On the occasion of the first International Day of Biosphere Reserves, which is commemorated this Thursday, the head of the Lanzarote Biosphere Reserve Office, Ana Carrasco, has warned of the risks facing the island. Carrasco has recalled that this appointment that the island received in 1993 is much more than an award and has stressed that in two years there will be a new evaluation to see if the commitments involved are being met.
What is your assessment of the evolution of the island of Lanzarote since its designation as a Biosphere Reserve in 1993?
Next year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Biosphere Reserve. And I say celebrate in quotation marks. We must be realistic and aware that we have changed a lot from 1933 to date. This island has changed in many ways and still has some fundamental challenges to begin to solve, for example, that of water. We cannot be losing 61.3% of the water we produce. That is unsustainable. Therefore, Lanzarote was a pioneer island, which had the requirements to be a Biosphere Reserve, which had one million tourists. But now we have reached three million. And we have also doubled the resident population, which means that we have a pressure on the territory that is not the same as before.
What responsibility does it entail to be a Biosphere Reserve?
There are three functions that a Biosphere Reserve must have: the function of conserving its own biodiversity, its cultural characteristics and promoting its development. And when we talk about human development, we have to refer to the development of the quality of life of the population. But above all, we have to learn to live with nature, to intervene in the territory in a harmonious way, in such a way that it does not affect our quality of life, but also that of the rest of the human beings with whom we live on this island.
Is there any monitoring to verify that these obligations are being met?
Yes, every 10 years there is an evaluation and independently, every year the UNESCO MaB program (Man and Biosphere Program), through its Scientific Council, evaluates a series of indicators that we have to meet. But the great evaluation, the one that takes place every decade, will be in two years. And UNESCO is getting serious about how we act in a Biosphere Reserve. The big problem that this island has had is that this appointment has been seen as an award. And a Biosphere Reserve is a commitment on the part of a territory. The island decided to be one. I think this is the reflection that we should make in the next two years: Do we want to continue to have this commitment to the way we act and live in Lanzarote?
What is the biggest challenge for the island today?
It is essential to reduce the number of tourists who visit us. In many countries there is now talk of the limits of the planet. We cannot go further, there is no sustainable growth. We had an important culture of limits, and not only because of Cesar Manrique. It came from behind. The residents of Haría were the ones who protected the Malpaís de la Corona from the possibility of being urbanized. And later the Island Plan of 1991 was made, which declassified 250 thousand tourist beds. We were pioneers in trying to self-limit ourselves.
And now there are no virgin areas left...
Penetration everywhere does not help. With the rise of social networks, a new way of communicating has been born. It seems that everything can be touched, that we can climb to all the sites and we can take pictures anywhere. The selfie has become the only way to corroborate that we have been to a site. When this island is conceived from the tourist point of view, what César Manrique and the whole team do is to prepare it for contemplation. You see the landscape from the car. The soil of Lanzarote, what is its volcanism, is very fragile. Therefore, when we have to enter the natural environment, we have to do it carefully.
Perhaps the problem is that the islands are not capable of being Biosphere Reserves in their entirety?
A Biosphere Reserve is not achieved as a protected natural space. For example, Lanzarote is a second generation Reserve because there was an error, they were declared National Park. It is not meritorious to declare a Natural Park. The merit lies in a territory where there is a population that faces the changes that are taking place, both globally and locally. The merit is in our behavior. What we have realized is that here there was a culture of caring for the environment, but it is being lost. We are going to schools and institutes and we see how a loss of that generational memory. When we go out with the children to the countryside and we ask them "What are you seeing?", there is a mountain of rubble and they do not see it. That is the problem. We are getting used to this new landscape, which is not good for our minds, nor for tourism, nor for anything.
Is there still time to change course?
It is a matter of rethinking the issue of limits. In fact, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the report on the limits of the planet, the Club of Rome. And on December 15 and 16 of this year we will hold a conference in the Cabildo to talk about the issue. The vice president of the Club of Rome will come and explain what is the latest report that has been made on the limits of the planet, which provided data that was not good, of course. Since this report emerged in 1972, there was already talk of what could happen, which in the end is what is happening now. At the conference we will also talk about the limits of Lanzarote. Because our island has faced and mobilized on many occasions to set limits, and we cannot lose this culture. We have to fight and keep insisting, because no matter how much we do, the system does not help us. Young people today are in front of a screen where they are seeing interventions that do not conform to what we should do to preserve our territory. And more conversation is needed, to converse to conserve.
