Environmental organizations have harshly attacked a parliamentary majority formed in the Catalan Chamber with which they propose, in their opinion, delaying the approval of the special protection areas for birds (Zepas) in the Llobregat Delta, which should promote the Government.
The approval of this expansion of the Zepas (which the Government has promised to carry out shortly) is a demand contained in the letter of formal notice sent by the European Commission to the kingdom of Spain due to the insufficient protection of the Llobregat delta as a result of the large infrastructures created 20 years ago (expansion of the airport and diversion of the mouth of the Llobregat). The infringement procedure against Spain is a harsh blow from the EU to the administrations for keeping the Llobregat delta unprotected.
This past Thursday, October 5, the Parliament of Catalonia approved a resolution with the support of different groups (Junts, PSC, PP and VOX) that will mean a delay in the promotion of these new Zepas. The agreement, which was opposed by ERC, Comuns and CUP, gives the Government a period of 15 days to form three dialogue tables to delimit the Zepas, improve hydraulic infrastructure and review the regulations of the Parc Agrari.
"This resolution puts even more pressure on a terribly degraded territory: the Llobregat delta. It is an unnatural alliance that shows that the economic and territorial model of the PSC for the Baix Llobregat is not very different from the groups of the right", says Ecologists in Action.
"Under the apparently understandable argument of seeking "consensus" with the territorial agents (municipalities and the agro-industrial and peasant sector), the motion asks to postpone the approval of the expansion of the delta Zepa," lament the environmentalists.
The expansion of the Zepas is a legal imperative that emanates from the Birds Directive of the European Union and is applied with exclusively scientific criteria of the presence and nesting of protected species. “Pretending that political criteria or economic interests should guide the delimitation of the Zepa is a perversion of the norm, and in essence it is asking for a right of veto, given that what is intended is that a local political will could prevent the much proclaimed "consensus".
“This is a stratagem that directly violates community legislation and would bring the Generalitat even closer to being tried in the European courts, and possibly sentenced to pay million-dollar fines,” says Ecologistes en Acció.
Secondly, the resolution calls for improving hydraulic and drainage facilities. “This is a matter of common sense that all the governments of the Generalitat until now (including those of the PSC and Junts) have systematically failed to comply with,” this organization values.
The hydrological system is not only for the ditch and rain drainage, but it is also an ecosystem that, in compliance with the Water Framework Directive, must be restored and its environmental values recovered.
The parliamentary pact also calls for the processing of the Special Plan for the Protection of Natural Spaces, a document that successive governments of the Generalitat have intentionally left in a drawer.
Thirdly, the review of the Special Plan for the Agrarian Park is requested. For Ecologistes en Acció, this draft seeks "a radical and ultra-liberal transformation" of the agrarian model of that territory. Instead of peasant agriculture, of small sustainable farms that generate quality jobs near the city, "we are looking for an industrial model in which - with hyper-technification, robotization and digitalization - crops are grown under greenhouses with minimal labor. work", according to this organization.
This would entail "not only an immense loss of jobs, but also a profound degradation of the environmental quality of the agricultural park, which today is a mosaic in which small and medium-sized farms, with outstanding social environmental values, coexist, although not without difficulties." , and other social uses that would be seriously damaged.
For all this, Ecologistes en Acció asks the Government to take into account not only the political intentions of these parties and businessmen but also of citizens as a whole, and increase the protection of the territory with the immediate approval of the expansion of the ZEPA and commit for peasant, ecological and dignified agricultural production.
