camintradIT IS ABOUT THE APPLICATION OF A LEGAL FIGURE THAT PURSUES THE CONSERVATION AND REHABILITATION OF TRAILS AND RURAL PUBLIC SPACES.

The Commonwealth of the North of Gran Canaria has proposed to promote the implementation of territorial contracts, that will allow farmers to receive a modest income in exchange for conserving the trails and public spaces around their farms. Although it is a new bet in the Canary Islands, This has been developed successfully in regions of the Peninsula. Like this, in the so-called territorial contracts, owners of agricultural land receive an economic amount “symbolic”, in exchange for maintaining the landscape, the trails, the forest mass and other rural public services that, without your presence and collaboration, They would deteriorate and be forgotten due to the depopulation of the countryside..

According to the president of the Commonwealth, Damaso Arencibia, This project can be an important boost for the agricultural sector, both self-consumption and small commerce and complementary activity; In this way, the farmer obtains a fixed income that he can use to pay his agricultural insurance and other benefits., as long as it helps maintain the landscape around it.

In addition, The project has great interest in generating a new tourist offer, in visitors looking for a rural environment and hiking. This innovative experience is being carried out in regions such as Navarra, and it is beginning to be implemented in Andalusia, declared Arencibia.

These Territorial Exploitation Contracts (CTE) emerged in France after the reform of the CAP of the Agenda 2000 and they continue to be marked by controversy. Like this, From Asaja they describe its implementation as a complete disaster, which forced them to leave them parked.

This agricultural organization has been the most critical of this figure, stating that it makes no sense to implement this type of contract in Spain, which has already failed abroad., especially when it does not provide any added value for the farmer and rancher.

In Spain, these types of contracts are included in the Law for the first time. 45/2007, of 13 of December, for the sustainable development of rural areas, although it limits them exclusively to measures developed in this non-agrarian Law.

However, from Asaja they criticize that environmental organizations (WWF, Greenpeace, SEO BirdLife, Ecologists in Action and others), very distant from the real interests of farmers and ranchers, They intend to use the figure of Territorial Exploitation Contracts to “green” the CAP itself in aspects that go far beyond the Law on Sustainable Development of the Rural Environment, and they advocate that the farmer subscribe to new environmental commitments, similar to those defended by Great Britain or Sweden in the recent reform of the CAP.

Territorial contracts are currently regulated by the Royal Decree 1336/2011, of 3 October,as an instrument to promote sustainable development of rural areas.