Competing demands for irrigation water: golf and agriculture in Spain

In many countries where water resources are under stress, there is a perception that irrigating golf courses causes significant additional abstraction, and that this has major impacts on the environment and other abstractors, including irrigated agriculture. This paper provides a quantitative assessment of water use within the golf sector in Spain, and compares it with irrigated agriculture. It is based on literature review, a national survey of golf course irrigation practices, and a correlation of reported irrigation consumption against agroclimate. Using a geographical information system (GIS), the water consumption for all golf courses in Spain was modelled and mapped, and the total water consumption estimated. The results show that the volume of water used for golf irrigation is extremely small compared to agricultural irrigation. Furthermore, a significant portion comes from wastewater reuse (41%) and desalination (7%), rather than direct abstraction, which competes with agriculture. However, it is concentrated in particular tourist areas and could cause local problems. The average economic productivity of the water used for golf, estimated at around 9 € m −3 in direct benefits (course fees) and 28 € m −3 if including the benefits to the tourist industry, is very much higher than for even high‐value agricultural crops. These results suggest that irrigating golf courses for tourism purposes is an economically rational water use in Spain, even though the transfer of resources from agriculture is controversial.