Environmentalists GOB issue an election “manifesto”

In presenting a document on coastal conservation, GOB stresses the importance of determining the load capacity to take account of ecological values in each given site and of classifying these values for beaches in urban settings and unspoiled ones.

GOB wishes to activate a debate on the environment prior to the general election, it wanting the Coasts’ Law to be repealed in order to prevent the construction of new coastal promenades and to establish a moratorium on marinas. It also wants a stop put on airport expansion and a transfer of airport management to the regional government and the island councils. As for ports, GOB proposes amendment to the law in order to prevent the building of new marinas and the expansion of existing ones. Specifically, it rejects any amplification of Palma’s El Molinar and Formentera’s La Savina.

A further measure that GOB would like to see introduced is a tax penalty on second homes and those acquired “for speculative purposes or for tourist exploitation”. It also wants a tax on empty homes, a fostering of public residential housing projects and incentives for building rehabilitation.

GOB goes on to ask for there to be an energy audit, the encouragement of energy self-generation, and laws to combat climate change, to boost sustainable transport and to make the Mediterranean “free of hydrocarbon prospecting”. Other specific items for the Balearics include a widening of the Cabrera national park and the protection of the underwater mountain range in the Majorca Channel as well as a declaration of marine reserves in waters off the Balearics.

A law on “ecological taxation” is another GOB proposal along with the leveraging of legal and administrative resources to combat environmental offences and corruption in cases where there is a link between land use and construction.