Environmentalists to fight Volcan Baru National Park rezoning

Environmentalists taking the Martinelli administration to court

Volcan Baru National Park rezoned for development
by Eric Jackson

The pretenses are no longer being made and the gloves are off. During his campaign, some of Ricardo Martinelli's literature promised to abolish the National Environmental Authority (ANAM). Then, because that would be an excellent excuse for many wavering Democrats in the US Congress to oppose ratification of the free trade agreement between the United States and Panama, Martinelli backtracked on that, at least for foreign consumption. However, Panama's sometimes fractious environmentalist movement is now solidly of one mind that for all practical purposes the president might well have abolished the nation's environmental protection agency.

The fights began over who has been hired and who has been fired at ANAM. Then came Martinelli's support for controversial hydroelectric dam projects. More recently, the Panama Canal Authority has filled in, and ANAM has approved of the destruction of, wetlands that the Audubon Society says are important for local and migrating birds. Then there are the permits that ANAM has given the thuggish ex-governor of Cocle, Richard Fifer, to dump cyanide into the environment at his Petaquilla gold mine.

However, the environmental battle that's most likely to escalate into a national and international full-scale confrontation that will definitively deep-six the free trade agreement is set in Mireya Moscoso's environmental Waterloo, the Volan Baru National Park. Mireya wanted a road through the park and her administration organized a goon squad to push it through, but three ANAM directors in a row refused a permit.

Martinelli has yes-people in place, certainly at ANAM and probably now in the Supreme Court, which blocked the Torrijos administration's attempt to subdivide and develop Cerro Ancon National Park. (In that latter confrontation, former Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro refused to issue permits, but if Martinelli tries to pick up where Torrijos left off on Ancon Hill, we can rest assured that Bosco the Clown won't oppose him.)

Last October 30 ANAM passed, and during the holidays it published, Resolution AG-0911-2009. This resolution, passed at the behest of businessman Enrique Luis Morales and his company Stash Investment Inc, removes protection from some 800 hectares of second growth forest within the park, around the headwaters of the Caldera River. The company owns about 160 hectares of the rezoned area and Morales wants to build a hotel there. He told La Estrella that it would be a small eco-tourist facility, with eight units and nature trails on the surrounding property.

On RPC radio, ANAM director Javier Arias emphatically denied corruption. He said that the rezoning was not done for the benefit of just one person or business, that on his shift ANAM has not operated that way and will not do so.

That's part of what Panama's environmentalist movement fears: what other developments are going in on the more than 600 other hectares, that have been rezoned for development? There appear to be five other owners of those lands, whose development plans are unknown.

Among the other issues that have mobilized the environmentalists are that the change was done in violation of Panama's basic environmental protection law, which does not allow the clandestine rezoning of national parks; that the change violates the 2004 Volcan Baru National Park land use plan, which has the force of law. As a first step toward challenging the ANAM resolution in the courts, the Alianza para el Desarrollo Ambiental de las Tierras Altas (ADATA), an alliance of environmentalist organizations, filed a petition with ANAM requestion reconsideration of Resolution AG-0911-2009. Once that's denied or ignored, it will be possible to bring a challenge before the administrative bench of the Supreme Court.

The opposition will likely not be confined to administrative channels and the courts. The argument will get loud and public, and will be held up abroad as an example of how Panama's international commitments to uphold environmental laws really don't mean anything.

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