The creation of the Agència de la Natura de Catalunya is on track to lead one of the longest administrative processes known. Approved by the Parliament on July 2, 2020, its entry into service has been accumulating delays, and now the new horizon to complete its processing is in the year 2025. One of the reasons for these delays is the slow bureaucratic pace imposed on the preparation of the statutes that must define the way of functioning of its board of directors (an essential requirement for the Agency to start working). The process has already lasted more than three years. Yesterday, the DOGC published the decree with these statutes, which continue to encounter strong resistance from various rural and agroforestry social sectors.
The Nature Agency was approved by a large majority in the Parliament with the fundamental mission of stopping the loss of biological wealth derived from multiple activities and intensive use of resources. The functions entrusted to the new entity are planning and formulating policies to improve nature conservation. Its legal nature will make it more agile (it will be able to hire staff more easily) and, in addition, it will have new financial resources, including the Natural Heritage Fund, which will be funded with half of what is collected with the CO2 tax of the cars implemented by the Canvi Climàtic law.
However, its implementation continues to be delayed, a slowness that the Government attributes to problems of internal bureaucracy and to the attempt to reach a consensus with the rural world, critical of the content of the statutes. Environmental sectors, however, attribute the delay to the lack of political leadership to complete this entire process.
When approved in 2020, the Parliament gave a period of one year for the law to come into force, with the expectation that the operating statutes would be carried out in those 12 months. This deadline was met in July 2021, and it was now, two and a half years later, when the Catalan government released these statutes to the public (yesterday, Friday).
“After more than three years, we see that the planned deadlines continue to be missed. And this happens despite the fact that at the time more than 260 organizations demanded in Parliament the need and urgency to create the Nature Agency,” says Sandra Carrera, coordinator of the Xarxa per a la Conservació de la Natura (XCN). Carrera highlights the negative effects that these delays are causing on the already insufficiently financed natural spaces.
“We continue without a structure that centralizes and leads conservation policies in an agile and effective manner and that has budgetary independence, as required by the Agència de la Natura law and the Canvi Climàtic law,” Carrera laments. The XCN has repeatedly criticized that the resources from the CO2 tax on vehicles are not being properly channeled towards nature management, “but are in the hands of Agriculture.”
From the first moment, the Agency collided with the rejection of sectors of the rural and local world and forest owners. They all maintain that the new entity will entail new protections, controls and excessive interventionism over forestry activity, and they fear a worsening of “protectionist” policies.
Likewise, they have been relentless in their criticism of the Agency’s board of directors. They aspired to have significant or equal representation in this board of directors; but their presence is comparable to that of other social sectors (two representatives of the local world and one of the forest property, in a body of 19 members with most representatives of departments of the Generalitat). The Consorci Forestal de Catalunya, the Catalan Federation of Forestry Associations (Boscat), town councils and the País Rural platform have kept the flame alive against the Agency.
In an attempt to seek consensus, the then councilor Damià Calvet promised to improve the representation of these sectors in the governing bodies of the Agency. However, the promise has only been half fulfilled, given the decree with the statutes made public yesterday. Their participation remains the same in the board of directors, since its composition could not be modified as it was defined by law. On the other hand, they have been granted a generous presence on the social council, an advisory body, although their opponents see it as an irrelevant concession.
Marc Vilahur, general director of Polítiques Ambientals i Medi Natural, defends the participatory process carried out to prepare the statutes. “We have tried to achieve maximum consensus and unity. Much of the rural world has reacted favorably to the statutes. With some parts we have achieved a rapprochement, but another maintains its antagonistic position,” he adds. In this participatory process, ten sessions have been held, with 300 contributions, of which 75% have been incorporated.
Vilahur specifies that it was not possible to change the law, as the agroforestry sectors claim. “The law is legitimate; It is what it is. Reopening the debate would have been to cast doubt on a law approved by the Parliament by a very large majority,” he says. Likewise, he highlights the importance of the social council, in charge of ensuring the good management of the Agency. “It is not a decision-making body, but it may issue reports that question the functioning of the Agency and that can be transferred to management.”
The Government reported at the time that it would process the decree of the statutes at the end of 2022, a forecast that was not fulfilled. Now, the Agency’s statutes will be publicly available, before undergoing new administrative steps (reports and opinions) that predict its entry into service in 2025.
“We ask the government to act according to the technical and political criteria that support the creation of the Nature Agency without being dragged by pressure or particular interests,” says Sandra Carrera.
Meanwhile, various entities from the rural and local world and forest owners have resumed the offensive against the Nature Agency, very upset with the content of the statutes that will govern the management body of this new Administration body, according to the proposal known yesterday Friday. The Rural Country platform has promoted an initiative for town councils and other social sectors to adhere to a motion as a manifesto in which they demand that the Generalitat modify the composition of the Agency’s board of directors to increase the representation of rural sectors. .
The motion has the support of the Association of Local Forest Owners’ Entities in Catalonia and the Catalan Federation of Forest Owners’ Associations, among other entities. Its promoters announce that they will intensify this mobilization after Christmas.
The promoters of these entities complain that this board of directors is poorly representative of the local, rural and forestry world. “They don’t want to let us participate in the governance of the Nature Agency”, laments Josep Maria Vila d’Abadal, former mayor of Vic and promoter of the País Rural platform, which brings together these sectors that feel relegated by politics of the Government in the forestry sector.
In this motion they allege that the composition of the board of directors only includes two representatives of the local world out of a total of 17 members (plus a president and a vice president). They also regret that the board of directors does not provide any representation for the town councils that own rural land of communal property.
The battle over the statutes of the Agència de la Natura hides a deep disagreement about the configuration and mode of operation of this new organization. These agroforestry sectors demand greater representation on the Agency’s board of directors with the aim of defining and influencing policies in the natural environment, at a time when the debate continues to focus on the dilemma between conservation and exploitation.
The motion requests that the entire process to approve the Agency’s statutes be paralyzed, that its future powers be modified and that the system of resources it will have be clarified as well as that it not have sanctioning capacity.
Vila d’Abadal maintains that the “Agency wants to impose protectionist criteria”, something that is out of place in his opinion, taking into account that “we are losing management capacity in our forests” and that only “a minimal part of “The forests are being exploited.”
Government sources reply that the new body will inherit (and exercise) the powers that until now were carried out by the autonomous Administration in this matter, including the power to impose sanctions (as is the case with the Agència de l’Aigua or the Agència de Residus). “The Agency will not have any new function.”
The general director of Politiques Ambientals, Marc Vilahur, rejects that the operation of the Agency will entail more administrative controls over forestry exploitations. “We don’t want to impose restrictions. The Agency offers the rural world an opportunity to be more resilient in the face of the environmental crises that we are suffering, the climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity.”
The general director points out that “we do not want the ecological vision to be represented on the board of directors; but this Agency must be for everyone,” he says.
He also believes that although there are rural sectors that are in a line of open confrontation, in others he detects a spirit of collaboration. The creation of the Agency has galvanized the widespread unrest prevailing in interior and mountain areas that are suffering from a crisis that threatens to deepen the gap between the territories of Catalonia.
