Biodiversity and the Rain in Spain

The EU Biodiversity 2030 program kicked off in 2022, which led to the removal of 133 river barriers in Spain - the highest in Europe. With the recent devastating floods in Valencia, it is reasonable to raise an eyebrow and wonder if the two events are connected. It would be churlish at this stage to point to a direction of causality any more than local authorities immediately declared it was all down to climate change.? However, with an eyebrow up, we should pose some questions about the efficacy of EU-centralised biodiversity-first policy trumping local flood resilience.

The tension between barrier removal and flood management exposes potential misalignment of incentives. As Mehryar and Surminski (2021) succinctly observed: "There is often a tendency among decision-makers to give primacy to measures that provide immediate protection over those that have long-term and indirect impacts." The EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 (going to be a busy year for climate targets) appears not to take their advice by incentivising local authorities to prioritise biodiversity initiatives with short-term visible over long-term invisible flood protection.? History in Finance tells us that misalignments of incentives almost lead to catastrophes.

Effective flood resilience requires a more nuanced approach than the current policy exemplified by the EIB’s 2023 “No barrier to river diversity”, which opens with a nuance-free declaration that “dams are bad for rivers”. Some academics writing in Nature, solemnly declared in 2020 that dams were a hotbed of CO2 emissions.?

We need to adopt a more risk-based approach to this. We should start by combining social and human capital, which must work alongside natural and physical infrastructure, not in opposition to it. Financial resources must align with local risk profiles rather than targets set by remote bodies such as the EIB. The historical separation of these elements has created artificial barriers based on narratives to effective flood management where lives matter, as Valencia has found out the hard way.

Before removing another barrier, we must improve how we measure and analyse river systems. The current approach to risk measurement needs to be revised, reflecting a need for more consistent and homogenous data to build insights into river dynamics. We need to replace environmental ideology with complex measurements and real-time AI-driven analytics.

An analytical approach means understanding fluid dynamics under various conditions—from drought to flood, clear water to sediment-heavy flows. Only then can we optimise outcomes by prioritising flood resilience while considering biodiversity rather than vice versa.

We should treat a river system wired like a nervous system: thousands of IoT sensors monitoring water levels, flow rates, sediment loads, and weather conditions in real time. The system would operate in two modes: strategic planning for optimising barrier placement and design and tactical mode for real-time flood response. AI algorithms would crunch historical data alongside real-time measurements to optimise barrier placement and design, weighing costs against benefits across entire watersheds.

This isn't about removing barriers wholesale or leaving them as they are - it's about intelligent, data-driven decisions that protect communities while respecting environmental needs. We can move beyond the false choice between flood protection and biodiversity. Today's technology exists to create sophisticated, responsive flood management systems that serve both goals. What's needed now is the will to implement these solutions at scale.

The old saying "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" belongs to a simpler era. Today's reality demands more intelligent systems driven by data and analytics that work in real-time. The devastating floods in Valencia should serve as a wake-up call for everyone - flood management experts, financial institutions, and government agencies alike - to fundamentally rethink our approach to river management and flood resilience. The tools exist; it's time to use them.