Technically, for now, that activity does have some legal backing. An environmental impact report was approved by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development. The ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.
Part of the confusion is that land titles belonging to property owners around the lake were issued before the protected area was declared, with some titles extending into the water, theoretically allowing for private development.
However, at the same time, the protected area law says development is only allowed if the projects existed before 2014. That isn’t the case for the filling works that started last year, leading critics to believe that officials are cherry-picking which laws to abide by when trying to push through economic projects.
There is also debate about what qualifies as “leveling” versus “filling” an area, which may have allowed for more legal flexibility in moving forward with the project.
“The Ministry of Environment is ‘grabbing’ a restricted use zone to allow for the filling of the wetlands,” said Raquel Rodríguez, a biologist and local defender of the lake. “They allege that it doesn’t have strict protections.”
Congress wants answers
Last month, several congressmen requested an official explanation from Minister of Environment Ariel Oviedo about how the environmental impact studies were carried out and how he made sense of them in the context of the laws protecting the lake.
Deputy Kattya González, one of the most vocal signers of the letter, also said that she hopes to question other relevant officials about the issue. She visited the area earlier this year and took photos of construction work being done at a rapid pace.
She said the environment ministry appears to be “selling off” environmental permits, suggesting that other protected areas in Paraguay could face similar threats. However, González said she has so far not discovered concrete evidence of corruption.
The wetlands of Pirayú, adjacent to Lake Ypacaraí. Photo via Silvia Centrón/MOPC.
“Today they have a really criminal policy,” González told Mongabay, “in which the environmental impact permits, which eventually enable the completion of works, are totally subject to the economic powers that control Paraguay.”
She added: “They look into environmental impact qualifications from their desk, without going to the site, without verifying, without taking into account everything that goes into the law.”
The ministry has come under fire in the past for similar activity. In 2020, several former ministry officials described to UK NGO Earthsight how the agribusiness industry was allowed to illegally clear forests and disregard complaints from Indigenous communities.
“Our Lake Ypacaraí is dying at the hands of the negligence and criminal complicity of authorities and unscrupulous people,” González said earlier this month, “who take advantage of the fact that no one controls and disciplines them.”
Banner image: The waters of Lake Ypacaraí. Photo via Silvia Centrón/MOPC.
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Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Environment, Environmental Law, Environmental Politics, Freshwater Animals, Freshwater Ecosystems, Freshwater Fish, Governance, Lakes, Protected Areas, Urbanization, Wetlands, Wildlife, Wildlife Conservation
Latin America, Paraguay, South America
Source link : https://news.mongabay.com/2022/02/threatened-wetlands-in-paraguays-lake-ypacarai-raise-legal-questions/
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Publish date : 2022-02-25 03:00:00
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