ENVIRONMENT: When a minister can’t see the wood for the trees

The Ministry of the Environment, which is supposed to safeguard our natural heritage, has invented a legal instrument to use areas that, precisely, have been chosen to be protected from exploitation, whatever it may be. Obtaining this authorization is easy: the applicant only has to demonstrate that it was established within a reserve before it was declared as such. With this demonstration, you will be awarded one or more “certificates of accreditation of land use in protected areas.” From now on, where there used to be forests, now we will see agro-industrial farms or whatever can be exploited. If Miambiente does not have an inventory of the current occupation in the protected areas, how will it corroborate that all the information provided by the petitioner, be true? How difficult can it be to prove that a space has been occupied in an area that was later declared protected? If dozens of families were able to demonstrate to Anati that for years they occupied kilometers of coastline in Juan Hombrón, in order to sell them to the Papadimitriu family, how difficult can it be to meet the requirement that Miambiente will now demand, especially if it is a politician?? What part of “protected area” does the minister not understand? Can you be more obtuse? – LA PRENSA, Nov. 29.