Growing depopulation and climate change have received increasing attention in the media. This article shares some insights that are common among experts in rural development regarding depopulation and rurality, and some perhaps less obvious aspects related with the interaction between depopulation and climate change.

One viewpoint common among rural development experts is that in Spain there are different types of rurality. The reality of the Emptied Spain of Castile and Leon, La Mancha and Aragon is very different to that of the agro-towns in Andalusia and Extremadura. Depopulation is a particularly pressing problem in the former, whereas unemployment is in the latter. Furthermore, the experts warn us that everyday mobility in the rural world is much greater than usually believed, which makes it difficult to establish a geographical unit for analysis. It is increasingly frequent for people to live in one municipality, work in another, and access basic education and health services in a third, all within a radius of 25 km (or more). According to the experts, these functional units in the rural world have overtaken municipalities and are currently undergoing a process of redefinition. 

Another common idea is the diversity of factors that are aggravating depopulation. Figure 1 shows depopulation factors that are recurrent in the literature. Some, such as youth migration, low birth rates, industrial relocation or lack of economic diversification, are quite well known. Others, such as unfavourable market conditions for agricultural producers, or the hegemony of urban lifestyles and values, are perhaps less known but are equally important. Many factors mutually reinforce each other, aggravating the depopulation problem. For example, youth migration has a negative effect on birth rates, which in turn makes it difficult for economic diversification and social innovation initiatives to prosper.

Meanwhile, studies on depopulation also point towards factors (often called mitigation factors) that help to either palliate or revert depopulation. These include the development of agroindustry and of renewable energies (such as solar and wind power), rural and environmental tourism, immigration, housing availability, cultural and entertainment opportunities, the diffusion of a rural lifestyle, and connectivity with urban areas. With regard to all these factors mentioned, the experts also clarify nuances. Industrialisation, mechanisation and the concentration of farms and agricultural services in the hands of major companies (the so-called uberisation of the countryside) are presented as a solution to the lack of generational replacement. However, they also become part of the problem by hindering access to young farmers and immigrants to production resources. Furthermore, such concentration usually occurs in areas with better lands, which aggravates the abandonment of farms that are less productive and more vulnerable to soil degradation. 

Similarly, industrial development may generate many jobs, but this does not necessarily mean that it secures the population (this would be the case, for example, of solar farms or wind parks) and its impact on the environment can be very significant (as has occurred with the boom in the meat industry in Catalonia and Aragon and the subsequent risks of water contamination due to slurry). Rural tourism, for its part, was conceived as a support for farming activities. Scaling tourism and generating relatively stable jobs in rural areas is possible and desirable, providing that it is guaranteed that the benefits are capitalised by local actors, that housing gentrification is avoided, and that the carrying capacity of ecosystems is taken into account. 

An interesting note with respect to all of the above is the distinction that some experts make between population and territory, and the difficulty in promoting both. Population can be secured at the expense of the territory, as in the case of the macro pig farms; the territory can be “occupied” at the expense of securing the population, as in the case of renewable energies, and also it is possible to “uberise” farming activity at the expense of alienating the territory’s population.

In Spain, the study of the relationship between depopulation and rural development has a longer history than that of the relationship between climate change and rural development. Perhaps for this reason, climate change does not appear as a central issue in literature on rural development. And perhaps for this reason, too, there are few experts in rural development who recognise the existence of clear connections between climate change, depopulation and rural development. These connections, however, do exist. The literature on the impacts of climate change on the territory have clearly pointed to the evident advance of desertification in Spain and its relationship with the intensification of agriculture and also with its abandonment. Similarly, the risk of floods in coastal zones and their impact on tourism development and the securing of the population are increasingly patent. 

A first step for understanding the co-occurrence of depopulation and climate change consists of visualising their distribution around the territory. In recent months, spatial analyses have emerged on the prevalence of depopulation in Spain that enable identification of areas that are more and less affected. In Spain, the superimposing of such maps with maps of exposure to climate change (measured, for example, through the aridity risk) enables the identification of regions in which a dual exposure exists: it is estimated that 29% of the rural territory is exposed to high rates of depopulation, 45% to climate change, and 17.5% to both phenomena at once (see figure 2). 

These results must be explained, as they have been calculated based on very specific variables (aridity in the case of climate change and depopulation rate in that of depopulation) and the existence of different types of rurality, as already mentioned. In this analysis, rural is defined according to population density, land use and connectivity to urban hubs, and there is a distinction between remote, intermediate and accessible rurality (based on Reig et al., 2016). As illustrated by figure 3, it is estimated that the territory simultaneously exposed to climate change and depopulation would fall from the aforementioned 17.5% to around 11.5% in rural areas that are accessible (with low population density and predominantly agricultural uses, but well connected), and would increase to 23.3% in remote rural areas (with low population density, with predominantly agricultural uses and poorly connected).

Tackling the problems of depopulation in rural Spain requires us to look beyond the “usual suspects” and to start to better understand its interaction with climate change. As we have shown, a large part of Spain’s rural territory is simultaneously exposed to problems of depopulation and aridity. These two problems not only coexist, but also interact with each other. The abandoning of extensive livestock farming and forestry activities increase the sensitivity of the territory to the impacts of climate change; and leaving pastures and woodland unattended contributes to soil erosion and makes it more vulnerable to desertification, landscape homogenisation, and fires. Similarly, not all rural development solutions are necessarily desirable from an environmental viewpoint. Livestock farming intensification (such as macro pig farms), for example, can contribute to economic development, but it also increases the risk of overexploitation and of contamination of water resources, thus reducing the resilience of the territory and its population against periods of drought.

The study of the dynamics of depopulation and of the impacts of climate change is complex. The good news is that there is growing awareness regarding the need to study these processes in conjunction.

MAEZTU REDÍN, C. (2020): Analysis of recent trends in Spanish rural depopulation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Extraído de https://ddd.uab.cat/record/258731.

MARTÍNEZ, E. R., F. J. GISBERT, and I. C. MARTÍ (2016): Delimitación de áreas rurales y urbanas a nivel local: demografía, coberturas del suelo y accesibilidad, Fundación BBVA.

O’BRIEN, K., et al. (2004): «Mapping vulnerability to multiple stressors: climate change and globalization in India», Global Environmental Change, 14(4), 303-313.

POCULL BELLÉS, G. (2020): Mapping multiple-stressors of rural areas in Spain: identifying new geographical spots of vulnerability attention, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Extraído de https://ddd.uab.cat/record/258809.