Editorial
Towards a single management
model
It was a decision long-awaited
by many sectors of Catalan society. Almost a year ago now, on 29
November 1999 to be precise, the Official Gazette of the Government of
Catalonia published Decree 297/1999. It abolished the Directorate General
for the Natural Environment of the Department of Agriculture, Stockbreeding
and Fisheries and its functions of nature conservation were attributed
to the Directorate General for Natural Heritage and the Physical Environment
of the Department of the Environment. Finally, logic prevailed: a single
model was necessary for the management of natural areas in Catalonia, both
public and private. Since then, the management of natural heritage
has been undergoing a transition. Affairs are being put in order pending
the creation of the Agència Catalana de la Natura (Catalan Nature
Agency), the organism which will be responsible for unifying and piloting
the management of the country's natural heritage.
In this context of change
and in this moment of opportunity, this latest issue of Medi Ambient. Tecnologia
i cultura makes its appearance. In recent years, most natural areas have
been mistreated, there has not been a single, coherent policy. Now Catalonia
has a unique opportunity to adopt the latest management trends and direct
an imaginative policy to protect and preserve not only natural areas, but
also the whole country.
With regard to the contents
of this issue, first of all Martí Boada and Mònica Rivera,
of the Centre d’Estudis Ambientals de la Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona, follow the evolution of the idea of conservation, from the "reserves"
created in Mesopotamia to the mid-seventies, when democracy arrived in
our country. The authors highlight particularly the Montseny massif, the
paradigm of protectionism in Catalonia.
The geologist and environmental
expert Josep Maria Mallarach analyses the latest trends in management where,
increasingly, ecological criteria carry more weight when defining protection
policies.
The Ebro Delta Park is a
natural area which has always been characterised by the great deal of human
activity developed there. Rafael Balada, its director, explains how they
have got local residents to consider and defend that park as valuable heritage
after a history of setbacks.
Protected natural areas
are particularly suited to research and in many cases have become
essential instruments for scientific advance. Jaume Terradas, researcher
of the CREAF of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, details the
role these areas play in fomenting research. Over 2.6 million members and
an annual budget of 50,160 million ESP make the British National Trust
one of the most important non-governmental conservation bodies in the world.
Richard Ellis gives an account of this singular experience. The interview,
a regular section, features Lluís Paluzie, chairman of the Nature
Protection Council and a heavyweight in the history of protection in Catalonia.
Finally, the lawyer Ignasi
Doñate gives a breakdown of the legislative reality of the subject
matter of the twenty-seventh issue of Medi Ambient. Tecnologia i Cultura.
Lluís Reales
Editor of Medi Ambient.
Tecnologia i Cultura
The
origin of protected natural area
Martí Boada.
Mònica Rivera
Centre for Environmental
Studies. Department of Geography. Autonomous University of Barcelona
The authors examine how the
idea of conservation developed from the “reserves” created in ancient Mesopotamia
to the first references to protectionism in Catalonia. They also deal with
the begunnings of territorial planning in Catalonia and the environmental
revolt in the sixties, the key to protectionism in the presernt day.
It is generally accepted
that the protection and conservation of natural areas as they are understood
today began in the second half of the nineteenth century with the creation
of the Yellowstone National Park in the United States. From this event
onwards and in different contexts of time, intensity and geohistorical
situation, different forms of protection have continued to appear. The
creation of protected natural areas serves as a milestone in the history
of conservationism, which has its origins in the remote past and as the
result of different reasons. The objectives of the oldest ones were connected
mostly with hunting, as is the case of the origin of the hunting areas
of the count kings and treatises that exist on falconry in Catalonia. An
example is the first documented zoological collection of King John I the
Hunter that was conserved in a palace olive enclosure. In a different yet
not unrelated civilising context, Hernan Cortés wrote in his diary
of how impressed he was on his first visit to Moctezuma II’s palace in
Tenochtitlan by the live displays of different habitats with specimens
of flora and fauna from the Aztec Empire.
The oldest documentary reference
to the creation of definitive "reserves" comes from ancient Mesopotamia,
the birthplace of the three great Sumarian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilisations
that provided important knowledge on agriculture, gardening, stockbreeding
and fishing. Various Mesopotamian kings introduced the first animal reserves
for the privileged purpose of hunting and these are probably the first
examples of territorial space being submitted to regulation for the purposes
of leisure (Boada, 1997).
In terms of knowledge of
the natural environment and the role that it plays in the balanced nature
and health of the individual, it was Hippocrates (460-375 BC) who formulated
the "first environmental audits" and expounded that the health of both
the individual and society as a whole can only be understood by studying
the nature of their surroundings: "On arriving in a city or town, one should
observe the location of the place in relation to the winds and its waters,
whether the area is marshy, whether the ground is soft or hard, whether
it is situated in an elevated or flat area, what the surroundings are like".
The first urban and territorial
"planning" occurred during the period of Romanisation as a result of the
increase in mobility and in the ability to transform the natural environment.
Caton established the first land classification to regulate and organise
territory (see Figure Caton).
In Geographika, Strabo (63
BC to 19 BC), the geographer and historian, emphasises the extensive woodland
character of the Iberian peninsula, probably the result of his impressions
of the dense, closed character of the Iberian landscapes. Strabo made some
initial descriptions of his natural systems and wrote: "Iberia has many
roe-deer and wild horses. The people from Emporion produce flax and part
of their land is
good and part is bad with extensive and useless reeds".
The descriptions of the Iberian
natural heritage collected by the sage Pliny the Elder when he was procurator
of Baetica are also interesting. In his Natural History, he quotes one
of the first examples of an "ecological crime" in that storks were held
in such high honour because of the number of snakes that they killed that
anybody killing one would be given the death penalty.
Planning and the misuse
of forests and woodlands
Another well-known contribution
is De re rustica by the Hispano-Roman author Columela, which brought together
all of the Classical knowledge on agriculture and forestry and produced
what can be considered to be the first treatise on good agricultural and
forestry practices.
An early treatise on the
need to conserve and improve forests entitled Capitullare de Villis appeared
in the year 800. This was a Visigothic ordinance on royal properties that
reveals a preoccupation with managing and conserving the forest resources:
"Our forests must be carefully looked after. Damage by excess felling of
the forests, where they are necessary, must not be allowed. Planting should
be encouraged of juniper, apple, pear, plum, white beam, medlar, chestnut,
hazel, almond, mulberry, laurel, pine, walnut and cherry".
During the long process of
feudalisation, certain historical events led to political measures that
had a negative impact on the environment. This point will not be gone into
but there is the example of the order proclaimed by the viceroy Garcia
de Toledo in 1561 for the systematic burning of all woodland located near
to all important thoroughfares and, if necessary, all other woodlands in
the Principality, for they constituted an impregnable refuge for bandits.
He was congratulated for this action by Philip II "for the peacefulness
and calm that it established in the principality and earldom" (J. Reglà,
1962).
The first areas to come under
a definitive "system of protection" date from the demographic increase
and the human impact on the land. The over-exploitation of forests due
to the increasing demands of society and the heavy consumption of forestry
products by the domestic, handicraft, naval and protoindustrial sectors
explain the appearance of a normative document to put abuses in order and
to outline the organisation of an incipient form of "forest administration".
The first legislation on the "arrangement and conservation" of the forests
in Catalonia are the Forest Ordinances or the Solsona Forests Act (1627).
The document begins with "Many great excesses have been committed
in their exploitation, and limits have been exceeded (...), His Excellency
(...) prohibits (...) anybody (...) from removing the marks and signs on
the trees (...) or from felling marked trees". This extensive normative
document regulated felling, and the making of charcoal and pitch. It penalised
fire and other practices considered as being abusive.
Changes in the relationship
between society and nature
Likewise, it should be considered
that the age-old belief until well into the Enlightenment at the end of
the eighteenth century, was that natural resources were inexhaustible due
to divine or supernatural reasons. The prevailing belief was that
providence protected and regenerated all natural resources that were exploited
in any way by society and the idea of limits was non-existent. The continuous
exploitation of the forests and the considerable decrease in woodlands
during the eighteenth century would explain the appearance of the document
by the Marquis of Ensenada, signed 31 January 1748. The document, which
was an Order in Council, regulated the exploitation and conservation of
forests and woodlands. An outstanding aspect of this ordinance concerning
the development, cultivation and conservation of woodlands was the explicit
demand that all inhabitants in the whole country had to plant three trees
for each tree felled besides that which it was their duty as inhabitants
to plant every year, and only poor widows and infants were exempted from
this obligation. As has been established with documentary evidence, the
implementation of this regulation meant that some villages, by municipal
agreement, increased the number of trees that each inhabitant had to plant
before the end of the year to five.
The decree made it clear
that "for activities in the forest to be carried out correctly, planting,
pruning and felling are to be done with the most convenient methods, and
it is recommended that there be a place in each village that is well exposed
to the south and protected from the winds from the north for planting the
tallest, healthiest and most robust beech and oak trees, and that neither
grass nor herbage be pulled up for they maintain the humidity and dew in
summer."
With regard to felling and
pruning, the appropriate time during the year was given and how felling
should be done without damaging the tree. Orders were given for anybody
felling or chopping down without permission or incorrectly to be strictly
punished. Permission to cut down trees was always required and note was
made of the need to increase both new growth and the amount of woodland.
The first forest inventories originated from this important document managed
by what can be considered to be the first forest wardens, known curiously
enough as Naval Commissioners. This was a corps of agents with a representative
in each main forestry town in the Principality that carried out the control
and inventories of the forest and, if necessary, any tree felling.
It was not until the end
of the eighteenth century, however, that the first more or less well-constructed
proposals aimed at approaches that can be considered as the precursors
of conservationism were made. At European level, the early phases of the
industrial revolution were already producing an extraordinary impact on
the woodlands. A conceptual outline of nature had appeared in Western thought
that was comprised of three overall general views (Glacken, 1967; Goudie,
1990):
The theological view. That
is, the belief in a supreme entity that governs the rhythms of nature and
society. It coincided with supernatural Providence. (Urteaga, 1993).
The deterministic view. That
is, the idea that natural conditions are responsible for the evolution
of human societies. Montesquieu had already formulated this idea.
The anthropocentric view,
in the sense that, by reversing the order of the previous deterministic
view, it is human societies that influence and govern environmental rhythms
in a definite and increasing way and not the other way round. This view
arose not so much from philosophical reflection, which may be the case
with the previous two, but from the practical experience of observing the
important initial effects of deforestation.
One cannot fail to notice
fact that Humboldt emphasised the importance of some of the modifications
introduced by man in natural systems in his "Essay on the Geography of
Plants and the Physical Form of Plants". He dedicated this first piece
of work on environmental geography to his contemporary, Goethe, whom he
would join in some of the social gatherings organised by the latter where
artists, poets, writers and scientists would mingle together. The influence
that he had on the awakening of studies in natural resource management
in the setting of these German Romantic literary groups led by Goethe is
well known. Out of this context appeared Heinrich Cotta who was to play
an important role in establishing the nascent foundations of the conservationist
sciences through his formulation of the need to organise the rational exploitation
of natural resources (Boada & Saurí, 1999).
Cotta founded the Tharandt
Planning Institute, the first forestry school where Agustin Pascual, the
founder of the Forestry School in Villaviciosa de Odon, was trained at
the beginning of the nineteenth century (Gómez, 1992). A large proportion
of the classes at these institutions were initially made up of youths from
rural areas in Catalonia (Boada 1996). At the end of their training, some
of them (Bosch i Julià, the brothers Josep and Ramon Jordana, Sebastià
Soler, Primitiu Artigas, Joaquim Castellarnau) went on to make what were
the first contributions to the management of forest resources, the reforestation
of head waters, dune stabilisation, etc. Josep Jordana’s visit to the United
States in 1876 and 1877 and that of Rafael Puig i Valls in 1893 put them
in contact with the first protectionist formulations in the form of the
establishment of the Tree Festival in the state of Nebraska in 1872 and
the creation of the first national park in the world at Yellowstone in
the same year.
The need for protection
The indiscriminate exploitation
of the land and forests in the United States during the second half of
the nineteenth century led to the appearance of a conservationist trend
at the heart of the country’s federal institutions. The main objective
was to preserve certain areas from the pressure of colonisation according
to the idea that nature was no longer considered to be unlimited. It also
began to be conceived as a heritage that needed to be conserved for subsequent
generations (Saurí, 1993). The protected area was conceived as a
sanctuary of nature and untouchable by man in order to maintain it "virgin".
Yellowstone, the most extensive and most visited national park in the United
States, was formulated according to this way of thinking.
Following Cotta’s line, the
figure of the Tarragona forestry engineer Rafael Puig i Valls played a
pio- neering role with his contributions to the gestation of
conservationism and environmental awareness in Catalonia. Faced with the
continuous and intense destruction of the woodlands, he formed part of
a Commission made up of himself, another member of the Catalan Agricultural
Institute in Sant Isidre and two others from the Catalan Association for
Scientific Excursions in 1884 to organise a league in defence of the environment
in opposition to the abusive cutting down of forests and in order to create
essential legal regulations for protecting, conserving and restoring forest
landscapes. The first job of this commission, which was more than likely
one of the first conservationist associations in the country, was to draw
up a project for the reforestation of the Collserola sierra.
It was Puig i Valls that
made the Tree Fair known in an article entitled "Native land and trees"
that was published in the La Vanguardia newspaper on 21 September 1898.
Nevertheless, the idea of establishing reforestation from a socially binding
or popular perspective has already been mentioned above in the Order signed
by the Marquis of Ensenada in 1748.
The first Tree Fair was held
on 30 April 1899 in Barcelona. This popular homage to trees had different
antecedents such as that mentioned above by the Marquis of Ensenada, and
it was more than likely a consequence of Puig i Valls’ visit to the United
States in 1893 on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition held in Chicago.
During his long stay, in which time he travelled through various states,
it would appear that he found out about the Tree Day celebration that was
held for the first time on 10 April 1872 in the state of Nebraska. The
purpose of this fair was to deploy a broad-based popular initiative aimed
on the one hand at the recovery of woodlands and, on the other, at stimulating
people’s love for trees and the symbol of being grounded in the concept
of one’s native land (Boada, 1995).
Immediately after guiding
the Tree Fair, Puig i Valls broached the subject of the protection of natural
areas and became the precursor of conservationism in Catalonia, and the
whole of Spain, with a proposal to create a protected natural area. On
6 April 1902, he presented the basis for the Montserrat National Park project
and suggested that the same was needed for the Tibidabo and Montseny sierras.
At the same time, he also proposed that Cap de Creus be declared a place
of interest (Boada, 1995).
The first references to
protectionism in Spain
As has already been mentioned,
the origins of conservation policy in Spain are connected, predominantly,
with the sphere of forestry inherited from the forestry tradition linked
with the process of the sale of church lands in the nineteenth century.
The defence of the wholeness of the landscape and of natural values gave
forestryism a field in which to develop its naturalist, conservationist,
heritage and educational aspirations. The idea of protected natural areas
became one of the privileged meeting points for scientific as well as cultural
and informative knowledge on forests (Gómez, 1992).
The first specific form of
protection dates from 7 December 1916 when the National Parks Act was passed
in Spain (in force until 1957) (1). The National Parks Board was established
as the administrative authority by Royal Decree on 23 February 1917. The
chief role during this stage was played by Pedro Pidal i Bernaldo de Quirós,
Marquis of Villaviciosa from Asturias, the sponsor of the bill and the
first commissioner of the Spanish National Parks Service. Pidal agreed
with the forestryism ideas of the nineteenth century and established a
causal relationship between the impoverishment of the nation and the disappearance
of the woodland mass (Fernández, 1998). It is not surprising that
the first national parks were originally forest reserves and inspired to
some degree by the hygienist and anti-urban movement from the beginning
of that century. The father of Spanish national parks maintained that
"the national parks represent the virgin character of nature that is being
conserved; the less they are touched, the more virgin they will be".
The presentation and defence
of the National Parks Act came about within a complex political and socio-economic
context, both at European (with the First World War and the Russian Revolution
in the background) and national (extensive strikes) levels. Pidal believed
that ecological questions could not wait, even though there were more important
matters (Fernández, 1998). The fundamental lines of his protectionist
policy (based on mountain and forest landscapes) are the functions of tourism
(source of income) and recreation (people's enjoyment).
Puig i Valls and Pedro Pidal
both believed in regenerationist approaches; both of them believed that
education with regard to the environment and the recovery of the natural
environment were the only solution for a country engulfed in the colonial
fiasco of 98.
Catalonia: the first objections
and the social response to the aggression of the natural environment in
Catalonia
Apart from Puig i Valls’
context of forestryism, the starting point of the awareness of the destruction
of landscape in Catalonia is to be found during the Renaissance when interest
in science, learning, art and knowledge of the country was greatly stimulated
and projected through various associations and institutions, and also through
hiking and rambling which was a very particular way of coming closer to
nature. The founding of the Catalan Association for Scientific Hikes in
1876, the precursor of this movement which later became the Catalan Hikers'
Centre in 1891, marked a new stage in terms of the knowledge of the country
in naturalist terms and developed a new social use for landscape through
hiking and rambling.
The first documented objection
is to be found by Antoni Massó (1879). Considered a hiking pioneer
and the founder of the Catalan Association for Scientific Hikes, he warned
that in Montseny, "the destruction must be avoided of these magnificent
forests of colossal beech, giants of vegetation, both poetic and useful"
.
These early protectors of
nature in all probability had been guided by contributions made by the
first Catalan naturalists, of which Joan Salvador i Boscà was the
first member of a lineage of apothecaries that began the systematic study
of the country’s flora at the beginning of the seventeenth century. This
research continued throughout the seventeenth century and part of the eighteenth
century with the help of his son Jaume and grandsons Joan and Josep. Interest
in knowledge of the natural environment led to the creation in 1899 of
the Catalan Natural History Institution, founded by Salvador Maluquer,
Josep Mas de Xaxars and Antoni Novellas. A pioneering entity in the study
and defence of nature, it has been transformed and is fortunately highly
active at the present time. Operative for a hundred years, it has been
a unifying force for those studying and working in the different disciplines
of the natural environment.
The meteorologist Dionís
Puig gave a lecture at the Catalan Hikers' Centre in 1894 that went beyond
a mere speech. He outlined a hypothesis of global change and explained
his theory of how the meteorological regime had changed, with global change
being evident in a decrease in temperatures and precipitation as a consequence
of the deforestation of the forests and woodlands. He upheld that deforestation
at local level was responsible for causing flooding on the Barcelona plain.
In this context, Dionís Puig demanded that action be taken to stop
the improper tree felling that was going on in the country’s forests and
he supported Puig i Valls’ endeavours to introduce the tree fair (Boada,
1996).
At the turn of the century,
a proposal made by the La Ciutat Jardí (2) Civic Society in Barcelona
at the 3rd Catalan Congress on Hiking and Rambling, held in Tarragona in
April 1914, which set a historical antecedent in conservation policy in
Catalonia. In the proposal, a request was made to the Provincial Council
for a Plan for the Forestry Reserves and National Parks in Catalonia (Fernandez,
1998).
In 1921, a warning cry on
the sale of the Gressolet Forest in Alt Berguedà appeared in the
journal of the Catalan Hikers' Centre. It demanded a natural park to protect
the beauty and wealth of the forest as opposed to the threat of tree felling,
alleging the devastation of cultivated land downstream due to the non-retention
of rocky material during torrential rainfall. An intense rescue campaign
by the C.H.C. succeeded in preserving the forest intact.
Montseny, a paradigm of
protectionism
The Montseny massif is a
paradigmatic example of popular sensitivity in the defence of exceptional
landscape values, and of public intervention in the field of conservation.
The history of its conservation is valuable more as a comparable indicator
than as a local form of analysis and for this reason it is given special
attention in that it shows in a very significant way an important part
of the history of conservation, from the perspective of the different agents
involved.
Social demands for the protection
of Montseny stimulated the participation of the public authorities to bring
about a legal framework for protecting this area. In the somewhat timid
form of the Mountain Trust, it constitutes the first legal form of protection
for the landscape value of an area of territory in Catalonia. It became
a natural park at the end of the seventies and almost simultaneously (1978)
became part of the world network of Biosphere Reserves through the UNESCO
Man & Biosphere programme. It was also the first one in Catalonia to
do so.
Much earlier, however, at
the end of the eighteenth century, the Montseny forest reserves which were
made up fundamentally of fir, beech, oak, Scots pine, evergreen oak and
chestnut came under the jurisdiction of the State, together with the forests
in Tortosa, La Selva and Empordà (Aragó, 1964). This followed
the trend of events in the Enlightenment that had been started by the Bourbon
dynasty and realised in a policy of the Royal Navy of protection and encouragement
in a Decree by Monts in 1748.
The first serious attempt
to give Montseny a legal form of protection stemmed from the study carried
out in 1922 by the botanist Pius Font i Quer, in which he made a proposal
that appeared in the Official Chronicles of the Commonwealth of Catalonia
that the massif be declared a national park. This Institution had stated
its interest in creating parks in connection with the publication of the
Act of 7 December 1916 and the Decree of 23 February 1917 that defined
and created the national parks and places of national interest in Spain.
For this to be accomplished,
the areas deserving special protection had to be presented to the Directorate
General for Agriculture, Mines and Forests through the chief engineer of
the Provincial Forestry District. This was the administrative context in
which different entities and societies made proposals and how the District
came to propose the creation of two parks, one in Montserrat and the other
Montseny. The Commonwealth commissioned various studies that made up the
first corpus of interdisciplinary work for the creation of a protected
natural area. Given their interesting content, various examples are given
below:
"Montseny, National Park"
by
the botanist Dr. Pius Font i Quer:
"The purpose of the Montseny
National Park is to conserve the present vegetation and fauna in the mountains
by preventing its destruction or modification by man (...). Unfortunately,
Montseny has been seriously affected by the interventions of man; the National
Park should thus not only conserve that which exists but also restore everything
that has been destroyed (...)"
"Orientations for the
future National Park" by the zoologist Ignasi de Segarra:
" (...) This Montseny, that
is a country of coalmen and herds, of dense forests and havens for the
vestiges that we hold in high esteem. It is worthwhile doing everything
that we can to conserve it (...)". This well-known naturalist published
an excellent article in Science magazine in 1927 entitled "Montseny (Gloss
of the natural values of the region)" that was to become an indispensable
point of reference with a view to the future protection of the massif.
"Report" by Llorenç
i Artigues, secretary of the School of Fine Arts:
" Montseny is the richest
representation of land-scape in Catalonia (...) Its geographical position
gives it a unique and special location that has made it a centre of convergence
(...) with the whole landscape contributing to raise it up in a such a
representative way. Montseny, the ultimate transfiguration of the Pyrenees
in Catalonia (...) The mountain is becoming more and more a neighbour of
the city. Two factors are rapidly determining this proximity, the urban
spread of the city centre and the improved means of communication that
link the city of Barcelona with the Montseny massif. The parks in Barcelona
have not been constructed in an intelligent way and the same can be said
for the urban development of the mountains nearby. The invasion of the
mountain by people is a danger (…) Only one extreme measure can oppose
this ungracious and yet necessary invasion and that is by intervention.
No laboratory presents itself in such a magnificent way to a vast undertaking
as the attempt to take intervention from the city to the Montseny massif
in an attempt to convert it into a national park. The fusion of all of
man’s techniques in the joint task of civilising a whole mountain in an
intelligent way may be a great step and mark a fortunate stage in the course
of Catalan thought and social life in Catalonia".
"Montseny, National Park"
by the architect Serafí Bassas:
" (...) This monument to
nature in Catalonia must be conserved intact and protected (…). Once it
has been saved, it must be turned into the home of our culture and science.
This is why the most certain solution lies in the rapid declaration of
the organisation of the Montseny massif as a national park. In this way,
Montseny has become our national mountain; Barcelona made it into an extension
of the city, its own mountain garden. The most complete aspect of the massif
is undoubtedly the botanical one. In the same breath, we could also say
that no other aspect is in so much danger as the botanical one. The finest
of the oldest specimens of beech have recently fallen down. The magnificent
fir falls to the tragic sound of the axe.
It’s a good way of checking,
the fact that it was impossible to find various species seen by the botanist
Costa in the famous herbarium of the Salvador family (...)".
"Pathways of Montseny"
by Lluís Duran i Ventosa, MP:
"(...) Access and especially
the easy access to the picturesque areas of the countryside is something
that is being thrust upon us. (...) For this purpose, it is sufficient
to build cart tracks that are wide enough for the wagons that service farms
and passengers who want to enjoy and contemplate the beauty. (...) Nevertheless,
if the actions of the public authorities contribute in any way at all to
this, the trip to Montseny will need to be a Sunday outing and easy on
the good citizens of Barcelona (...)".
"The higher animals that
could exist in the Montseny National Park" by M. Rosell i Vila, lecturer
of zootechnics at the Higher College of Agriculture:
" (...) Oh, yes! There have
to be animals in Montseny. (...) The higher animals needed in Montseny
should not be as docile as pet animals nor should they be so wild that
they set on people. (...) Many of the animals that were proposed for the
National Park would be fine from the very first day. Others, like pets,
would need to be second generation for them to become unfamiliar with the
touch of man (...)".
Once the work of the experts
was carried out, the definitive step was the presentation of the motion
"Montseny, a Catalan National Park" by the MP for the Regionalist League,
Jaume Bofill i Mates, well known as a poet under the pseudonym of Guerau
de Liost, to the President’s Office and the Permanent Council of the Commonweath
of Catalonia in the session on 8 February 1922.
" (...) As the result of
the personal effort of the Marquis de Villaviciosa, a National Parks act
has been passed and two parks created in Spain, those of Covadonga and
Ordesa. (...) It is now Montseny that would appear to demand preferential
and urgent intervention, however modest that may be. (...) The preeminence
of Montseny is vouched for by the highly interesting records made by Font
i Quer, Ignasi de Segarra, Rosell i Vila, Llorenç i Artigas, Serafí
Bassas, Duran i Ventosa and Francesc Galí.(...)".
But who could have known
that the proposal by Bofill i Mates would crystallise in a new political
situation of involution during the dictatorship of general Primo de Rivera
that appropriated documents and conservationist proposals that were advanced
for their time due to their relatively innovative character. As President
of the Council of Ministers, the dictator signed the document cum report
that would be the basis for the Royal Decree that Alphonso XIII would inexplicably
sign in Stockholm in 1928 to create the Montseny Mountain Trust. The document
starts in general according to the Hippocratic base of the Commonwealth’s
scientific document, but the reactionary content is clear. The Hippocratic
basis is obvious at the beginning of the decree in that it says, "The Provincial
Council of Barcelona, in its keenness to comply with its duty as protector,
aims to improve the wealth of the province and especially to complete the
works that more directly contribute to public health and to provide for
physical expansion with an admiration for the splendours of nature. It
asks that it be granted the necessary faculties so that the great mountain
that is Montseny, the veritable lung of Barcelona, can be made into a natural
park, one part especially for health purposes, where special attention
is paid, and with the forms and means that are most in harmony with scientific
and practical procedures, to recover and improve the weaknesses of nature
and provide for and strengthen the physical virility of the race. (…)".
The values of protecting nature in this document clearly show disturbing
ideological connotations.
Once the Mountain Trust was
constituted, it was entrusted with the main objectives of providing health
services (the construction of anti-TB centres); tourism and sports; forest
resource production, restoration and conservation. As can be seen, the
order or hierarchy of functions put conservation at the bottom of the list.
The naturalistic aspects were obviously considered very little but the
aspects related with the local population counted even less.
From this initial effective
form of protection onwards, Montseny has appeared in all of the catalogues
on areas to be protected in the different land-use plans.
The beginnings of land-use
planning and the PNAs
In 1932, the Autonomous Government
of Catalonia published the Plan for the Distribution by Zones of the Territory
of Catalonia or the Regional Planning of Catalonia, which was the work
of the Rubió i Tudurí brothers. It was a very advanced planning
document that proposed the creation of a system of protected natural areas
and forest reserves:
National parks: L’Artiga
de Lin, Alt Pirineu, Sant Joan de Lerm.
Parks that were merely landscape
reserves: Serra del Cadí and Alt Ter-Núria, Coma de Vaca,
Fresser, Ull de Ter and Carboners; the mountainous area around Requesens
castle; the Ridaura valley and la Collada de Santigosa in Olot; Montseny,
Montnegre, Serra de Gallifa, Sant Llorenç del Munt, Montserrat,
Serra de Prades; la Mussara, el Montsant, the Cardó mountains, the
Caro mountains and the Besseit passes. Important landscape reserves were
also proposed on the Costa Brava. The Tibidabo massif was proposed as a
reserve for the city of Barcelona (Paluzie, 1990).
Despite the fact that the
Regional Planning only reached the blueprint stage, it did determine several
subsequent territorial plans (Gurri, 1997). Likewise, the historical involution
that the Franco dictatorship represented was obviously bound to affect
the field of conservation of natural heritage. It was not until 1953 that
a timid territorial Regional Plan appeared that included the city of Barcelona
and 27 surrounding municipalities. The document provided for a large natural
park (Collserola) for Barcelona and its region (Paluzie, 1990).
Parallel to this plan, a
Provincial Plan was drawn up under the name of the General Land-use Plan
for the Province of Barcelona. The regulation for this was passed in 1963
and it established a catalogue of possible natural parks: El Corredor,
Montnegre, Montserrat, Sant Llorenç del Munt, Montseny, Guilleries,
Bellmunt, Rasos de Peguera, La Quar, Catllaràs, Falgars, Serra del
Cadí and Tibidabo (Collserola).
In this setting, the Provincial
Council of Barcelona developed the previsions of the Provincial Plan during
the seventies by means of specific special plans for some of the catalogued
parks. The Natural Parks Service of the Provincial Council of Barcelona
was established in 1974.
The General Metropolitan
Plan was passed in 1976 for the urban planning of the Barcelona area and
its region that covered the same area as the 1953 Plan, where the system
of free spaces was structured according to urban parks and forest parks
(Paluzie, 1990).
The decade of the sixties
and seventies was quite prolific in the preparation of territorial planning
work influencing the protection of nature and forms the basis on which
part of the conservationist legislation in Catalonia has been developed.
The parents of this "uncorking" of committed civil servants, scientists
and social leaders were a group of scientists that played a decisive role
in the knowledge and study of the territory and environment of the country.
They included the botanists Oriol de Bolòs and Creu Casas, the ecologist
Ramon Margalef, the geologist Solé Sabarís, the geographers
Llobet, Casasses, Puchades, Gurri, etc.
Through the Commission for
Urban Development of the Provincial Council, they used the scant resources
of the 1956 Act on land use and urban planning and the reform of 1975 to
begin making the first formulae of protection for natural areas under the
most pressure, basically due to urban development. Examples of this are
the approval of the Special Plan for the protection of the Montseny Park
(1977 Provincial Council of Barcelona, 1978 Provincial Council of Girona)
and the Special Plan for Sant Llorenç del Munt and the Obac sierra
in 1982. Along the same lines, special plans were subsequently approved
and sponsored by the Provincial Council of Barcelona for Montesquiu, Garraf,
Montnegre-Corredor and Olèrdola. Approval was given for the Collserola
park in the same way in 1987 (Gurri, 1997).
The environmental revolt
of the seventies, key to the current protectionism
Mention must be made of the
important role that the different forms of civil action played in the protectionist
response at the end of the sixties. At the Congress on Catalan Culture
in 1975, the Campaign to Save the Natural Heritage served as a unifying
and revitalising element for the multitude of groups around the country
that had appeared in response to important transformations and their great
impact on the natural environment. This broad movement became, in part,
highly responsible for saving and subsequently protecting in a definitive
way some of the natural areas that are protected at the present time. The
most important examples are the Garrotxa Volcanic Region, the Marshes of
l'Empordà and the Ebro Delta.
Nature: use or abuse? White
paper on nature management in Catalonia was an important document published
by the Catalan Institution of Natural History in 1976 that became a fundamental
source of reference in the conservation of the country’s natural heritage.
That same year, during the blooming of the conservationist movement, the
non-governmental organisation League for the Defence of Natural Heritage
(DEPANA) was established as a leader of this movement. The first provisions
for environmental education were also created in the Santiga nature itinerary
that was prepared by the Department of Ecology of the Autonomous University
of Barcelona. Starting from these processes, the conservationist and protectionist
movement spread all around the country, together with installations for
environmental education (Boada, 1999).
With the establishment of
democratic institutions in 1978, a process of political and social normalisation
began which in turn led to the normalisation of the PNAs.
References
1 This initial national parks
service administered the first five parks: Covadonga (July 1918, 16,925
hectares); Ordesa (August 1918, 2,046 hectares); Teide (January 1854, 11,866
hectares); Caldera de Taburiente (October 1954, 3,500 hectares), and Aigües
Tortes and the Sant Maurici Lake (November 1955, 9,851 hectares) (Font
& Majoral, 2000)
2 An entity founded in 1912
in Barcelona that was concerned with urban development and the quality
of people’s lives. Amongst its objectives was that of "preserving and increasing
the hygienic reserves in the centre of towns and cities, particularly through
the conservation and creation de woodlands on the outskirts, rural and
natural areas, urban parks and gardens and all kinds of free spaces". (Castelló,
1990)
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New
management trends
Josep Mª Mallarach
Geologist and Master
of Environmental Sciences. Environmental consultant, professor at Girona
University.
The protection of protected
natural areas in many countries has developed rapidly over the last few
decades as a concerted strategy to save from destruction and degradation
those species, habitats or landscapes considered socially —and legally—
as natural heritage and answer to the social demands associated with them.
It is, thus, a modern phenomenon which aims to counteract, at least on
a local scale, the unsustainable tendencies of the type of development
that currently dominates, which, globally, brings about the destruction
and impoverishment of natural and cultural heritage on an unprecedented
scale.
Throughout the 20th century,
the protection policy of natural areas has been characterised by three
main stages. The first was based on the protection of singular and emblematic
natural areas. Their principal exponent are the "wildlife sanctuaries"
and "national parks". The terms "sanctuary" and "national" are a clear
evocation of their symbolic and political significance. They are publicly
owned areas, generally remote, which are promoted and administered by central
governments. In recently colonised countries where there is little artistic
heritage, its emblematic nature is reinforced even further.
The second stage raised the
need to increase the number of protected natural areas and provide them
with various levels of protection and management. That was when a lot of
legal figures suddenly appeared, in excess of a hundred in the United States,
and sixty in the states of the European Union. Amongst them, we can highlight
undeveloped reserves, nature reserves, biosphere reserves, natural areas
of national interest, wildlife sanctuaries and protected areas, some of
which are publicly owned and many others area private or mixed. At this
stage, several public administrations are involved, including local governments
and, in English-speaking countries, the concurrent initiatives of the private
sector are developed.
The third stage stems from
the recognition of the global scope of the environmental crisis, the basic
principles of ecology and the inadequacy of previous approaches to stem
the wholesale destruction of biological diversity and the continued degradation
of the peri-urban landscape which houses the largest proportion of the
world’s population. From strategic and global approaches rises the challenge
of integrating the conservation of natural areas with sectoral policy and
land-use planning, that is, to reform the current unsustainable model.
It is proposed to conserve functional networks of natural areas which enable
the conservation of biodiversity to be guaranteed, with the participation
of the social agents. It includes a large proportion of private natural
areas, and is supported by economic incentives and formulae for co-operation
between the public and private sectors.
This third stage began in
the early eighties in a few leading countries, but is not clearly outlined
internationally until the Earth Summit in 1992. In Europe, it was marked
by the approval of the 1992 EEC Programme on policy and action regarding
the environment and sustainable development, the 1994 Parks of Europe Action
Plan and the PanEuropean Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy, 1995.
The tendencies set forth below are those that characterise this last stage
in western industrialised countries and which, therefore, are or could
be of significance for our country.
As what characterises new
approaches is their comprehensive integrating nature, to give an idea of
their scope let us examine how they affect the identification, research,
typology, planning, management, financing and assessment of protected natural
areas. And, finally, to show the new social trends, amongst both the agents
and the users of these same natural areas.
Identification of natural
areas needing protection and research
Complying with the recommendations
of the most influential international organisms, the identification of
natural areas needing protection, increasingly starts from ecological criteria,
amongst which the most outstanding are the criteria of diversity, rarity
or singularity, integrity, representativeness, fragility or vulnerability,
connectivity and size. Amongst others, some of the consequences of this
have been that is has been possible to compare and approve rank, to evaluate
natural areas which had received little consideration previously (such
as the steppes or extensive dry farmlands), or to establish transfrontier
protected areas.
Ecological criteria began
to be applied within the framework of political units, but it soon became
obvious that they only gave coherent results if applied to biogeographical
regions, which, in Europe, usually transcend national limits. This tendency
has enabled the Habitats Directive, for instance, to define the lists of
habitats and taxons of interest for each of the great natural European
regions (Boreal, Continental, Macaronesian, Alpine, Mediterranean and Atlantic)
which has enabled the proposal of the natural areas necessary to protect
them, within the framework of the Natura 2000 network. On the other hand,
ecological criteria began to be applied to terrestrial environments, but
latterly application has spread to coastal and marine environments, where
the shortcomings of protection are greater. In the Mediterranean basin,
this is the approach of the Barcelona Convention for the protection of
the Mediterranean marine and coastal environment (1995).
The number of protected natural
areas has increased rapidly over the last forty years. In many countries
this growth has been exponential, as has also been the transformation and
fragmentation of natural habitats. The proportion of natural areas that
enjoy a certain level of protection has reached 25 to 60 % of the territory
in many advanced states. The new disciplines of the biology of conservation
and the ecology of the landscape have shown that when the proportion of
territory essentially transformed exceeds 33 %, the losses in biological
diversity become inexorable, however well-managed these areas may be, as
shown by, amongst others, the example of many German lands.
The application of ecological
criteria presupposes considerable knowledge that has fuelled numerous lines
of research. In leading countries, basic studies of the different components
of ecological diversity has been encouraged: inventories and maps of ecosystems,
habitats and landscapes, cataloguing of species and races, etc., which
has "red books" to be drawn up for the most endangered components, classifying
them according to the degree of endangerment and vulnerability. Likewise,
follow-up plans have been established based on ecological and environmental
indicators that enable us to measure trends. Finally, applying the principle
of the right to environmental information, the resulting biodiversity data
bases have been made available not only to researchers, but also to the
rest of society, with the aid of new technologies (geographic information
systems, internet, etc.).
Typology of natural areas
The rapid development and
lack of coordination of conservation policies have given rise to a great
variety of protected areas. In the United States, for instance, there are
over a hundred different legal figures. In 1994, the International Union
for Nature Conservation defined six basic categories, graded from the highest
to the lowest degree of conservation. The first protected natural areas
to be created were little affected by human activity, remote and publicly
owned, and were in the first four of the aforementioned categories. Most
notable were the national parks and nature reserves, where recreational
and scientific use is —or should be— subordinated to nature protection.
The amount of land protected at this level totals 28 % of Denmark, 12 %
of the USA and 10 % of the Netherlands, but barely 2 % of the southern
European states.
In countries or areas where
human activity is more widespread, most natural areas are at the two lowest
levels of protection. Thus, in Europe, the total of protected natural areas
is 67 %, whilst in the world they represent only 15 %. They are protected
natural areas in privately-owned land, which may contain towns and where
activities and uses compatible with the conservation of natural values
take place. The figure of the national park in England and Wales (Naturpark
in Germany, Parc Naturel Régional in France) is the most used. The
amount of land that has been protected at this level totals 20 % in Germany,
14 % in the United Kingdom and Luxembourg, and 7 % in France.
The PanEuropean Biological
and Landscape Diversity Strategy of 1995 exacts protection for a representative
sample of all landscapes, seminatural or anthropic, of interest, particularly
traditional farmlands that conserve remarkable beauty and associated biological
and cultural diversity but which have received little consideration so
far in many systems of protected areas.
Aside from the types of natural
areas defined legally, another typology series has developed used by private
conservation organisations, or even by individuals, which are no less effective
for not having official approval. In some western countries these initiatives
—known generically as custody of the land— have undergone extraordinary
development in recent years. For example, the private American organisation
The Nature Conservancy, which has almost a million members, has created
and manages the largest private system of nature reserves in the world,
which includes over 1,500 natural areas covering 3.2 million hectares in
the USA and over 17 million hectares outside the USA, mostly in Latin America,
in collaboration with NGOs and local governments.
Planning natural areas
and ecological connectivity
Since the approval of the
Agreement on Biodiversity and the Global Strategy of the same name, in
1992, the role of protected natural areas has been framed within the strategies
or national conservation plans of biodiversity, which, in turn, in the
most advanced countries, form part of Green Plans or National Sustain-ability
Strategies (Agendas 21). Their translation at European level, promoted
by the agreements of the World Parks Congress in Caracas in 1992, was the
Action Plan for European protected areas, promoted by the IUCN in 1994.
This plan, far-reaching in scope, defines a comprehensive, coherent series
of strategies and priorities, and requires deployment through State action
plans. The Spanish State plan, is currently being drawn up by a work group
from EUROPARC-Spain, and is expected to be approved in 2002.
National or international
biodiversity strategies propose action plans that enable biodiversity conservation
to be integrated in the public policies and programmes that could most
directly affect it. With regard to protected natural areas, current trends
are towards completing existing systems on several administrative levels
and, above all, establishing and conserving networks of natural areas physically
connected and functional. The national ecological network of the Netherlands
(1991) conceived as a coherent network of sustainable ecosystems, in one
of the most man-made countries in the continent, was the point of reference
that inspired the declaration of the Maastricht European Ecological Network
(E.ECO.NET) the following year.
The outlook associated with
the global climatic change, means that we may expect altitudinal and latitudinal
movement of biotas, an increase in the likelihood of natural disasters
(climatic, epidemics, fires, etc.) and, therefore, an increase in the risk
of extinction for many species and communities. Apart from limiting the
gaseous emissions that cause the greenhouse effect, and stemming the direct
destruction of habitats, one of the few measures that can be adopted to
reduce the magnitude of the problems to come is to conserve a network of
natural areas with functional connections that facilitate the natural movements
of all the organisms with the capacity to do so.
Furthermore, social sustainability
requires that in protected natural areas affected by human activity in
disadvantaged rural areas, socio-economic development plans be promoted
to improve the quality of life of local populations, establish and recover
a rural population, and thus conserve a diversity of land-scape and ecology
which would otherwise disappear.
Individually, it is considered
that each protected natural area should have its own management plan, and
must be endowed with human and economic resources appropriate to their
objectives. The management plan model promoted by Eurosite, is the European
point of reference for the Natura 2000 network. Increasingly, there is
a tendency to approach planning on two levels, a strategic level and an
annual level, for both individual natural areas and systems. The strategic
plan of the American national parks system for 1998 is an international
reference in this respect. Both strategic and annual plans must be closely
linked to management and have performance indicators, on which to base
monitoring and assessment, as we shall see later.
Natural area organisation
and management forms
Gone are the days when natural
area systems were managed by distant central services, the application
of the principle of subsidiariness has led to the decentralisation of governing
bodies, integrating representatives of local public authorities, to extend
the regime of economic autonomy and create and consolidate teams of professional
administrators. The administrative centres of natural and national
parks and other large natural areas are allocated within the area or immediately
outside it to foster good relations with the local population and enable
more effective and less bureaucratised on-site management.
In many countries, the days
in which protected areas only had a police-type security service are long
gone. Today they have teams of professionals attending to information,
environmental interpretation and education, documentation, specialists
in public use, biologists, zoologists, landscape architects, administrative
staff, etc., who enjoy the support of volunteer staff.
Finally, in the management
of natural areas, as in other sectors, quality regulation has been introduced
in recent years, based on international standards that guarantee and approve
planning and management processes, such as the ISO.
Fiscal and economic instruments
of natural areas
The creation and appropriate
management of protected natural areas bring about costs which vary greatly
depending on the case. Small, private natural protected areas, where nature
protection takes preference and where there is frequently no public use,
may be economically self-sufficient, although there are usually maintenance
and security tasks which are carried out by volunteers.
In contrast, natural areas
managed by the public administration which usually have several social
uses, tend to have economic problems, even in countries like the United
States where they are 100 % publicly owned, access is controlled and one
must pay on entry and for many other services. The state parks of New Hampshire
are the exception that proves the rule.
In order to face these costs,
various policies and instruments have been developed which enable the contradictions
of many public policies to be reduced and some of the public benefits generated
by private properties within protected areas to be recognised.
To begin with, measures have
been promoted to reduce or eliminate direct disincentives to conservation,
such as aid for reforestation with exotic species, or indirect, such as
disproportionate subsidies for irrigation water. The latter, explain why
in regions suffering from lack of water, water prices are artificially
low, which leads to an increase in irrigated land which threatens the
integrity of the wetlands linked to places where water is extracted and
also to the conservation of dry habitats or steppes in areas thus transformed.
At the same time, a series
of incentives for conservation has been established, of which there are
three main types:
• Tax exemptions or deductions
for series of strategic actions, such as the sale of land to conservationist
organisations, the sale of conservation easements, the establishment of
protection agreements, donations in cash or in kind to organisms respons-ible
for conserving natural areas, and transfer of heritage or rateable value
of properties within protect-ed natural areas.
• Agro-ecological subsidies
aimed at fomenting extensive farming practices, at ecological farming or
stockbreeding or at promoting, recovering and conserving autochthonous
breeds of animals or plants. Within the European Union, the so-called "agro-ecological
funds" cover 50 % of the costs, the rest is covered by the member states.
In the UK, for example, an extensive system of Environmentally Sensitive
Areas has been established that reinforces and increases the system of
protected natural areas. Over 350,000 ha of natural areas were protected
in this way in Scotland alone between 1987 and 1993.
• Taxes on the main actions
that spoil natural areas (ecotaxes), such as the sale of property, the
segregation of rural properties for construction, or building in threatened
landscapes or habitats. This last line, initiated in Maryland (USA) in
the seventies and taken up in other states and provinces of America, has
been applied with good results in parts of Europe, such as France through
the Consérvatoire du Litoral et des Rivages lacustres.
Public use
The tendency to increasingly
concentrate
more inhabitants in urban and periurban environments, along with transport
facilities, has given rise to increased social demand for natural areas
and greater public use of many of them. So much so that the impact caused
by visitors to protected natural areas has become a delicate problem in
many places. With millions of visitors a year, many a park has suffered
the degradation of some of its most emblematic spots.
The European Charter on Sustainable
Tourism in natural areas (1999) proposes a clear strategy to confront this
situation. Access to existing protected natural areas should be regulated,
and the flow of visitors should be controlled to avoid the overloading
of the more fragile areas. But this is insufficient; there must be more
alternatives. One which offers good results is the creation of green ways
and green belts around large cities and metropolitan areas, made up of
municipal or regional parks, or some other type. These green belts make
resilient natural areas available to the majority of citizens, which are
well-equipped to satisfy the logical physical and emotional need to be
in contact with nature, close to home. Thus, whilst they help to stem the
unsustainable expansion of diffuse cities, they also save on movement —with
the corresponding economic and environmental costs— reducing the pressure
on natural areas of greater ecological value, which for various reasons,
often due to their small size, are fragile or vulnerable.
Monitoring and audits
of natural areas
A protected natural area
is not an end in itself, however much social demand endorses it, but an
instrument which serves to achieve other ends, amongst which are the conservation
of natural heritage and the fomenting of a certain public use, generally
for recreational or educational purposes. Its adaptation to the social
and ecological reality it must serve is not guaranteed, but must be proven.
While some protected natural areas have fulfilled very well the expectations
of their creation, others have not, and for different reasons have failed
to some extent or another.
To assess the state and tendencies
of protected natural areas, the most advanced countries use two basic tools:
follow-up plans and operative or performance audits. Follow-up is a periodic
measuring of previously selected indicators and enables changes and tendencies
to be detected over time through ecological, socio-economic, planning and
management indicators. The operative audit assesses the instruments, management
results, and external factors that affect them.
These two instruments are
usually applied on two different levels; systems or networks of protected
natural areas and individual protected natural areas. In the first case,
it is important to know the sustainability of the model or system and its
role in the conservation of basic ecological functions such as biodiversity.
As many of the dominant trends in western countries (increased consumption,
fragmentation of the land, intensive farming, atmospheric pollution, etc.)
compromise the future of many protected natural areas, legal protection
is far from equalling effective protection, which, in short, is what counts.
In the case of individual
natural areas, the operative audit focuses on particular planning and management
objectives, and assesses them in terms of efficiency and effectiveness,
of the different management phases and their results, indicating the extent
to which they have achieved their objectives and the costs involved (economic
and otherwise). When management problems are caused by factors beyond the
control of the managers (such as insufficient administrative coordination),
they must also be identified and solutions must be proposed to the corresponding
authority.
For them to be really effective,
both the monitoring and assessment should form part of the planning and
management process of natural areas. Although socially they may have other
important motivation, such promot-ing transparency of information and public
participation, from the viewpoint of those in charge of natural areas these
two tools enable management plans and their execution to be adapted to
new situations and thus achieve the proposed objectives with flexibility
and efficiency. This enables the managers of natural areas to gain credibility
and social and institutional support which would otherwise have been difficult.
Strategic assessment of
environmental impact
To reform the prevailing
model toward another more sustainable one, it is essential that society
be aware of the environmental impact of policies, plans and programmes
before they are approved, and take part in decision making. The instrument
that enables this to happen is called strategic environmental impact
assessment.
The procedure of environmental
impact assessment was conceived initially as holistic, that is, as an instrument
applicable to policies, regulations, programmes and plans which could have
serious effects on the environment. Thus it was included in the American
National Environmental Policy Act in 1969. Despite this, however, when
sixteen years later this instrument was introduced in the European Community
its application was unfortunately restricted to certain types of project.
Over the years, several European countries have become aware of these limitations,
in terms of environmental effectiveness, as the basic policies, programmes
and plans, that is those that define the framework of projects and lower-ranking
decisions, do not usually include environmental values or guarantee, consequently,
a suitable level of environmental protection. For this reason, it was decided
to recover the initial will of this instrument, and extend the application
of environmental impact assessment at least to plans and programmes and,
in some cases, such as Nordic Countries and the Netherlands, also to policies.
In all cases it has shown that it is at strategic level that the environmental
impact assessment is most effective.
Territorial plans, sectoral
infrastructure plans and town development plans are amongst those with
the greatest capacity for transforming and, therefore having a negative
effect on the land, ecosystem and the quality of life of the society that
lives there. It is not only a question of the direct environmental impact
they can cause in natural areas, but above all from the indirect, accumulative
impact which is usually much more serious. Ignoring it in a country’s main
plans and programmes causes serious environmental dysfunction, such as
the degradation or loss of biodiversity, which cannot be solved at lower
levels. Indeed, the real alternatives which should be examined, to choose
the one that has the least environmental impact, are usually above project
level. When the time comes to assess the environmental impact of a project
that affects a protected natural area, for example a new road, the corrective
measures proposed are all too often of a cosmetic nature. And there are
still too few of them, and they are not always executed satisfactorily.
This procedure based on reactive
policies contravenes the principles of sustainable development promoted
by the Commission of the European Communities in its Fifth Action Programme
(1992), principles that were reaffirmed and deepened by the Treaty of Amsterdam
(1997), which established a series of mechan-isms to integrate environmental
policy in other public policies, amongst which the environmental impact
assessment of plans and programmes is the most noteworthy.
Public participation
To promote the aforementioned
natural area approaches, the public bodies responsible are obliged to gain,
maintain or reestablish their credibility. As pointed out by Agenda 21,
it is a question of encouraging mutual trust between the public administrations
and the most affected sectors or institutions. Public participation in
decision making is a privileged means, because it enables to know
people’s values or worries, promote consensus, and also to prevent and
reduce the conflictiveness, which is inevitable up to a point in that very
different points of view must be included, which are frequently opposed.
The public cannot participate
if they are not informed beforehand. Public information is an essential
require-ment for public participation. This information includes operative
audits, and when it does not, there are activity reports and follow-up
plans for protected natural areas, along with documents of greater scope
such as reports on the state of the environment, or on biodiversity, which
are not only published in technical versions, but also informative versions
within the reach of the public, amongst which are electronic formats. Then
comes education, which brings about a deeper knowledge than mere information,
as it includes legal instruments or other types within the citizen’s reach.
The third level is the formal consultation, which is given for example
through consulting bodies of a representative nature, and this is where
true participation begins. The fourth level is civic implication in decision
making, which is through governing bodies or other participative procedures
in the decisions that most obviously affect protected natural areas.
One of the most interesting
trends in public participation in the management of protected natural areas
is the promoting of voluntary work, as they provide an outlet for the social
demand to intervene directly and altruistically and at the same time gain
ample support for conservationist management. Deeply rooted in northern
and central European countries, in Spain outstanding experiences of voluntary
work are those in protected natural areas, coastal areas and conservation
of biodiversity promoted by the Junta de Andalucía since 1995.
In short, the new trends
developing in protected natural areas in the most advanced countries aim
to overcome the contradictions in which they are immersed by applying the
principles of sustainability through strategies and instruments previously
mentioned, in order to improve their efficiency, contribute to conserving
biological and cultural diversity at the same time as they become key instruments
in land-use planning and points of reference to head towards more just
and sustainable development. •
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