One more year, this March 22, World Water Day is celebrated under the slogan, proposed by the United Nations, "Save the glaciers" with the aim of raising awareness among societies about the importance of glacier conservation and the need to start acting in the face of the water crisis.
For Lanzarote and the Canary Islands, it is also a very special day in a historic year because it also commemorates the 60th anniversary of the inauguration, in the spring of 1965, of the Díaz Rijo desalination plant. An installation that would mark a milestone as it was the first plant in Europe capable of transforming seawater into drinking water.
The installation and commissioning of this desalination plant produced an exponential change on an island that until that moment faced serious problems of drinking water supply, and what we had arrived mainly on ships from other islands with water resources that we did not have in Lanzarote.
The plant is named after Manuel Díaz Rijo, the naval engineer who, together with his brother José and the engineer Javier Pinacho, promoted this visionary project that transformed the water reality of Lanzarote and facilitated population and tourism growth, and improved the quality of life of residents.
And precisely, because the Canary Islands are pioneers in desalination, the next XIV International Water Congress, organized by the Spanish Desalination and Reuse Association (AEDyR) will be based on the islands, specifically the Adán Martín Auditorium in Tenerife, between June 24 and 26, with the slogan '60 years of innovation in desalination and reuse' and Lanzarote will be the main island.
However, in this new anniversary of World Water Day we must all reflect more deeply, administrations, companies and citizens in general. The water crisis caused by drought and climate change is visibly affecting the integral water cycle.
Lanzarote has also been an example, precisely because of its need for drinking water, of what we call the culture of water: maretas, cisterns, ditches... any container, any traditional hydraulic engineering construction has served us for water collection. Today more than ever we must maintain that water culture and reflect again on the reality that responsible consumption benefits the planet and benefits us all.
We face one more year of World Water Day in the midst of the declaration of water emergency, approved in November 2024 by the Insular Water Council. An emergency declaration that will allow us to easily access investments in production improvements, in reducing losses in distribution, and that also entails the responsibility of all citizens to face the mismatches between production and consumption suffered by our hydraulic infrastructures.
From the Lanzarote Water Consortium we are laying the foundations to achieve, in the midst of the emergency declaration, lay the foundations for a more productive integral water cycle, which ensures the needs of the population 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but which at the same time is an example of a sustainable model, both in production and consumption.
