In the first nine months of the year, there was a 265.9% increase in rights charges for Protected Natural Areas (ANP) compared to the same period last year.
The federation charges rights for the use or exploitation of natural resources within the ANP, as well as for the use or exploitation of ANP resources for recreational, tourist and sports activities, in accordance with the Federal Law on Rights (LFD).
The increase between January and September, in part, is due to the fact that in 2020, a year of strong effects of the pandemic on tourism, it obtained a particularly low revenue compared to previous years, according to data provided by Conanp in a request for information.
In real terms, the 118.2 million pesos in collection of rights, between January and September 2021, represent an increase of 4% compared to the amount collected in the same months of 2019.
Where does the money go?
“The income obtained from the collection of the rights referred to in this article will go to the National Commission for Protected Natural Areas (Conanp), for the sustainable management of Protected Natural Areas”, reads article 198 of the LFD.
This article is basically aimed at generating income from the tourist use that ANPs have in Mexico, something that is done in other countries. However, the money does not end up re-entering the ANP, partly because of loopholes in the law itself.
“The law says that you have to re-enter, although it doesn't say under what mechanisms, how often you have to re-enter or what conditions are for them to return. That is not defined anywhere, and we believe that it is one of the problems,” explained Miguel Palmeras, coordinator of the Marine Conservation Program of the Niparajá A.C. Natural History Society.
In the absence of mechanisms, it has been left to the discretion of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) to allocate the money derived from rights collections to the ANP.
“We detected in our investigation that from 2013 to 2018 not a single peso was returned to Conanp,” said Palmeras.
Although the authorities have started to re-enter amounts in recent years, one problem that has occurred is the inequality between what the ANPs generate in rights charges and what the SHCP ends up returning to them for the management of the ANP itself.
An example highlighted by Palmeras is that of the Cabo Pulmo National Park, in Baja California Sur, which in 2018 earned 1 million 200,000 pesos for collection of rights, and to which 128 thousand pesos were allocated in 2019.
“In short, rights are charged in many ANPs, but they are not reimbursed and that has been a complaint from people we know, because collecting rights for the Commission is also a job. If they also have a lot of visitors and they have to be selling these bracelets, then you're doing a job, and if you do that job and it doesn't generate benefits, then in the end it doesn't feel good, it's something that didn't come to fruition at all for the operation of the Protected Area,” said Palmeras.
In the first nine months of the year, the ANP with the highest amounts collected from January to September are Revillagigedo National Park with 17 million 721 thousand pesos, Palenque National Park with 12 million 432 thousand and the Guadalupe Island Biosphere Reserve with 11 million 335 thousand, according to a request for information from Causa Natura.
The budgetary distribution
For next year, Conanp will have 887 million pesos, as presented by the SHCP and approved by federal deputies in the Federal Expenditure Budget (PEF) 2022. This is 1.2% less than the budget allocated for 2021 in real terms.
The distribution of the budget for the ANPs in Mexico is carried out according to the regional directorates that group the ANPs. However, Conanp's criteria for dividing this budget by region are uncertain.
“What is not very clear is what are the criteria for allocating the budget. That's when they suddenly assigned very large ANP, or the largest, such as the Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, which was allocated 230,000 pesos in 2021, but in 2020 they allocated 500,000 pesos. Why was there this decline of almost half? These criteria are not known,” Palmeras questioned.
In this way, the allocations seem to be governed by previous allocations, but without making it transparent how they consider different needs to be met from the 182 ANPs that exist in Mexico.
“For example, monitoring or managing the ANP of La Mariposa Monarca, which is a very large land area, with very complex problems, is not the same as managing the Revillagigedo National Park, which is a Marine Protected Area, which is very far away, that no people live there, there is only one base of the Navy. In other words, the situations of each ANP are different,” said the expert.
The importance of the budget for ANPs is of vital importance, since without adequate amounts, NAPs are at risk of being poorly managed.
“An ANP that has 50,000 pesos for gasoline or surveillance actions is not going to be enough even to visit the area. The budget does include salaries and they are insured, but operating expenses, buying gas or maintaining a boat, food to go on a trip to the countryside, in other words, it's very difficult. How do you tell people who work as park rangers that they are going to go out to the field with 200 pesos, or how do you tell them they have to do 200 tours a year but I give you 20,000 pesos. Nobody will be able to reach it, this reduces the presence and makes the ANP more vulnerable to illegal activities,” Palmeras said.
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