Environmental accounting as a management tool in the Mediterranean context: the Spanish economy during the last 20 years

Although human presence is one of the main characteristics of the Mediterranean identity since ancient times, a false dialectic between conservation and social-economic development has emerged in recent decades. On the one hand, an economic growth policy is taken as the paradigm of social-economic development; on the other hand, there is a multi-scale conservation policy, in which natural protected areas, as patches of preserved nature, are used as one of the main tools to deal with the challenge of sustainability. The Mediterranean Basin is the habitat of many unique species and one of the 25 main biodiversity hotspots in the world, and as a consequence a strong conservation policy has been used to protect environmental values. At the same time, Mediterranean countries are deeply involved in promoting strong economic growth policies, which are not always compatible with environmental ones. In this paper, Spain has been studied as one model of this situation. Due to political reasons, Spanish economic growth and conservationist policies were pursued together during the last 20 years. As a result, Spain owns one of the largest networks of natural protected areas in Western Europe, and at the same time it has experienced one of the strongest periods of economic growths in the European and Mediterranean context during the 1980s and 1990s. An historical series of resource use in five annual periods in the last 20 years of conservation policy, and the effects on the preservation of natural capital have been investigated by means of the eMergy (spelled with an 'm') synthesis approach, which was used to characterize the flow of environmental services supplied by ecosystems, but not in monetary terms. This study shows that Spain is becoming less self-sufficient and more inefficient in resource use, comprehensively measured in eMergy terms. A large part of Spain's economy depends on imported goods and services, and most economic activities are based on tourist services and associated construction, which promotes intensification in the urban use of the territory and more intense environmental impacts and resource use intensification of those countries supplying the raw materials. The consequence is a decoupling of the Spanish economy from local environmental services and the increase of Ecological footprint of Spain, measured by means of eMergy-based indicators. In spite of the increase in number, area and associated budget of the natural protected areas and other conservation measures, the general sustainability of the nation is decreasing.