The death of Domingo Jiménez Beltrán (Calatorao, Zaragoza, 1944-Águilas, Murcia, 2023), the first executive director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), has left us a little orphaned when he died (due to cancer of the colon), since it has been one of the fundamental referents to be able to interpret the socio-environmental changes that are taking place, as well as those that are necessary or pending.
Knowing his explanations allowed us to see the horizon illuminated thanks to the high beams that he always put on everything; he helped identify the agents that block advances in the new ecological regulations and knew how to generate complicity and draw up strategies to overcome the barriers that prevent true prosperity by reducing our footprint on the planet.
Jiménez Beltrán spoke as head of the Spanish delegation at the Rio de Janeiro conference (1992), which for him was the "moment of greatest hope" to face environmental challenges.
And he was an exemplary citizen, since all his knowledge treasured as a senior manager in various institutions was a capital that he returned to society by promoting multiple initiatives that completed a restless, fraternal and committed personality.
Industrial engineer from the UPM, he was general director of Environment in the Ministry of Public Works of Josep Borrell, and during his time at the EEA in Copenhagen he managed to make environmental impacts, energy, water, waste or biodiversity come into the political agenda of the EU, with reports that are an ecological portrait that brings out the colors to Europe. He was advisor to the Economic Office of President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and director of the Observatory of Sustainability in Spain.
Concerned about the power of “an emerging technocracy” and big corporations (who are making the citizenry “increasingly insignificant”), he lent his extensive knowledge to civil society.
He helped consolidate the Fundación Renovables, chaired the Fundación Retorna and participated in the creation of the Fundación Desarrollo Sostenible, focused on the idea of thinking globally and acting locally.
For this reason, he dedicated part of his life to revaluing the natural area of Castillo de Chuecos, in the Sierra de Almenara, which had become an example of connected self-sufficiency, and where he had his particular Central Park of sustainability. There he dedicated himself to nature conservation studies in Mediterranean ecosystems tirelessly seeking alliances to make his dreams come true.
No less remarkable is its contribution to the spread of the capital of empty Spain: a vast territory full of energy: sun and air, two pillars for obtaining (desalinated) water, interconnected information, food and a distributed industry.
His model was not globalization, but to make each region or territory a self-sufficient place connected in a multifunctional and resilient world in the face of climate change. All of his reflections have been collected on the web portal Cuentaconmingo.org.
His legacy is one of the best fruits of this political current with socialist roots that wants to reconcile with nature.
