Decalogue of "tourism unsustainability", according to Ben Magec

Ben Magec-Ecologists in Action has presented its decálogo of the "unsustainability" of the tourism model in the Canary Islands, where it highlights the "key" factors to understand the social and environmental effects that it attributes to this activity, on which it believes that "urgent measures" must be taken.

The decálogo, prepared on the occasion of the International Tourism Day that is celebrated this Friday, summarizes "the problems and consequences of a predatory system that is straining the territory and its inhabitants", as well as the "urgent measures" that the group believes must be adopted to control it, as explained in a statement.

There is, he alleges, "a widespread and growing discomfort" among the Canarians, who "suffer daily the consequences of the inaction of public institutions in curbing and controlling a situation that has exceeded all limits and that strains, more and more, the lives of the people", and before which they ask for "measures", such as limiting mass tourism, an ecotax, a tourist and vacation moratorium and "the urgent regulation of the purchase of homes by non-residents".

Issues such as the predation of the territory, the consumption of water or the lack of housing are some of the aspects included in the document, which seeks to "be a roadmap to understand the problems derived from an economic system that generates inequality, precariousness and excessive dependence on the outside".

For Ben Magec, the "historic demonstrations" of last April 20 to demand "urgent measures" to limit mass tourism, are a sample "of the deep discomfort of the Canarian citizenship before a situation that has exceeded, by far, all the limits" and that is causing a "deep degradation, both of the territory and of the quality of life of our people".

Faced with this, the Canarian institutions "have ignored the social debate, looking the other way and accelerating the approval of new macro-tourism projects", allowing, in addition, "the continuity of many that violate the law", he denounces.

In addition, they point to other social problems derived from a "unlimited and uncontrolled" tourism model, such as access to housing for Canarians, the rise of vacation rentals and the purchase of properties by the European population that has "increased the price of housing to unaffordable figures with their salaries, increasing up to 45% since 2015".

For Ben Magec, this crisis "is aggravated in all the islands and causes people with employment and income to be unable to access a home" and that there is an "unprecedented overcrowding of the islands and an increase in the cost of living", with a "rise in the basic shopping basket of up to 32% in the last three years, the most pronounced in the entire State".

They call attention to the fact that despite the "tourist records that are exceeded year after year, almost 36% of the Canarian population is at risk of poverty or social exclusion", figures "much higher than the state average" that place the islands as the second community with the worst data, only behind Andalusia.

The scarcity of water, the result of the overexploitation of aquifers, the reduction of rainfall and the prolonged drought suffered by the islands as a result of climate change is another of the factors that, in Ben Magec's opinion, aggravates the current situation, since "the tourism industry continues to make irresponsible use of this resource, filling swimming pools or watering golf courses, consuming, in addition, up to six times more water than the resident population".