A new Life project, entitled “Lanzarote in the Biosphere 2” (2001-2004), is allowing Lanzarote Island Government to explore new lines of action, financing and taxation for the Biosphere Reserve. This document sets out the objectives that are pursued with this new European Union-supported initiative and summarises the proposal of work to be carried out up to the year 2004.

Life combines the possibility and the obligation to integrate in a general overview the different key lines of work that it is wished to carry out on the island in the mid and long term. Nevertheless, the greatest potential and interest of the Life initiative lies in its imbrication at the centre of the institutional and social processes that have been taking place hitherto and that are expected to occur in the coming years, both on Lanzarote and in the Canary Isles in general. The Life project acquires special importance in view of the fact that the Regional Government recently embarked upon a process to set limits on the growth of tourism and to reorient the general model of development towards sustainable patterns in all of the Canary Isles archipelago.

This document is structured in two parts, besides this presentation which summarises and extends the work proposal initially presented to the European Union.

The first part sets out the vision of the island as an integral system, and the need to avoid any further overloading of the island’s carrying capacity, suggesting the need to formulate new questions and to seek new responses in the process of advancing towards island sustainability. Using abundant graphic support, the island is established as a suitable territorial unit for evaluating the advances or setbacks on the road towards sustainability, and from which to implement the necessary corrective strategies.

The second part specifies the objectives of the new Life project which aim to correct the situation described in the first part, along with the actions to be undertaken in order to continue to face the challenge of sustainability in Lanzarote from a renewed viewpoint.

Lanzarote has built up a wealth of experience trying to provide responses to the challenges of sustainable development. Nevertheless, despite the fruitfulness of the paths that have been followed, this experience also reveals the need to renew the lines of action towards sustainability.

�        30 years of work: a long process of social awareness-raising

Declared a Biosphere Reserve in 1993, Lanzarote has more than thirty years of experience trying to orient the development of tourism and the island’s development in general towards more sustainable forms. This experience has fed on the high level of public awareness and participation, which it has in turn served to nourish, and has given rise to a series of instruments which, suitably oriented and updated, allow a situation of progress to be visualised on the island.

The work of C�sar Manrique and Jos� Ram�rez in the sixties and seventies, the Island Planning Plan (PIO) of 1991, the sustainable development strategy “Lanzarote in the Biosphere” of 1997, the “island tourism moratorium” of 2000, and finally the Life programme “Lanzarote in the Biosphere 2” (2001-2004) constitute the milestones of a process aimed at sustainably orienting island development.

The PIO of 1991 cancelled close to twenty urban development plans, deprogrammed more than 250,000 tourist beds, introduced measures to slow down the rate of growth, protected the island’s territory as a whole... and since then not only have no new urban development plans been approved, but this line of containment of growth has been furthered, to the point of the approval, in the year 2000, of the so-called “island tourism moratorium”. This measure is the most visible result of the preparation in 1997, through a Life project operated by the Island Government, of the “Lanzarote in the Biosphere” strategy: an integral proposal with 8 lines of action and 27 action programmes for the sustainable development of the island. The Life project promoted the Biosphere Reserve Council, a forum for public and private participation which involves the island’s public institutions and its most representative economic and social actors.

�        Lanzarote, a worrying evolution

Despite all the measures that have been adopted, the current situation on the island is highly concerning. A provisional analysis of the period 1996-2000 confirms both the difficulty of reorienting the model and the unsustainability of the existing development rates: densities, population ratios, biodiversity, consumption, emissions, etc. As a result of the growth in tourism, the island has outgrown its workforce and consequently there has been a high level of immigration of outside manpower in a short time period (45% of residents were not born on the island), which is inevitably adding difficulty to the desirable processes of integration and social cohesion.

Therefore, the crucial issue for Lanzarote today continues to be focused on the excessive human pressure originated by the growth of tourism, authorised before the PIO of 1991, on a very fragile island system from a socio-cultural and environmental viewpoint. The growth in tourism has been so fast and powerful that it has multiplied human pressure on the island (from 90 to 183 inhabitants/km² from 1987 to 2000), surpassing tolerable limits and giving rise to a series of generalised disequilibriums in the basic ecosystems. The sustainable development strategy “Lanzarote in the Biosphere” warned that the tendencies of island development were unsustainable and created a 10-year reflection period (2000-2010) in order to establish the desirable scenarios and instruments of change.

The 10-year reflection period was implemented by means of a partial revision of the PIO, a measure popularly known as the “island tourism moratorium”. This established a new programme for tourist and residential capacity in tourist areas, reducing to 10,707 the number of tourist beds that could be constructed before the year 2010, while at the time opening up social debate on what should be the definitive ceiling after this ten-year period.

However, the potential growth of tourist areas continues to be excessive. At present some 60,000 tourist beds are registered, not counting second homes, but after the 10-year “tourist moratorium” these figures could rise to 95,437 tourist beds and second home capacity for 58,000 persons if new limiting measures are not taken. These figures are unfeasible and would double human pressure on the island and worsen population imbalances, definitively transforming and overloading the island system. The situation is visualised in the following table:

POTENTIAL GROWTH OF TOURISM ON LANZAROTE[1]

Given this context, and in view of how it has been formulated, the new Life programme goes to the centre of the problem of the island’s development. This is because Life has the vocation to offer a renewed and innovating institutional and social instrument that serves as a new impulse to the old island process of advancing towards sustainability.

By exploring new lines of action, financing and taxation for Lanzarote Biosphere Reserve, Life opens up two main directions in which work can be carried out:

�        An internal direction.

Allows the reorganisation of the initial work plan with an all-comprising overview and greater scope, in the framework of the initiative adopted by the Regional Government to set limits on the growth of tourism in all the Canary Isles in general.

�        An external direction.

Offers the European Union a first view of the new Life programme as a dynamic process which intends to combine learning, social awareness-raising and the transformation of reality.

As new problems arise and their degree of complexity increases, new questions are being asked on the island which call for new responses related with sustainable development. As a result of this process of reflection there is a broad consensus on the island in relation with two major needs:

*        To stabilise the current situation, constraining new tourist growth.

*        To put into practice the set of programmes contained in the “Lanzarote in the Biosphere” strategy.

To resolve these two needs it will be necessary to explore a new, more elaborate concept of tourist development than the simple growth of accommodation capacity, or to define new instruments (legal and other types) to constrain growth in the number of tourist beds. It will also be advisable to simultaneously address both supply and demand, investigating mechanisms that allow access to the island to be regulated at its ports of entry (ports and airport) in order to prevent the overloading of its carrying capacity. But this will only be feasible if, at the same time, a new economic logic is created, based on new instruments for financing and taxation, and a new relationship is established between tourism and the local population through lifestyles.

Enrique P�rez Parrilla

President of the Island Government

2. LANZAROTE, AN INTEGRATED ISLAND SYSTEM: THE NEED TO AVOID FURTHER OVERLOADING THE ISLAND’S CARRYING CAPACITY

(Soon to be posted –Spanish version– on...)

3. LIFE PROJECT “LANZAROTE IN THE BIOSPHERE 2” (2001-2004): WORK PROPOSAL

3.1.             Objectives

Given the complexity of the problems described above, on Lanzarote it is necessary to dare to contemplate renovating the concepts and instruments put into play with the PIO in 1991, as well as to improve information and management systems, and very specially to face the fact that furthering the necessary containment of tourist growth on the island will mean the need to adequately resolve the problem of unconsolidated urbanised land. This means being ready to pay out compensation, if, as it seems, the consequences of not doing so could be infinitely worse.

To take on this great objective, three main lines of work have been delimited:

�        Awareness-raising of the resident population and tourists

Since they affect both the local population (110,000 residents on 31^st December 2001) and the tourist population (an average of close to 50,000 visitors on the island every day), the new challenges for sustainability faced by the island call for solid awareness-raising processes that are closely linked with consumption and lifestyles.

�        New lines of financing and taxation

Considering the proposed aim that not one more tourist bed be built after 2010, the new Life project aims to identify the potential of a green tax reform from two points of view:

a.       Analysing the possible models and alternatives for a tourist tax (or tourist “ecotax”), with the aim of generating funds with which to finance the repercussions of the excess of building rights.

b.      Analysing the possibility of applying environmental criteria to existing taxes.

�        Institutional agreement with the Regional Government

Lanzarote needs a drastic reduction in the potentiality of new growth in tourist areas, even though a large part of this growth could be located on consolidated land. To this end a series of studies are being carried out, and ideas exist about how to address this issue. The participation of the Canary Isles Regional Government is imperative, since with the existing scope of competencies in the Canary Isles autonomous region, the island of Lanzarote has exhausted all the judicial and administrative means at its disposal to further limit tourist growth.

To overcome this situation, and so that the island can continue to advance with its own process, it is vital for the Canary Isles Regional Government to create the legal conditions that allow the following matters to be resolved:

�        That no more tourist beds than those contemplated by the “island tourism moratorium” (10,707) be constructed after 2010.

�        A drastic reduction in the rest of accommodation capacity in tourist areas, combined with measures to impede its use for tourism and to modulate its rate of development.

�        Promote the application of the programmes defined by the “Lanzarote in the Biosphere” strategy in 1997.

For this reason, Lanzarote Island Government has considered it opportune to propose, during the public information procedure of the Preliminary Guidelines for General Planning and Tourism Planning in the Canary Isles (last quarter of 2001), a single suggestion[2] in which it declares that the island is faced with a challenge that must be taken up by the leadership of the Regional Government and through the shared responsibility of the island’s institutions. In particular, Lanzarote Island Government considers that the challenge facing the Canary Islands has a historic dimension and demands equal portions of institutional generosity, demanding of coherence and spirit of cooperation.

3.2.       Lines of action

The steps to be taken to further the strategy towards sustainability on Lanzarote are set out in the following lines of action for the island:

1.        A reliable system of information, evaluation of the island’s situation, and inspection of planning and tourist activities, at the service of sustainable strategies, compliance with the legal requirements in force, and fair competition in the tourist market.

2.        Drastic measures to constrain potential growth in tourist zones, in all product areas and on all types of land, including non-constructed urbanised land.

3.        Condition the development of new equipment with a high territorial impact (large tourist, sporting, leisure or retail facilities) on the establishment of a strategic and anticipatory evaluation for such installations in the island system.

4.        Measures to preserve non-tourist rural and coastal villages from the foreseeable disproportionate increase in the supply and demand of second homes on the part of the non-resident population.

5.        Preserve the marks of identity in territorial and urban planning on Lanzarote, as reflected in the PIO, complementing them with a series of measures and ordinances on minimisation of environmental impact.

6.        Dimension not only the supply but also the demand of tourism, through sustainable management of the main access ports (airport and ports of Arrecife and Playa Blanca) and the mobility of tourist flows on the island.

7.        Preparation of a renewed sustainable island tourism project, based on the island’s singular qualities and on quality, promoting the rehabilitation of the tourist sector and with a high multiplying factor on the rest of the economy and the wellbeing of the island’s society.

8.        Consideration of three Strategic Projects of Regional Interest: Arrecife and the centre of the island; the preservation of biodiversity; and the rehabilitation of tourism.

9.        Reformulate, at regional-island-local level, a new financial and fiscal framework that is capable of stimulating a transition towards more sustainable scenarios in tourism and in general, and which allows a drastic reduction to be made in existing commitments to tourist growth on the island.

10.    Integrate the set of mid-term strategies of the Guidelines for General Planning and Tourism Planning in a coordinated development of the “Lanzarote in the Biosphere” strategy, a new generation PIO, and the development of Local Agendas in the different municipalities on the island.

In order to develop the ten main lines of action specified above, Lanzarote Island Government has promoted the performance of a battery of studies whose aim is to provide the island with a rigorous base for innovating the institutional culture and, with this, addressing the great problems that are facing the island. The most significant studies under way are:

1.        Georeferrenced identification of the supply of tourist accommodation (hotel accommodation and partial plans).

2.        Report on a new general regulatory framework for sustainable development on the island.

3.        Evaluation of the public savings induced by the containment of growth of the tourist market.

4.        Juridical report on the possibility of access of non-residents to the ownership of second homes in inland villages.

5.        Juridical report on the possibility of limiting the growth of hire cars.

6.        Report on the possibilities of adapting the volume of tourist flows in airports to the sustainable strategies.

7.        Instruments for taxation and the environment on Lanzarote.

8.        Planning eco-ordinances on the island.

9.        Sustainability, consumption and lifestyles on Lanzarote.

10.     Alternatives to strengthen the island economic system that are compatible with the containment of tourist growth.

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