Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
eraging 71 percent. In five cases, the percentage of the population working in agricul-
tural/livestock/extractive sectors does not exceed 25 percent of the total (Carrasco et
al. 2003). Bearing in mind that the data available are from 2001, the current situation
is even more marked.
These aspects are some of the factors that prevent the local population from iden-
tifying with the territory and are, therefore, major obstacles blocking effective partici-
pation. However, there is another factor that causes disjointed relations between pop-
ulations included in each of the three sectors and, especially, between the three
sectors. If the area of the Guadiamar ever constituted a connected, structured territory
in the past, this certainly has not been the case for some time. The specific ecological,
socioeconomic, and cultural characteristics of each of the three sectors have acted in
the past and continue to act as obstacles to the establishment of social relations suffi-
cient to generate a territorial identity. Sadly, the development planning that currently
dominates the corridor area does not favor the correction of this trend and, indeed, ex-
acerbates it. This is happening in all three sectors, although most significantly and
profoundly in the sector corresponding to the region of Aljarafe.
In addition to the incapacity, inefficacy, limitations, and lack of political will for
substantive public engagement on the part of those responsible for the creation and
development of the Green Corridor project, there is another crucial explanatory fac-
tor. Opinion surveys conducted by Andalusia's Department of Environment and our
own interviews and discussion groups demonstrate the detachment and disinterest dis-
played by most of the current population around the Green Corridor in relation to the
Guadiamar River. For at least thirty years prior to the catastrophe, the Guadiamar and
subsequently the corridor have meant (and continue to mean) very little to most of the
population. It should be noted that the environmental condition of the river was
highly degraded even before the mining spill, as nearby towns, agricultural and live-
stock farms, and industries used the Guadiamar as a kind of sewer. For example, waste
from olive processing operations was dumped in the river. This indifference to the
river as a system is now combined with an influx of new residents who have a very lim-
ited, although potentially transformative, relationship with the river and the corridor
concept.
One decisive factor that explains this lack of a connection is the process of unsus-
tainable development that has characterized the area in recent years, particularly in
the sector corresponding to Aljarafe. This sector is feeling the full force of urban
sprawl spreading around the Seville-Huelva motorway, a new axis that breaks the tra-
ditional north-south structure of the region and has provoked the exponential accel-
eration of changes in both population and land-use patterns. A large portion of the
current population in the central zone moved there only recently; their activities and
interests, like most of the native population, are increasingly oblivious to the environ-
ment of the river.
Although this indifference in the population is notable in relation to the particular
stretch of the river corridor that runs through each of the three sectors defined in
the area, it is magnified in relation to the protected space as a whole. The level of
awareness among the populations in each of these areas that they are part of a single
