FANMED asks the Govern to limit the competences of the Environment Commission

It regrets the “lack of objectivity” and “insufficient motivation” of its reports and demands “a minimum degree of affection” for the environmental evaluation to be mandatory.

The Federation of Nautical Associations for Environmental Issues (FANMED) has called on the Balearic Government to restrict the cases in which it is mandatory to obtain the opinion of the Environmental Commission of the Balearic Islands (CMAIB). The user and employer entities represented in this federation consider that “the minimum degree of impact should be established with quantifiable criteria to specify the projects or actions that must be subjected to environmental impact evaluations.” This statement comes after the announcement of an autonomous decree of administrative simplification and following the opinion of the CMAIB that considers harmful the effect of the shadows of the ships on the posidonia and imposes “disproportionate” demands for the installation of an anchoring polygon in the Sa Foradada area, on the north coast of Mallorca.

FANMED has also conveyed to the Government its discomfort with the CMAIB's “lack of objectivity” on the matters subject to environmental evaluations and the “insufficient motivation” of some of its reports. . In this regard, he maintains that the Ministry of Ecological Transition has a methodological guide for the spaces of the Natura 2000 Network that, if used, “would have avoided subjectivity and arbitrariness” in certain opinions. . Another aspect that worries the nautical federation is the risk posed by the existence of an emergency procedure in the declaration of a protected natural space.

Gabriel Dols, president of FANMED, considers that environmental regulation should have “a very clear operation and based on technical or scientific reports”, depending on the case. “The fact of not having parameters and protocols with clear contents when evaluating projects that require them can cause arbitrariness and subjectivity in decisions, and confusion among affected citizens,” said Dols. at the end of a meeting of the FANMED board of directors held yesterday Thursday, where it was agreed to propose to the Government that it abandons “the environmental management model based on prohibition”.

“Reading in the BOIB on December 16, in one of the last files of the previous legislature, that there will be impacts on the posidonia 'due to the effect of the shadow of the boats' is something that at first leaves no doubt good place to its authors. The worst thing, however, is the disaffection caused in citizens by the excess of ideology and the lack of rigor in an issue as serious as environmental care," says an official statement agreed upon by the FANMED board.

Gaceta Náutica exclusively echoed on December 21 a report published days before in the Official Gazette of the Balearic Islands in which the CMAIB ruled, among other things, that the shadows of the boats on the surface they reduce the luminosity that the posidonia receives and affect its photosynthesis process. The document also indicates that the anchors for the installation of ecological buoys must be located outside the meadows (that is, on sand or rock bottoms) and imposes the obligation to monitor the anchoring polygon (in this case that of Sa Foradada ) day and night with a boat with two crew members, at the expense of the concessionaire or the administration responsible for the management of the space.

FANMED's position was established in this chapter of Gaceta Náutica's Gaceta Náutica titled:  “The shadow report is an insult to human intelligence” 

Source: Gaceta Náutica