Portugal Facing Possibility Of Worst Drought In 300 Years

LISBON, Apr 15 (IPS) - "April showers bring May flowers, according to the old proverb. But this year in Portugal, April showers are desperately needed to prevent what could develop into the country's worst drought in 300 years.

Portugal is in the grip of a drought so severe that if the current lack of rain continues, the country will be facing a catastrophic phenomenon repeated every 300 years in its northern region and every 135 years in the south. And even if precipitation returns to normal levels between April and September, the country will still be plagued by a less severe drought, a pattern that tends to run on a 40-year cycle.

These were the main conclusions reached in a report released this week by the National Water Institute (INAG), which added that the problem has now reached even more serious proportions than expected in February, when experts were predicting the worst drought in a century.

The INAG report noted that thanks to the rains that fell in northern Portugal last month, 26 percent of that part of the country was experiencing ”slight drought” as of Mar. 31, while the rest of the country fell into the categories of ”severe” or ”extreme” drought. Two weeks before the precipitation that fell in the last 10 days of March, a full 88 percent of Portugal -- which has a total area of 89,000 square kilometres and a population of 10.2 million -- was suffering from severe or extreme drought conditions. The director of the Centre for Rural Engineering Studies at the Higher Institute of Agronomy, Luis Santos Pereira, continues to deny that the current situation is a result of climate change, although he admits that this phenomenon ”does have an influence on the patterns of precipitation, flooding and droughts over the long and medium term.”

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