Teresa Ribera proposes to set up a special paper in the Senate on the future of the coast in the face of climate change

The Fourth Vice-President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge has invited the plenary session of the Senate to constitute a special presentation to discuss what is going to be done on the Spanish coast as a result of climate change because she believes that it is an “extraordinarily complicated” debate.

During the control session of the full Senate, the minister recalled that climate change is a phenomenon that “is going to become a new normal” and that will affect the coast so she said that it is not only worth thinking about restoring the beaches, “thinking that there is sand, which is also finite and complicated to extract it, that also generates an impact in doing it and placing it on the beach and waiting for it to be taken away after a month.”

Thus, he stressed the need to clean the beaches and that they are “in perfect condition of magazine” but also to integrate into a strategic vision of medium and long term what is going to be done on the coast to minimize losses, the costs in human lives, but also of the public treasury.

In that sense, he has insisted that the coastal strategy must be “fully” compatible with scenarios that “unfortunately are already a reality such as climate scenarios.”

In any case, he has responded to the senator of the PP of Castellón Vicente Martínez Mus that between January 20 and 23 the delegation and subdelegation of the Government in Castellón and the Demarcation of coasts are working with the coastal City Councils of Castellón to “quantify” the damages in order to start the actions to “leave the beaches ready for Holy Week”.

Specifically, he acknowledged that Castellón was “very shaken by the Storm Gloria” so they are considering “extraordinary measures” in which the Government wants to “accompany”.

The popular senator has estimated at more than 16 million euros the damages caused by Gloria in the province of Castellón both in the interior and on the coast, but has referred to the coasts as being “exclusive competence” of the State.

“Easter is already there, there are two scarce months left and the beaches are about to be fixed. There is nothing left, barely a month and a half and the mayors fear that (the department of) Costas will not leave the beaches ready for Easter. It’s wages, salaries, food for the people who work on it. When will the necessary works begin to be carried out to restore normality to the beaches devastated by the Gloria storm?”, Martínez Mus claimed in his premiere in the plenary session of the Upper House.

In this regard, he has asked Ribera that his intentions become “quick facts” and given the urgency he has proposed that he copy the model of action of the PP Government in February 2017, because “it gave him time to arrive” and fix it from February to Easter. “You just have to copy,” he added.

Finally, he urged the minister to review the specific strategies for the coast because he assures that “nothing has moved” and they are “practically the same” as when they were designed in 2015.

“If he doesn’t move fast next year it will be worse. We need action, now, because the coast must be protected, because without protection the people who live on the coast will not be able to sleep. We need action now without excuses,” he said.

Source: The Vanguard