The Government of the Canary Islands will activate the forestry cent in its 2025 budget, a measure that will provide the island councils with “economic muscle” to face the challenges of climate change through resources aimed entirely at this objective.
This was announced this Tuesday by President Fernando Clavijo in Parliament, after stressing that experts consider the creation of an “effective and stable” financial fund “vital and urgent” to tackle the threats to the Canary Islands ecosystem.
Clavijo also recalled the warning issued by the Economic and Social Council (CES) after alerting that the Canary Islands invests less than one euro cent per square meter of protected space. The Government is trying to reverse this shortage of resources with the creation of a specific financial fund aimed at acting against the growing risk of forest fires and the advance of desertification.
However, the president has announced in Parliament that the final decision to apply this new forestry cent will be in the hands of each island corporation. He also referred to the earmarked nature of the resources that are collected, being mandatory that they are allocated entirely to actions focused on the fight against climate change. The autonomous government will guarantee this via regulation.
The new forestry cent will allow the island councils to apply a surcharge of up to 0.02 euros per liter in the tax levy on motor fuels that already exists in the autonomous community. It is estimated that, thanks to this measure and in the event that all the island corporations decide to use it, around 40 million euros per year will be collected to fight against the effects of climate change in the archipelago.
The president has stressed, however, that professionals in the transport sector will be exempt from paying this surcharge on the fuel tax, an exceptional treatment that will be included in the transitional provision of the 2025 Budget Law through which the forestry cent will be launched.
Scientific proposal
The creation of the forestry cent in next year's accounts arises from a proposal designed and submitted to the Government by a panel of 17 experts from all over the Canary Islands. Specifically, it has been prepared by the multidisciplinary team formed in one of the pilot tables created by the Council of the Canary Islands 2030 Agenda, the so-called 'Resilient and safe forest landscapes'.
In this sense, Fernando Clavijo stressed during his speech in the Regional Chamber that the forestry cent arises from the autonomous government's commitment to “listen to scientists” and act “hand in hand” with them to advance towards the sustainability of the archipelago.
This commitment of the Executive to “seek among all” solutions for the Canary Islands “of the next decades”, recalled the head of the Government of the Canary Islands, is further strengthened with the work developed by the five working groups created by the Commission of Presidents.
In this regard, Clavijo recalled that the conclusions and 51 proposals of these Demographic Challenge teams were presented last Friday and are currently on public display so that they can be enriched by organizations and citizens in general.
During his appearance in the plenary session of Parliament, the president stressed that in this deep debate on how to advance towards a sustainable development model more than 100 experts from the Canary Islands and the autonomous communities of Aragon and the Basque Country have participated.
As a result of this work, an “ambitious” package of proposals is on public display, covering all the challenges set by the Conference of Presidents held on April 30: the demographic challenge; taxation and employment in the tourism sector; transparency in the protection and development of the territory; access to housing; and the protection of the environment.
Risks and threats
In this line of work, the creation of the forestry cent announced this Tuesday by Clavijo is “a first step of the many that we want to take towards sustainability. Its creation is based on a scientific report that concludes that the resources currently allocated in the Canary Islands to the fight against climate change “are clearly scarce and fluctuating”.
Specifically, experts warn about “the high risk of fires that currently exists linked to its progressive increase due to climate change and the loss of primary activity in the midlands of the western islands urges the development of strong preventive measures to reverse this trend”. In addition, they consider it necessary to act against “the very high risk of desertification that affects the entire archipelago”, both in some areas of the western islands and throughout the eastern islands.