SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, June 14. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Council of Ministers, at the request of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), has approved allocating 3,291,248 euros to the Canary Islands for actions to conserve marine biodiversity.
This investment is part of the total of 30 million euros approved this Tuesday by the Government, aimed at the protection, conservation, management and restoration of marine biodiversity within the scope of the powers of the autonomous communities and autonomous cities, which is framed within component 4 of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
Complemented by the actions planned by the General State Administration for an amount of 82.6 million euros, this disbursement represents, as a whole, a total investment of more than 112 million euros dedicated to the protection of marine biodiversity in our country.
In this way, the package of measures is aligned with the Government’s commitment to protect 30% of the marine surface by 2030. For this, it is necessary to establish conservation objectives, approve management plans and promote human activities compatible with the conservation of the environment. , as well as eliminating impacts and avoiding the interaction of certain marine species with human activity and restoring marine ecosystems and biocenosis.
MANAGEMENT OF MARINE PROTECTED SPACES
Among the actions promoted through this agreement are the identification of new spaces or extensions of the existing ones, according to the available scientific criteria, as well as the effective management of protected marine spaces, of autonomous competence, in which there is ecological continuity between the terrestrial and maritime natural space.
On the other hand, measures will also be promoted to reduce the pressure on the protected marine spaces under the jurisdiction of the General State Administration, especially through the improvement and modernization of the facilities on the coast and associated discharges, and actions that allow reducing the contaminant load of the watercourses.
At the same time, actions will be carried out to conserve and mitigate the impacts on marine species, such as birds and turtles, which carry out part of their life cycle on land. Marine species and habitats under a protection regime will also be subject to these measures.
Thus, the autonomous communities will have 2 months from the approval of the agreement in the Sectorial Conference to submit their actions and establish an information and follow-up procedure.
The distribution of the funds will be carried out proportionally according to the kilometers of coastline and the marine surface protected by figures of regional competence. In the same way, a minimum of 100,000 euros will be allocated to autonomous cities compensated proportionally with the amounts of the autonomous communities.
