How is it possible to build a commercial port in a Natural Protected Area?
In the case of Veracruz, a part of the protection zone is simply eliminated so that it can be done there.
A decree from the authorities alleging that the corals are dead and the work has a green light.
Later, the same authorities that said the reef was dead will announce a grand plan to relocate 40,000 coral families to survive elsewhere.
'That he wasn't dead, that he wasn't', some would sing.
The reduction of the area of the Veracruz Arrecifal System National Park occurred in 2012. A year later, the Ministry of the Environment (Semarnat) issued the first permits to launch the ambitious project: the expansion of the port of Veracruz to make it the largest of Mexico and one of the main ones in Latin America.
The works began in 2016 and have already destroyed a large part of the Punta Gorda reef.
On top of the corals they built a four kilometer long breakwater, a wall made of concrete blocks weighing up to 20 tons.
The project planned to build a second breakwater on the La Gallega reef, but, at least for the moment, that construction will remain in the plans.
The Supreme Court of Justice unanimously decided this week to cancel the permits granted by Semarnat to the work because "it violates the right to a healthy environment", protected by the fourth article of the Mexican Constitution and by many other international treaties signed by the country, such as the Escazú Agreement.
An important victory for environmentalists after a long struggle that has been, like so many other times, that of David against Goliath.
In December 2016, two women from Veracruz filed an injunction –supported by the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA)– against a titanic work that had presidential approval since the time of Felipe Calderón and a total budget of 70,000 million pesos (about $3.4 billion).
The first setback came when the district judge said the plaintiffs had no "legitimate interest" in the case.
They went to a higher court and, after years of litigation, the Supreme Court heard the case in January and has now ruled in their favor.
Construction work for the expansion of the port of Veracruz, in August 2016. Ilse Huesca (CUARTOSCURO)
"This is extremely important because it reaffirms that anyone can fight for the ecosystems on which they depend," says Xavier Martínez, CEMDA's operational director.
The lawsuit emphasizes the environmental benefits of the Veracruz Reef System, the largest in the Gulf of Mexico and in which there are more than 35 species of coral, such as elkhorn and staghorn, in critical danger of extinction.
It is the habitat of sea urchins, starfish, various species of turtles and more than two hundred types of fish on which the local diet depends, such as red snapper or sea bass.
This set of reefs, cays and islands was designated as a Natural Protected Area in 1992, a wetland of international importance by the Ramsar Convention in 2004 and a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 2006.
But until now, between the protection of the ecosystem and the expansion of the port, the latter had won.
“Mexico's door to the world”, from which the merchandise left for Europe in the colonial era or the one that welcomed the Spanish exiles, wanted more.
If in 2017 the port of Veracruz received 28 million tons of cargo, the ambition was to expand it to 95 million in 2030. It also wanted to be able to receive larger ships, the so-called Panamax, 325 meters long and which need a depth of 20 meters to access the port.
To do this, it was necessary to excavate the seabed, despite the fact that submerged reefs such as La Loma were found there.
"They mobilized the entire systemic apparatus of the Government to make this project happen, even to the point of reducing the Protected Natural Area," laments Sandra Moguel, a lawyer for the Inter-American Association for the Defense of the Environment (AIDA), who has accompanied the process.
Now the Supreme Court harshly criticizes the authorization granted by the environmental authorities, saying that the works "were analyzed in a fragmented manner (...), which meant that the viability of the entire expansion was not correctly evaluated."
So far, Semarnat has not responded to interview requests from EL PAÍS.
Moguel explains that, in Mexico, the company itself interested in carrying out a work is the one that pays a consultant to evaluate its possible environmental impacts.
This document is then presented to the environmental authority for authorization.
It goes without saying that, in many cases, the so-called Environmental Impact Statements are aimed at getting the project approved, so it is not uncommon that, for example, they omit mentioning some of the species or ecosystems that could be affected. .
In the case of the port of Veracruz, the documents ignore the existence of the La Loma reef.
A group of fish feeds on the corals of the Veracruz Reef System. SEMARNAT
Another of the recurring "tricks" is to divide the project into dozens of small parts, so that the impacts are evaluated separately and not as a whole.
For the expansion of the port, twenty different manifestations were presented: the construction of the breakwater, the access streets, the excavation of the bottom of the sea... For this reason, the Supreme Court demands that Semarnat re-evaluate the project, now " comprehensively” and “with the best existing information”.
According to Xavier Martínez, this sets a precedent so that, in the future, the judges always require that the projects be analyzed as a whole and not in a fragmented way.
But for Leonardo Ortiz the Court's ruling leaves a "bittersweet" taste.
The marine biologist from the University of Veracruz, who has been fighting against the expansion of the port since its inception, thinks that this sentence should have come five years ago.
"Now it is very difficult to reverse the impacts" because the gigantic breakwater that has already been built "is changing the entire pattern of currents in the National Park."
In any case, he acknowledges that the Veracruz Reef System has proven to be "extremely resilient" after decades of impacts from port activities, water pollution or overfishing.
From a legal standpoint, optimism wins these days.
Xavier Martínez believes that the ruling will have an impact at the national level in other lawsuits against megaprojects, such as the Mayan Train.
Meanwhile, Sandra Moguel describes the ruling as "historic" because it sets a mandatory precedent in environmental matters.
“It is very positive to see how the courts have opened up to the protection of the environment, something that did not happen so often before.
It is an advance of environmental law”.
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