On Thursday morning in the Chamber of Deputies, a plenary session of commissions will be held to debate various bills for the protection and rational use of wetlands. Congress has “a debt to society,” warned the president of the Natural Resources and Conservation of the Human Environment Commission of Deputies, Leonardo Grosso, who also considered citizen claims fundamental, such as those of the weekend, for lawmakers to address the issue.
It is expected that on Thursday the self-convened environmentalists and neighbors who kept the Rosario-Victoria bridge cut off during the weekend demanding the cessation of burning on the islands of the Paraná delta, will attend the National Congress “so that the the discussion for the Consensual Wetlands Law”.
The plenary session of the Natural Resources, Agriculture and Budget commissions will begin in the morning, and will deal with a dozen initiatives that seek to establish a regime of minimum budgets for the identification, conservation, protection, ecological restoration and rational use of wetlands.
The issue will be debated after the decision adopted on Thursday during the special session of Deputies, during which a request by deputy Enrique Estévez to summon the Natural Resources Commission to advance in the debate was approved. “We owe each other a sincere, honest and respectful debate without overreacting that deepens the contradictions we have as a society,” assured Estevez from Santa Fe on that occasion.
In anticipating his support for this proposal, the president of the Natural Resources Commission, Grosso, anticipated that the ruling party “is determined that this important issue be unlocked.” “Let’s see if we can rule and have the legislative matter already prepared so that, as soon as there is a session, we can give half sanction to a law of minimum budgets for the protection of wetlands,” said the deputy.
An inventory of wetlands
Grosso explained that the consensus project “defines wetlands and proposes an inventory” of them. “Each province has to say where the wetlands are based on different scales, regions, landscapes and, based on that, establish budgets minimum protection, preservation and rational use,” he explained, adding that the standard would serve as a “tool to prevent” fires.
If the law is sanctioned, the provinces will have the power to “enable or not economic and tourist activities on these wetlands based on these minimum protection budgets,” he explained.
“The Argentine Rural Society, the most concentrated sector of the countryside, is the one that most resists the Wetlands Law with a false argument, saying that economic activity on wetlands is going to be prohibited and that is a lie,” he added. “This law is not a law against production, this law seeks to regulate,” remarked the legislator and maintained that “it is a law against destruction.” Referents from different blocks of Deputies indicated that they hope to be able to advance with a joint opinion in the coming weeks.
Source: Pagina12
