“Due to lack of specific actions” to manage the threats that Doñana faces. This has been the reason given by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to expel the Huelva National Park from its green list, the most important in the world.
The largest environmental organization in the world would have communicated its decision to the Andalusian Government by letter a couple of weeks ago, although the regional government claims that they have not received such notification. What’s more, the Department of Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy of the Junta de Andalucía points out that no UINC evaluator has been to Doñana to carry out an analysis of the situation in the area.
For her part, the Third Vice President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, assured today from Brussels that the national Executive received the notification on January 1 explaining the departure from this natural space. of the Green List for the “alerts generated by the disastrous irrigation law proposal.” Likewise, she has declared that she “has run out of time” for not working on the preservation of this natural space.
The decision, which makes Doñana the first nature reserve excluded from this list, is based, as El País announced this Monday, on the fact that “at the moment, the site does not meet the IUCN green list standard.” , confirms the organization’s director of protected and conserved areas, James Hardcastle.
The expulsion would have been confirmed by letter to the Andalusian Administration two weeks ago, although sources from the Ministry of Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy of the Junta de Andalucía have told EFE today that they have no evidence “that the IUCN has taken that decision” and that they have not received that news from the international organization.
Likewise, they have pointed out that “the IUCN evaluators have not set foot in Doñana”, and have specified that the usual thing, as happened in June in Sierra Nevada, is for the evaluators to visit the space and, within a certain period of time, in this case six months, issue a report “in a serious manner and with the territory.” In the case of Doñana “this has not happened, they have not come,” they have stressed.
Furthermore, according to the Ministry of the Environment, “it is difficult to understand that the trigger that would have led the IUCN to make that decision is a law that has not been approved and much less applied in the territory,” in reference to the proposed law. improvement of irrigation in the Northern Crown of Doñana, which declined at the end of November after the signing of the agreement between the central government and the Junta.
“We are in this new framework of Agreement for Doñana and we are going to continue working for and for the Park and its surroundings,” they assured.
The leader of the Andalusian PSOE, Juan Espadas, has also spoken out about Doñana’s departure from this list, and has done so through his social networks. “Mr. Moreno, as I told you in Parliament, your confrontation with the Government of Spain has clearly had disastrous consequences in Doñana. With the serious drought that you have used so much in Dubai, it was incoherent and dangerous to spend two years defending increasing irrigation, affecting the ecosystem and the image of agriculture in the area. No matter how much propaganda it uses, its green revolution does not exist. It is pure marketing,” he commented.
The news comes on the day that the Plenary Session of the Doñana Participation Council analyzes, in an ordinary session, the agreement reached between the Junta de Andalucía and the central Government on measures for the National Park, a work of several months carried out by both administrations in order to protect space.
It was the Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge who explained this Monday that the IUCN has welcomed the understanding between Governments and the agreement “with satisfaction”, since it has urged the president of the Board, Juanma Moreno, to deploy “all the tools” at your disposal to reduce pressure on the natural park. “The important thing, the fundamental thing, is to work against the clock to be able to recover the quality of life of the Doñana ecosystem,” she indicated.
And the protection of the Park inevitably involves “enforcing current legislation”, closing illegal wells that dry up the groundwater around Doñana. “There are more than 400 illegal wells closed. We are seeking to reduce that pressure with the corresponding fines,” he said, while summarizing that no illegal cultivation should be “amnestied.”
This same year, a report issued by ten experts from this international organization was made public after two years of evaluation and the study of a total of 50 indicators, of which the natural space only approved 17.
Of the four blocks evaluated (good governance, park design and planning, effective administration and successful conservation), Doñana only surpassed the second and with just a 5; Experts criticized the “lack of specific actions” to manage the threats facing space.
The IUCN maintains that despite the exclusion from the Green List, Doñana remains a candidate for inclusion in the future, something for which they will support the space authorities.