From today until December 13, most of those responsible for climate change policies will meet in Madrid. They will talk about how to curb global warming, among other issues, but it is not clear to me that they will talk with the same intensity about water, that resource scarce for some and abundant for others, especially these days of stormy weather.

Watching Jalis de la Serna's impeccable report on "El país del Agua" I could see what it means to give a real political response to a water supply problem when it occurs, as it does in Australia. It was easy to compare it with the demagogy that surrounds us in Spain in relation to this resource, which will be scarce in the future if it is not already so.

According to statistics, one person consumes 150 liters of water per day, so 40 million Spaniards would consume 6 billion liters of water every day. These same statistics blame agriculture and the agri-food industry for the excessive consumption of this precious resource resource. How much truth is there in these statements? Let's do some quick numbers.

At project LIFE MCUBO we have had the opportunity to work for the last three years with 17 productive companies in the agri-food sector in the Basque Country, Navarra and La Rioja. These companies are fully committed to reducing water consumption. The project team has been able to identify, through the use of technological tools, a potential saving of 1,000 million liters per day in these 17 companies. Yes, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, in 2018, there were about 30,000 companies in this sector, extrapolating the result, they could save every day the equivalent of the consumption of all Spaniards for a year. Why don't they reduce it? Why don't they force them to do it?

First of all, it is true that a small part of these savings comes from simple measures, such as raising awareness among workers to reduce some consumption or the adoption of more efficient cleaning systems that, although they are somewhat more uncomfortable for the cleaning staff , could save 30-40% of water in this process. These measures, which are economically viable, should be mandatory and compliance should be ensured through inspections.

Other measures, which could be estimated at 25% of the total water savings identified, involve investments in technology and here we are faced with an economic dilemma. The savings, in euros, would involve only 6 €/day per business, while the investments in technology would be around 100,000 €, without counting the costs of maintenance, analytics, etc. As a result, no technological measure will allow companies to reduce this consumption considering the savings in the invoice water. Nor can the solution be to raise the price of water, because it could reduce the competitiveness of our agri-food industry, although we all know that the current cost is not the real one. But nowadays, not everything has to be economic return, that is why I am convinced that we have all called an electrician and changed the halogens at home to LED, even though the return in the invoice of light is not immediate.

But undoubtedly, the star saving measure is the reuse of water, specifically the water that comes out of the treatment plant of the companies and here, we collide with the politics and the mistrust of the consumer due to the lack of knowledge of the quality of the water offered by these companies after its use.

Companies in the agri-food sector cannot reuse water because it is prohibited by law, which limits the use of reclaimed water in the agri-food sector or establishes the conditions for water suitable for human consumption, respectively. In other words, some companies can discharge the water into the river, so that others can use it to irrigate or provide drinking water to a population or it can even be captured by another business to use it in their process; other companies can discharge it into the collector to be treated a second time (with the cost that this entails) along with the rest of the urban water, although practically, with a simple process, it could even be drinkable. But, in no case can they reintroduce it into their process.

How did we get to this status? We all remember those dirty rivers of the last century due to industrial discharges and the alarming news about environmental tragedies. subject It is very easy to lump all companies together, to blame them for pollution and to put up all kinds of legal barriers to avoid future tragedies. However, nowadays, most companies, at least those in the agri-food sector with which we have worked, work like people's kidneys, returning water to the river (or to the collector) in better conditions than the water they receive for their processes.

Are we going to take this challenge seriously ? I can only think of two possible solutions. Either the law changes and allows these companies - or at least a large part of them - to reuse water or we stop blaming them for the high water consumption. That's why I doubt that the Climate Summit will be serious about water, because no matter how much they try to convince us, most of the viable solutions are political, even if politically unpopular.