The Farmer's Monument hosted this Monday the presentation of the Initial Document of the Special Plan for the Protected Landscape (PEPP) of La Geria by the Cabildo of Lanzarote to the public, primary sector and public and business representatives. The president Oswaldo Betancort and the Councilor for Territorial Policy of the island institution, Jesús Machín, announced the details of the regulatory text that will order and regulate the agricultural development of the protected area of La Geria.
"After a consensual territorial diagnosis, our protected landscape will soon have a regulation according to a unique space, with respect to agricultural, environmental and recreational activity," said Betancort, remarking that the work done in these 8 months of Government by the technical team of the Territorial Policy Area seeks to reduce agricultural abandonment with measures that encourage the sustainability of the vine, protecting the traditional typology of cultivation, establishing measures against irregular extractive activity and regulating permitted buildings in order to maintain traditional typologies, in addition to meeting the needs of the resident.
The Councilor for Territorial Policy, Jesús Machin, stressed that "we are facing a primary document and we are all going to have to give in", clarifying that "our only aim is to provide legal certainty, minimum habitability services and environmental protection".
In response to questions from some of the winegrowers present at the event, Jesús Machín pledged to mediate with the Regulatory Council to process the allegations they wish to submit to the document, with the firm intention of putting the winegrowers who should never have been out of the equation at the center of the map of La Geria.
"Incentive to the hole" is the phrase with which the councilor wanted to summarize the support for winegrowers against the abandonment of farms or cultivation by other more profitable systems. The average density of plants per hectare increases as the traditional model of hole is abandoned. In fact, according to this initial document, in the last 6 years the net agricultural area of vine cultivation has decreased by 10.64 hectares.
Delivery and processing deadlines
The deadline for submitting the draft of the PEPP La Geria is next April 2024, meanwhile the Ordinary Strategic Environmental Assessment (EVAO), the technical and legal reports will be prepared and it will be submitted to the plenary of the Cabildo to subsequently have the so-called Scope document that will be again supervised by Gesplan and will have a new period of public display and allegations that will end in the Advance.
Finally, the Environmental Body of Lanzarote will carry out the EVAO, given that the body will be formally constituted in the next plenary session of the Island Corporation and will be formed by 6 people, two lawyers, two environmentalists and an architect.
It should be recalled that the Cabildo of Lanzarote awarded last August for an amount of 355,259 euros the elaboration of said Plan to the public company Gesplan; a document that runs parallel to the beginning of the legal file of the aforementioned planning, approved at the beginning of October in the Island Government Council.
During the whole month of October and until the end of December of last year, the draft of the document was submitted to citizen participation through a public consultation on the Cabildo's website and was updated with the suggestions of the citizens and the contributions of the agricultural, wine-growing sector and the Cabildo of Lanzarote.
This document, which is still in an initial phase and which is expected to be definitively approved by the end of 2026, is an instrument of planning that values the landscape, the wine culture of La Geria and the work of the farmer throughout history in this space, for the preservation of a form of traditional cultivation that respects its natural environment, with the aim of making it sustainable over time.
Wineries and new public spaces
The wineries are considered structuring equipment within this protected area, as they are an element that preserves the landscape and keeps the farms active, and that are an attractive factor of the landscape that benefits local communities.
The Special Plan of La Geria proposes, in this sense, to end the impact related to the presence of open-air steel tanks of the wineries, while preparing a study for the possibility of establishing a public sanitation network that serves the facilities that exist in that protected area. As well as the ordering of the existing tracks and roads and the establishment of conditions to the overhead power lines.
The draft also contemplates new public spaces such as an Information, Dissemination and Administrative Center in the town of Masdache (Tías), as well as an Interpretation Center and Recreational Area in Uga (Yaiza).
