The Junta is busy modifying the existing law (Plan de Ordenación del Territorio or POT) that governs urban development, amongst other places, on the Costa Tropical.
The POT came into being in the form of the Decreto 369/2011, on the 20th of December, 2011, when the Junta was still under the control of the PSOE. The law established three levels of protection, depending on the nature of the land: Areas of Outstanding Landscape, Areas of Landscape Interest and Areas of Landscape Potential. Each one of these three categories came with ‘authorisable use’ on non-building land.
Since the law came into force there have been hiccups and problems with its applications in certain municipalities. The fact is that several municipalities were not happy with the restrictions that the law imposed on their urban development plans and had asked to have their protected areas revised.
So the Junta is revising each protected areas so that they will “preserve yet permit sustainable development in the rural environment.” The new norms can be used to permit “buildings linked to agriculture.”
Furthermore the modification to the law will permit “adjusting degrees of limitations to allows tourist & recreational activities of public interest.”
The law reform will also permit wind farms on protected land as they will be considered adaptable to the natural topography of the land.
The Junta assures that these changes will not prejudice protection measures on natural landscapes.
Editorial comment: after many forest fires were started to destroy wooded areas so that the land could be recategorised as building land, a socialist government brought out a law forbidding such a recategorisation and that any money made from recovering timber would be automatically used for the restoration of the damaged woodlands.
However, the PP got in to the driving seat and changed the law permitting some ex-woodland to be recategorised under “certain circumstances,” a bit like the Orwellian adjustment to the Animal Farm’s Ten Commandments: no animal should sleep in a bed… with sheets. This latest tweaking of environmental protections laws smacks of more of the same
(News: Andalucia)