He National Environmental Certification Service for Sustainable Investments (Senace) It could absorb the functions of the National Forest Service (Serfor), the National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State (Sernanp), and the National Water Authority (ANA), in order to accelerate large investment projects in the country.
The initiative, presented by the National Society of Mining, Oil and Energy (SNMPE) has already had a first advance within the Executive, with the support of the premier Alberto Otárola. In addition to the absorption, it is proposed to assign Senace to the PCM, so that it has more budget and “complies with the country’s vision” of promoting investments, through more agile certifications.
It should be noted that Senace is the institution attached to the Ministry of the Environment (Minam) that evaluates and approves the detailed Environmental Impact Studies (EIA-d) of the main investment projects in the country. Currently, it has 15 mining projects under supervision in its portfolio.
The proposal, assures the energy mining union, It does not seek to reduce or degrade environmental standards, but to expedite projects that in Peru can take three times as long as in other countries. However, the possible merger has not been well received from the sector. What do specialists say about it?
It is born. The purpose of the EIAs is to identify the positive and negative impacts that are expected from the execution of an investment project, and to establish the necessary measures to manage them, involving citizens in an effective manner.
Senace: a merger that would “politicize” environmental management
The former Minister of the Environment, Gabriel QuijandriaHe maintained that proposing a merger of the four institutions responsible for environmental certification “is not understanding anything.” In this sense, he said that Sernanp’s main function is to manage protected areas at the national level, so an “EIA evaluation is a secondary issue in his mandate.”
The current regional director for South America of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) also considered that the SNMPE proposal seeks “go back in history ten years” in order to “regain direct control of the approval of EIAs.”
“The same must be said about the territorial ordering function. They say that they are concerned about an alleged politicization of the issue, but what they propose as a solution, by putting it in PCM, is to make the process only political,” Quijandría remarked.
“And if we imagine a Senace, absorbing Sernano, Serfor and ANA, and attached to the PCM, but with someone like Bellido being the first? Would they still think they discovered gunpowder?” he added.
Position supported by the former Minister of the Environment, Lucia Delfina Ruiz Ostoicwho assured that “the only thing that proposals of this type demonstrate is a sovereign ignorance of public management, or a sovereign contempt for it.”
It is born. The Environmental Impact Studies (EIA) are prepared by environmental consultants hired by the owners of the projects and are evaluated by the State.
Senace: independence to issue the EIA-d
For his part, the former Vice Minister of Environmental Management, Jose de Echaveopined that the mining business sector has developed “various campaigns against regulations, institutions and policies that they perceive as adverse to their interests”, regardless of whether these regulations and institutions are necessary for the country.
De Echave argued that the EIA represents the main technical instrument that allows the inclusion of the environmental variable in decision-making on the development or execution of projects for the use of natural resources or infrastructure.
“It is essential to have an independent institution, with top-level professionals and the necessary resourcesthat evaluates the possible consequences of the projects on the quality of life and on the environment,” the specialist explained.
Finally, the former Vice Minister of Environmental Management, Mariano Castro Sanchez-Morenoconsidered “unacceptable” the condition of granting more resources to Senace if it passes to PCM, for which he expressed that the Government should focus “not only on improving environmental institutions, but on promoting the transition to development with environmental and social sustainability.”
“Just as Peru assumed, for example, in the former Amazon Summit,” said Sánchez-Moreno.
For this reason, the director of the United for Forests Program warned that “with these wrong proposals” fundamental obligations are being breached to guarantee that investment projects do not cause environmental or social damage, something that, in his opinion, “has already happened with the Law 31841 of the National Infrastructure Authority”.
“The environmental impact assessment is fundamental for the application of preventive environmental policy, in charge of the Ministry of the Environment. Passing a merged Senace to PCM would generate politicization, mistrust and conflicts“, he sentenced.
Source: Larepublica
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