Sustainability and ecological transition are top of the agenda in the Canaries

By Janet Anscombe MBE

Gesplan (Gestión y Planeamiento Territorial y Medioambiental S.A.) is a long-established public company affiliated to the Canarian Government’s Department of Ecological Transition, Climate Change Action & Territorial Planning. Its main concern is the management and development of urban and environmental issues and planning.

It’s the sort of organization that will be pivotal in the future and its name will be heard increasingly over the next several years particularly because the Canarian Government’s Agenda 2030 is the region's commitment to the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Here, the agenda provides a strategic framework to adopt sustainable development goals and targets to the reality of the Canary Islands. As a result, it provides a guide for everyone here in these islands to strategies and action plans aimed at achieving sustainability across many sectors.

One of Gesplan’s current projects is to provide advice to young farmers on the subsidies and grants available for agricultural business creation. This is a key sector, in fact, the primary sector, which we have to support and improve it.

As just one example of problems faced by the sector, every single year around half our potato crop is ditched because of burrowing pests, with the system so embedded that the Cabildo issues notices around the islands telling farmers where the skips are for them to dump their infested crop. Given the soil we have here, this is simply ridiculous, and ways must be found to support local and sustainable supplies.

This type of issue is indeed a major plank of Gesplan’s activities, addressing the economic, social, environmental and governance weaknesses in current practices and developmental models, to make the most of the wonderful benefits these islands offer in terms of ecological transition, demographic changes and digital transformation. It is in fact the only way forward to ensure essential services for our survival here.

The current initiative aimed at young farmers began in 2017 under the auspices of the regional Min of Ag and has now been handed over to Gesplan. In the last five years, hundreds have been assisted with advice and funding and this is just the start.

Anyone interested in finding out more about this scheme in particular or Gesplan, in general, can send an email to [email protected] or check out their website: www.gesplan.es. I am sure we’ll be hearing much more of great interest about his over the coming years.