A long-term view of water consumption in Barcelona (1860–2011): from deprivation to abundance and eco-efficiency?

Abstract

Water consumption in Barcelona in Spain, and the corresponding water imprint, followed a path resembling an Environmental Kuznets Curve. They grew slowly from the mid-19th century before reaching a peak in 1967–70, and a downward trend followed up to 2010. This paper uses a decomposition analysis to assess the role played by population growth, income increase and water intensity as determinants of these trends. It is stressed that water intensity does not express technical change alone, but includes social inequalities, consumer habits and cultural perceptions as well. It can be explained by taking into account the social conflicts and public policies of each period.

Keywords:

• urban water consumption
• IPAT decomposition analysis
• social conflicts
• New Water Culture
• Barcelona

Acknowledgements

Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the PIRVE seminar on History of Urban Environmental Imprint held at the Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris, September 2009; at the V Simposio de la Sociedad Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Historia Ambiental (SOLCHA) held in Villa de Leyva, Colombia, June 2012; and at the 3rd and 4th Seminario Internacional sobre Metabolismo Social held at the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México, November 2011 and January 2014. The authors kindly thank all comments received, and the generous support in performing the IPAT structural decomposition analysis given by Rosa Duarte, Vicente Pinilla and Ana Serrano at the University of Zaragoza; and also to Javier Martínez-Galarraga at the University of Valencia for the help and data provided in regionalizing at provincial and local levels the available historical series of Spanish gross domestic product (GDP). None is responsible of the authors’ own mistakes.

Notes

1. This series is a reasonable proxy to the total amount of water delivered from outside or extracted from the underground of the city to be consumed in different urban end usages. This overall provision is called here ‘water endowment’ so as to distinguish it from the actual end uses that became increasingly metered by the private utility SGAB (now AGBAR). The difference between the amount of water endowed and metered in end-uses includes two kind of water ‘losses’: the physical leakages in the supplying network and non-metered end uses. The water taken by people from public fountains is included in the latter group.