Climate change protest in Palma, Mallorca

A climate change protest in Palma in 2019. | Pere Bota

Andrew Ede26/09/2023 11:54
TW
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Indignation because of an apparent undermining of environmental education accepted, but there was the sense of sheer brass neck as well. It was always likely that a Vox responsibility for the environment and for the rural environment and sport was going to be a red rag to a bull. And so it has already proven to be.

Pedro Bestard of Vox is a Council of Mallorca vice-president with just this responsibility. The Council has removed an activity from its catalogue of environmental education activities. Gone is one entitled action to stop climate change, and in its stead has appeared another - conservation of species and sustainable exploitation in the hunting sphere.

I'm not going to decry the hunting activity as I appreciate that hunting has a role to play in the management of biodiversity and species. The Council has long assumed this responsibility anyway. But now it has been elevated to become one of the environmental education activities by a Council vice-president who just so happens to have been the president of the Balearic Hunting Federation. He argues, as he is entitled to, that control of species is the cornerstone of the protection and care of the rural world. But given his background, he appears to have acted in an overt and calculated manner, more so as he is a well-known climate change denier. It is political through and through.

His critics include, you will not be surprised to learn, the environmentalists GOB. The president of GOB, Amadeu Corbera, has described this change as "ridiculous and absurd". The deputy director of the Climate Change Interdisciplinary Laboratory, Pau de Vílchez, believes that the removal of the climate change activity is "an act of inadmissible irresponsibility". "Climate change is not an ideological issue. It is a question of survival that transcends political colours."

Should transcend, but does not. It does not in the case of Sr. Bestard and Vox, but can it be said that the left in Mallorca have been entirely without ideological motive in matters of the environment, whether these are of a climate change character or not? A charge levelled at Més, who held the Balearic government's environment portfolio for two periods of office from 2015, was that they were over-zealous and that they applied a veneer of their nationalist ideology to their environmental management.

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The demand for, for instance, coastal management to be transferred from the Costas Authority in Madrid was based on an insular defence of territory. Sensible though this was, because decision-making should be more local, there was also an undeniable tone of this nationalism.

The irony of this is that Més are no longer in government and are therefore unable to lead or influence the new management that has come with a transfer of responsibility. The right, the Partido Popular, are in control via a ministry they have conjured up - the ministry for the sea. But as is so often the case with procedural matters like this, there are questions surrounding this transfer.

Miquel Mir, who was the Més environment minister until May, said before the elections that the transfer would not impact decisions already made by the Costas. Most notably, there was the case of the demolition order hanging over El Bungalow, the restaurant on the beach in Ciudad Jardín. The minister for the sea, Juan Manuel Lafuente, has spoken about a need for compatibility between environmental protection and maintaining traditional activity on the coasts, such as a 40-year-old restaurant. I agree with him, but there is a political dimension. Where did leading members of the PP, including the now president of the government, Marga Prohens, and mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, have lunch the day before the elections in May? El Bungalow. It was a political statement.

There is an anticipation that the PP will go softer on environmental policies. Perhaps they will, and in this regard there may well come a point when a stellar initiative of the left coalition becomes a controversy. The Es Trenc-Salobrar de Campos Nature Park was officially established in June 2017, the work of the first Més environment minister, Vicenç Vidal. In May this year, shortly before the elections therefore, the management plan for the park was approved.

Among other things, this doesn't permit the removal of any dry posidonia remains. But there are issues that go beyond the conservation of the beach and dunes system. There are business and private interests as well, such as those to do with a car park and a plan for a polo field. Since the change of government, a number of legal challenges to the park's management plan have been registered with the Balearic High Court. It will ultimately be up to judges to decide. But the fact that a change of government has provoked these challenges raises a question as to whether the government might itself intervene through amendment.

Arguing the case for preserving traditional coastal businesses is fair enough. But a car park and a polo field aren't in the same category. Softer on environmental policies? There'll be a hell of a fuss if they are.