Enhanced management of Andalusian Protected Areas

The Regional Government of Andalusia, as a Leader Partner of the Interreg Europe IMPACT Project, has successfully reached a policy change, consisting in the enhancement of the current policy tool for the management of natural parks in Andalusia, the Sustainable Development Plans (SDP), thanks to the interregional cooperation and good practices exchange carried out and to the implementation of the achieved results during the Project.

The implementation of the regional action plan has achieved its main goals in the framework of the improvement of the SDP through 3 main lines of action: firstly, boosting the integration of the local community through the inclusion of new tools of participation, taking into account their contributions in the draft SDP documents prior to the public information process, that is compulsory before the final authorization of each one. Secondly, building a conflicts resolution model to solve the issues between local population and natural parks authorities. This tool would have been applied during last may in the 5 current SDP pending of authorization, but the sanitary emergency we are involved in, has obliged to postpone its application to October 2020, and finally, integrating methodologies that promotes socio-economic development and biodiversity conservation: the “Assessment of the tourism carrying capacity”.

The specific SDPs improved with the inclusion of the implemented actions have been the following ones:

Sierras de Cardeña-Montoro, Hornachuelos, Huetor and Bahia de Cadiz Natural Parks, which their 4 SDP were sent on May 20th, 2020 to start the previous consultations stage to the participation forums before send them to the official public information.
Sierra Maria Los Velez, Cabo de Gata-Nijar and Montes de Malaga Natural Parks, which their drafts of the SDP for public information prior to their final authorization will be published in the Official Bulletin of the Regional Government of Andalusia by July 31st, 2020.
On the other hand, the Regional Goverment of Andalusia has tendered 2 contracts in order to elaborate 2 tourism carrying capacity studies in Sierras de Tejeda, Almijara y Alhama and Sierra de Huetor Natural Parks, based on the methodology developed by the IMPACT project.