in water purification and a real control of the increase in tourist places around a fact in which, it is supposed, there should be a total consensus.