Citizens now have a new application available, created by the organization For Naturewhich will allow reporting potential infractions in the implementation of laws and regulations related to land use and environmental protection.
During the second forum of Puerto Rico Preservesheld this Tuesday, environmental experts and community leaders recognized that the tool – called Citizen Protector – is positive, since it makes visible the environmental problems that communities in different areas of the country face and allows the processes to process complaints, which were classified as slow, to be accelerated..
“It becomes a collective tool, where one begins to see the disputes and conflicts in other parts of Puerto Rico. “Those that are repeated, those that are not resolved and, then, build a community within the Citizen Protector, because the citizen alone is not going to work.”explained the associate director of Village House, Arturo Massol Deyá.
The application – which can be accessed through citizenprotector.com– joins two other initiatives of this type from Para la Naturaleza: Hábitat and the Mapa 33 platform, to encourage citizen participation in the protection of the environment.
“The objective of the application is to make it easier for citizens to report possible failures in the implementation of environmental laws. This becomes a facilitator of nature conservation procedures in Puerto Rico,” she explained, in an interview with The new daythe president of Para la Naturaleza, Fernando Lloveras San Miguel.
Furthermore, he maintained that The tool will support citizens because formal complaint processes “are difficult to obtain” and requirements vary by agency.
“There is a reality that we do not know, in many situations, and that is what happens with complaints. It is a reality that there is a lack of personnel who can attend to everything that is happening in the country. There is a reality that there is an element of risk and security that, perhaps, tools like the application make it easier for people to, anonymously and without fear that someone may identify them“, give visibility to these situations in their communities,” said the environmental affairs manager of the Enlace Project of the Martín Peña pipe, Estrella Santiago Pérez.
From educational information to follow-up with agencies
Meanwhile, the president of Para la Naturaleza clarified that The process of reporting a situation, through Citizen Protector, does not constitute an official complaint. However, “we are going to provide information to people who want to carry out a formal procedure, so that they can do so, directing them to the page of the agency that has that more formal procedure”he mentioned.
By accessing the application, people will be able to use the map tool to indicate the area in which a potential violation of environmental laws and regulations is being reported.
“One of the very important elements of this application is that it will have a lot of educational information to guide citizens. Sometimes, we are talking about technical and complex terms, so there is a section, which is a library, that educates about all these environmental terms and procedures.added Lloveras San Miguel.
Once the area is identified, the person will be able to select the type of irregularity they are reporting. In addition, The application allows you to upload photos, videos and text, to better visualize what the problem is.
Then, “it is submitted, filed and the application, depending on the type of procedure that is being reported, channels that information to the different agencies that have jurisdiction over that issue,” stated Lloveras San Miguel. He explained that The digital platform will prepare monthly reports to follow up with the agencies on the reports that have been submitted.
“A report will be forwarded to the agency indicating that this has been filed and that, please, answer us if it is active or if it was resolved and how it was resolved,” he commented.
Beyond contributing to the process of creating and forming a database, he indicated that Another objective of the application is to help government agencies receive information that allows them to act more quickly and effectively.
“We want to provide government agencies with reliable information on where there are possible violations of environmental laws or regulations so that the agencies can proceed to carry out the rigorous procedures that they have established as part of their ministerial duty,” he stated.
Lloveras San Miguel announced that, as part of the initiative, they will visit public agencies to inform them of the purpose of the tool and how they can use it to their advantage.
“Democracy is transparency”
For his part, the former president of the Planning Board Luis García Pelatti highlighted the visualization element that the application provides.
“What this tool does, if one looks at it from a political-democratic point of view, is visualization. Democracy is transparency. If I don't know that there is a clandestine landfill or if I don't know what they are working on on some land in the forest, that doesn't exist because transparency is the basis of what exists. What I love about the tool is the visualization“, stated García Pelatti.
Lloveras San Miguel shared that his expectation is that citizens find the tool easy to use and that, in turn, it simplifies the resolution of the problems that would be reported.
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It becomes a collective tool, where one begins to see the disputes and conflicts in other parts of Puerto Rico ”Arturo Massol Deyá
Nevertheless, The environmental affairs manager of Proyecto Enlace warned that there is a part of the population that is left unattended on this platform due to the digital and literacy gap.
“We must recognize that there is a literacy gap. We have to see how we serve that population that wants to participate in the processes, but cannot because we start from the premise that they have the basics.”, Santiago Pérez highlighted.
Meanwhile, the president of Para la Naturaleza highlighted the organization's commitment to continue developing educational tools so that people have the correct information that allows them, in this case, to make “more precise and complete” reports that would accelerate the process of complaint.
“The two parts of the equation are that citizens can have better tools, better information, and that agencies, too, can have greater information and capabilities to act in favor of conservation,” he noted.
Likewise, during the event in which different tools for citizen participation were shared, the executive director of Friends of the SEA (Revolutionary Environmental Movement), Vanessa Uriarte Centenoanticipated that the entity will reactivate the Coastal Map – currently paralyzed – in the summer, so that citizens can denounce the closure of access to the beaches and their destruction.