Destroyed landscapes

Wherever I go to look for coastal locations to photograph I find the same reality: the seaboard is suffering daily agressions and who makes them is not punished. Dunes are covered by buildings and plots, cliffs are built to the edge, coves are sorrounded by houses.

El Portet, at Moraira, a few line is the beach, a yearby decreasing surface in which getting tan. Lots of beaches will dissapear or stop calling the tourist´s interest, but for the expensive, damaging and articial sand addition previous to every summer season by a ship that extracts it from the seabottom

Of the many interviews with people beside the sea, my personal conclusion is that speculation has been and still is, a permited reality. A few citizens have made lots of money using a communitary value, with the complicity in many cases of functionaries and politiciansof local administrations, as councils. Negligence allows that the result of all the nonsenses and law infractions has become the rule, a non-sustainable model of development that promotes destruction of natural habitats, social unbalance, corruption. And that is not my impression, you only have to take alook at the sanctions Spain is receiving from international level administrations.

THE BIG PROBLEM: Natural landscape destruction at the coastline.

WHY?

• Of course there are laws, but they have been and still are crearly insufficient to asure a good seaboard conservation.
• Laws are frequently vulnered.
• There are lots of profits to be achieved, sometimes it is worth to go against the law.

WHO?: There is a big corruption net spreaded. Some responsibles are officials, functionaries and politicians of public administrations, as well as big building enterprises.

WHERE?: Everywhere, most on the Mediterranean shores. Cities and villages raise towards the sea, limiting the beach extension, distroying or damaging the habitat. From Girona to Huelva, there are a lot of examples.
At the Atlantic seaboard the situation is not much better, although some ecologist initiatives are having a good acceptation and many denounces are sttoping the rythm of destruction.

WHAT HAPPENS LATER?: Natural landscape destruction, ruin or alteration of natural habitats (dunes, cliffs, beaches…), changes in marine water currents, loss of biodiversity, massification of population in certain times of the year, increase of water consumption and residual generation in the area, non depurated residual waters poured to the sea, luminic pollution, damages to the coastal historic monuments…

Spain has allowed the loss of many beauties of the nature and culture scenics at the coast, sacrified to obtain an immediate economic profit, under unsustainable strategies that miss the future. And the worst of it is that many places that still keep important natural and landscape values are under threat. Some of them will disappear very fast if we don´t act soon.

Villages grow without considering natural habitat destruction, in this example the dunes, limiting the beach to an ridiculous and decreasing surface.

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