After seven years of litigation between the American company Vulcan Materials and the Mexican government, on September 23, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared the Protected Natural Area (ANP) “Felipe Carrillo Puerto”, with more than 53 thousand hectares, in Quintana Roo. Experts believe that the declaration would be insufficient considering the lack of budget and oversight that these areas of the country suffer.
The decrease in the amount allocated to protected natural areas in the Federal Expenditure Budget (PEF) between 2018 and 2024 corresponds to 148 million 472,702 nominal pesos, while the six-year period added 50 new ANPs to reach a total of 232.
“This outgoing administration of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador began a six-year term, if I remember correctly, with 180 protected natural areas (182), and ended this six-year term with 232 protected natural areas. And well, until last year, until December 2023, with the number of ANPs that existed at the time, which already reached 200, we only had a budget of around 10.7 pesos per hectare... neither for gasoline, nor for 1 liter of gasoline that requires a protected area to be monitored,” says Gina Ileana Chacón Fregoso, director of public policy for the civil organization Wildlands Network.
The lack of budget for Management Plans is the result of insufficient funding for Conanp and also translates into less support for management programs. The new ANP Felipe Carrillo Puerto has emerged without one and, with it, without the indications of what should be done within it.
“It is neither more nor less, the essential document to be able to manage them, to preserve them. And it would be like a prescription, let's say, if we were speaking in medical terms, like a prescription of what you need, what you can do with them and what you shouldn't do with them,” explains Chacón Fregoso.
Overall, the budget allocated to the environment and natural resources fell by 11% in 2024. Of this bag, 89% goes to Conagua, which contrasts with 1.40% to Conanp and 1.28% to the Federal Attorney's Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa), a federal institution responsible for seeking justice and environmental surveillance, according to Oceana's Budget Analysis for the 2018-2024 environmental sector.
Surveillance
Profepa allocates a third of that budget for its only surveillance program, the analysis notes. The institution's oversight role is indispensable, because of this, in 2018 it was determined that the Vulcan Materials Company in its subsidiary Sac-Tun (formerly Calica), located in the municipalities of Solidaridad, Cozumel and Tulum, in Quintana Roo, made greater use than allowed of limestone, according to the rapporteur of the Government of Mexico after a hearing by the Arbitral Tribunal of Chapter XI of the T-MEC. For this reason, it was closed and sanctioned.
Vulcan, the largest producer of construction aggregates in the United States, responded to this closure with a lawsuit against the Mexican State, which sought compensation of more than 1.5 billion dollars.
The company argued that the agreement concluded in 1986 between the Federal Government, the secretariats of Urban Development and Ecology (Sedue) and Communications and Transportation, the Government of Quintana Roo and the company Calizas Industriales del Carmen, S.A. de C.V (Calica) was sufficient to carry out its activities on a temporary unlimited basis. However, in Mexico there is no authorization for environmental impact that is indefinite.
In addition to the lack of a management plan, there are no restoration intentions within the area. Guillermo DChristy, a 59-year-old activist, member of the Citizen Sciences collective, Urban Cenotes and the Sélvame del Tren movement, has witnessed the damage that the company Sac-Tun (formerly Calica) has left in its quarry of approximately two thousand hectares.
“There's no plan to restore... restore the water you see in those big lagoons... Here, Sac-Tun has been extracting so much stone material that it has already reached the level of the aquifer mantle. So what you see there is the aquifer. How to make up for that?” , Christy explained.
Aquifers are naturally protected by layers of soil or rock that prevent pollution. However, exposing water to the outside environment opens up the possibility of contaminants entering.
Future ANP
The number of new ANPs in this six-year term is still uncertain. According to Chacón, it is necessary to wait for two documents to know an estimate. The first is the 2025 budget allocated to the National Commission for Protected Natural Areas in the Federal Expenditure Project (PPF).
Although it is not mandatory that it include the number of estimated ANPs to be declared, it has happened before.
“In the previous documents of the Draft Expenditure Budget, some of the objectives have appeared as part of the Conanp. It says 'well, this will be to follow up on the creation of so many protected natural areas the following fiscal year'. But in the end, it was seen, for example, that in 2024 more were decreed than the 2024 PPF said. So that would be a first document to have an approximation,” said Chacón.
The second document, he explained, would be the National Program for Protected Natural Areas available at the end of 2025, which could provide a projection of the work objectives of the national commissioner of ANP, Pedro Álvarez Casa.
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