An end to subjectivities. FANMED urges the Government to review the environmental protection model

Following the announcement of the Balearic Government to prepare a first decree of urgent measures of administrative simplification, which would affect the Balearic Environment Commission, the Federation of Associations and Nautical Activities for Environmental Issues (FANMED) proposes to the Government to abandon the environmental management model based on prohibition and above all that the decisions to be taken are supported by technical reports.

FANMED assures that it "supports this action as long as it serves to streamline, rationalize and protect the environment, in a sensible and common-sense way". But it recalls the shortcomings they have found in the functioning of the Balearic Environment Commission.

Some months ago, the entity gathered information confirming the lack of objectivity in matters that should be subject to environmental impact assessment. As well as the issuing of insufficiently motivated reports. In this regard, FANMED recalls that the Ministry of Ecological Transition has a "Methodological guide for environmental impact assessment in the Natura 2000 Network", and that this guide would have been a good tool to avoid subjectivity and arbitrariness. 

With regard to the simplified environmental impact assessment procedure, the organization explains that "the minimum degree of impact should have been established with quantifiable criteria, in order to specify the projects or actions that should have been subject to this procedure". 

And as a last point, FANMED highlights the risk posed by the existence of an emergency procedure in the declaration of a protected natural area. "Issues as important as environmental regulation must be very clear and, above all, very well founded on technical or scientific reports, depending on the case," they state. According to the organization, the lack of parameters and protocols with clear content when evaluating projects that require it, can lead to arbitrariness and subjectivity in decisions, and bewilderment among the citizens affected by such decisions.

FANMED once again reminds the Government of the BOIB published on 16th of December, one of the last files of the last legislature, which stated: "There will also be impacts due to the effect of the shadow of the boats, which reduces the light reaching the posidonia". The organization understands that this statement is made with a lack of rigor and "the worst thing is the disaffection caused in the citizenship by the excess of ideology", they state.