It is proposed as a public mediation tool for the productive use of land that generates a new model of rural development: sustainable, fair, and job-creating for young people.
The Socialist Parliamentary Group, through the MP from Fuerteventura, Rosa Bella Cabrera, defended this Wednesday [9] its initiative to create the Land Bank of the Canary Islands. The Non-Legislative Proposition (PNL) was debated in the regional parliament, where it received 57 votes in favour and 3 against. The Land Bank of the Canary Islands is envisaged as a public mediation tool for the productive use of agricultural, livestock, and forestry land, fostering the generation of a new model of rural development: sustainable, fair, and creating jobs for young people.
The Land Bank of the Canary Islands, supported today by the Socialist Canary, Canary Nationalist, Popular, Nueva Canarias-Canarian Bloc, Gomera Socialist Group, Independent MP, and Mixed groups, will provide productive land to those wishing to join the primary sector, actively offering a solution to owners of unused land and facilitating the administrative processes between both parties. All of this will have a direct impact on local economies.
This PNL advocated today by the Socialist Group in the Canary Parliament arises from the initiative of the Food and Food Sovereignty Secretariat of the PSOE in Fuerteventura, “which highlights the good work being done at the island level to seek solutions to local problems, such as giving productivity to idle land and reactivating rural life and economy, which can have a reflection in other islands and provide a global solution such as the creation of the Land Bank of the Canary Islands,” stated MP Rosa Bella Cabrera.
A Land Bank like the one proposed by the PSOE for the Canary Islands serves as a meeting point between owners of idle land and individuals interested in working it, simplifying the administrative processes through a single window and structuring legal formulas for transfer and leasing that ensure security for both parties. It also facilitates the recovery of unused estates, the production of local food, the protection of soils and their biodiversity, and the enhancement of traditional uses.
In its rationale, the PNL notes that there is a significant area of agricultural, livestock, and forestry land in the Canary Islands that is abandoned or underutilised. It is estimated that around 85,000 hectares of agricultural land in the Canary Islands are unused, with only 30% of the area being actively used for agricultural or livestock activities.
The Land Bank of the Canary Islands is based on successful cases in other parts of Spain, where new-generation agriculture and livestock, managed through land banks, have served as levers to reverse depopulation and impoverishment of their territories (what is known as “the empty Spain”).
The abandonment of the countryside generates multiple effects: loss of biodiversity, increased risk of wildfires, increased risk of flooding, rural unemployment, depopulation, soil erosion, and degradation of traditional landscapes. All of this compromises the sustainability, territorial cohesion, and food sovereignty objectives of the Archipelago.
