The Plenary of the Cabildo of Lanzarote has approved this Thursday the designation of the members that will be part of the Island Environmental Assessment Body of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, which will be in charge of processing the projects and plans with environmental impact of an island nature and even procedures that the town councils need for their projects.
President Oswaldo Betancort has valued this approval as "one more step to launch a very important instrument in order to speed up the processing of regulations aimed at the conservation of the territory and the care of our environment, since unfortunately we were the only island in the Canary Islands without an Environmental Assessment Body".
In this line, he explained that "until now, any regulatory process undertaken in this area by the Cabildo had to go through the Autonomous Commission for Environmental Assessment of the Government of the Canary Islands, and now, the approval of this environmental body will facilitate the approval of fundamental norms that from the Cabildo we propose to approve in this same mandate as the Island Plan of Ordination of Lanzarote (PIOL) or the Special Plan of La Geria".
For his part, the vice-president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Jacobo Medina, assured that this agreement "is excellent news and a historical claim of the citizens of both islands". Thus, he revealed that "we could not continue without initiating the drafting of an environmental body, because we have a lot at stake in our territory and it was our obligation, as an island Corporation, to double our efforts to carry out this initiative", added Medina, who also pointed out that as the months go by "we will continue to advance and take more and more steps to have a complete and regulated document as soon as possible".
As head of the area, the Councilor for Territorial Policy, Jesús Machín, celebrated that in just eight months the regulation that resolves all the functioning of this body has been approved and that in today's plenary, the final list of perfectly designated members has been closed, from jurists, environmentalists, geographers and architects.
"A tool that will give us agility, that will give us dynamism and that will have the professional advice of people from Lanzarote who know our vicissitudes, our idiosyncrasies and what this new conception of the territory and the protected natural spaces means for the island", concluded Machín.
Members of the Environmental Assessment Body
The jurist Pedro Fraile Bonafonte, current director of the legal advice of the Cabildo, will be the new secretary of this Environmental Body and, for his part, Carolina Pardo, legal counsel of the island Cabildo will be the alternate.
Likewise, the following full and alternate members have also been appointed respectively: María del Pilar Gómez Cortés (legal counsel of the Cabildo of Lanzarote) and Santiago Calero Cabrera (legal counsel of the Town Hall of Tías); Flora Márquez Cabrera (legal counsel of the Town Hall of Tinajo) and Laura del Carmen Morales Soler (legal counsel of the Cabildo of Lanzarote); Alberto Lasso Hernández (architect of the Town Hall of Tías) and Lidia Sánchez Suárez (architect of the Town Hall of Arrecife); María Matilde Rodríguez Borges (environmentalist of the Town Hall of Teguise) and Tani María Acuña González (agricultural technician of the Cabildo of Lanzarote); Ignacio A. Ramos García (geographer) and Ancor Sánchez González (geographer).
The body is complementary to the Cabildo of Lanzarote and must be integrated, as emphasized in its regulations, by "people who meet criteria of autonomy, specialization and professionalism, adopting their decisions in a collegial manner." The members of the body will exercise their functions with independence, impartiality and objectivity, basing their actions on the principles of speed and efficiency, with full submission to the Law and the Right".
In this way, the environmental assessment of plans, programs and projects, both public and private initiative, that require environmental assessment, and whose approval corresponds to the Cabildo, will no longer have to be processed by the Government of the Canary Islands.
Both public employees and people with recognized professional competence, with higher education and in accordance with the rules on professional qualifications, may be part of the Environmental Body. In all cases, they must have accredited training and specialization in legal, technical, territorial or environmental matters, and must also meet the criteria of "professionalism, independence, impartiality and objectivity.
