A week before the end of the exhibition of the draft Natural Resources Management Plan of the Chinijo Archipelago Natural Park, the residents of Famara and La Graciosa, gathered around the citizen platform Dos Orillas, state that "it gives the impression that the two meetings that the Government of the Canary Islands held last December with the citizens, to present the PORN, respond more to issues of legal imperative than to a real interest in knowing the reality of the people affected".
"That is why we regret the lack of empathy with the population, if we add to that, in addition, that the days and times of the meetings were established unilaterally without consulting the interested parties," they criticize in a statement.
The citizen platform believes "that the document that has been exhibited on the regional website is a cumbersome text, even for specialized people, which causes the target population to find it difficult to understand what it means and how it affects them. We believe that the proposal should have been done the other way around, first ask about the problems and inconveniences we suffer, in areas such as fishing, tourism, agriculture, etc. and from there incorporate it later into the document".
They also consider "that the regulations that have to do with this environment must be processed meticulously to avoid inconveniences as in the past." They recall in the press release that the PRUG of 2006 had to be annulled due to lack of PORN and that the subsidiary regulations of the Teguise City Council have alignment and slope problems, causing obstacles to the residents, "in addition to eternalizing the processes since it is necessary to process them again".
They also value "that in these forty years of natural park the coordination between the different administrations has been deficient, which has seriously harmed the conservation and coexistence in this environment. In the same way, we consider that the participation of the affected population has not been taken into account, to know our problems, our interests, our proposals, as a tool that enriches the management of the space".
Finally, Dos Orillas requests the responsible institutions "a real involvement in the management of the Natural Park and that the neighbors of both shores are counted from the beginning, from the bottom up and not the other way around." To achieve this goal, they propose "the creation of a working table that allows us to work together on both the PORN and the PRUG, led by the Cabildo as manager of the Natural Park and by the Government of the Canary Islands as responsible for the elaboration of the plans, with the participation of the citizens and the rest of the institutions involved".
