Marilles regrets the political division over the conservation of the sea

Marilles Foundation welcomes the fact that marine conservation has been debated in Parliament and considers that the protection of the Balearic Sea should go beyond partisan positioning.  

A Proposició no de Llei (PNL) on marine conservation was debated recently in the Balearic Parliament. The proposal asked Parliament to urge the Balearic government to comply with the objective of having 10% of the Balearic Sea highly protected (currently only 1.7% is protected), to create a working table (as it has done with the Water Table) with all representatives to agree on it, and that within two years we have a map of where these areas of high protection could be.  

We are surprised and concerned that the party of the government - the PP - which has the capacity to act along these lines, has voted against these specific measures.  

If we want the Balearic Islands to be a reference in marine conservation, we must advance in the high protection of the sea based on the categories la and lb defined by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This is an issue on which this government has not yet taken a position.  

 Social and economic consensus  

More than 200 companies and entities of very different sensibilities have signed the Balearic Blue Deal to ask the government to apply concrete measures to guarantee a sea in an excellent state of conservation. We would have liked to see this same unity in the political sphere.  

The only commitments of the Balearic Blue Deal in which the Balearic government has shown interest and taken some action are those referring to the improvement of water quality and the sustainable management of the fishing sector.   

We applaud this. The Balearic public, however, not only wants to have clean waters but also to have them full of life. And this requires progress in the high protection of the sea, the effective management of protected marine areas so that their protection goes beyond paper, and the improvement of surveillance and monitoring programmes for habitats and species. All of this needs to be supported financially to make it possible.  

Lack of commitment  

Since July 2023, the government has not expressed or made public any commitment in this regard. We’ve not even seen a calendar or roadmap to define how to move forward in the coming years. The PP and the government have missed a great opportunity to show their willingness to conserve the Balearic Sea. Let's hope that the actions, at parliamentary and governmental level, will show the opposite.  

We welcome the fact that the PNL has been partially approved and we are grateful that several groups have echoed the Mediterranean 30x30 agreement presented in Madrid to the Spanish government last week. It contains many proposals that emanate from the Blue Deal that could begin to be applied in the Balearic Islands today. We also welcome the fact that the PP has approved some amendments, such as urging the central government to comply with the 30x30 designation and the high protection of the sea (a request it has refused to make in the regional government it leads).  

This recent debate was an opportunity to show that the parliamentary groups can unite on issues that are cross-cutting and of special importance for these islands, regardless of partisan positions.  

 Marilles Foundation will continue working and presenting our proposals to follow this path towards the effective protection of our sea.