The central government and the Andalusian Government have reached, after weeks of negotiations and months of hostilities, an agreement on Doñana that will be presented today by the Minister of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, and the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno. The axes of the pact will be the protection of the difficult ecological balance of the area and compensation to farmers, according to sources familiar with the agreement.
The Board explained yesterday that President Moreno and Minister Ribera will offer a joint press conference today and sign the protocol for the sustainable territorial development of the area of influence of the Doñana natural space. The details of the agreement have not been revealed, but the environmentalists trust that the Board will definitively park the controversial law that provided for expanding irrigation and that began to be processed in the Andalusian Parliament, with the rejection not only of the environmentalists themselves, but also of the European Commission, the scientific community and the opposition.
As soon as it became known that the Board's intention was to expand irrigation, the central government expressed its strong protest. And he was not left alone. Their criticism was supported by European authorities and even UNESCO, among other institutions, as well as environmental groups. Juanma Moreno's Executive claimed to act in favor of farmers, but there were also representatives of this sector who protested against the project, since it could affect the park's ecosystem. The permits to further deplete the area's damaged aquifers, they said, “means bread for today and hunger for tomorrow.”
In order for the negotiation to reach a successful conclusion, the president of the Board, Juanma Moreno, suspended the processing of the bill in Parliament and opened a period of one month to build bridges between the opposing parties and, in his words, “ always listening to the farmers.” The time scheduled for negotiation ran out a couple of weeks ago and, with the deadline, so did the patience of environmental defenders, who finally saw how the imminent signing of an agreement was announced yesterday. Doñana, they say, “cannot wait any longer.”
Before the public presentation of the agreement, the president of the Doñana participation council, Miguel Delibes, at the suggestion of the Board, has called the members of the council to a meeting to inform them of its content at the Salvador Távora theater in Almonte ( Huelva).
On October 3, Moreno and Ribera announced after a meeting that the approval of the proposed law for the management of irrigation in the northern crown of Doñana in the Andalusian Parliament was postponed and that they were launching a dialogue with all parties, at the beginning of a month, to find a solution to both this issue and the territorial development of the region.
For this purpose, a working group was formed that met on October 9 and, since then until now, has held meetings and received contributions from the different economic and social agents of the region to seek a solution that is as consensual as possible.
As indicated at the time, the agreement will be similar to that of the Mar Menor Technical Office (Murcia) and will have the objective of marking priority actions in the Andalusian national park and protecting the ecosystem along with the socioeconomic conditions in the area.
After the month of deadline, representatives of the Junta de Andalucía and the Government have called for caution on several occasions and have always been optimistic about the possibility of reaching an agreement.
The Platform in Defense of County Irrigation, which represents the farmers who would benefit from this new regulation that was brought to Parliament, requested a few days ago that the initiative return to the Andalusian Chamber for debate and approval, a request to which Vox joined.
