The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment has begun the new periodic meetings that it will carry out with the Environmental Foundations, following the will transmitted by the minister, Isabel García Tejerina, at the recent conference on the role of these foundations hosted by the Ministry, on January 19, to “strengthen collaboration and promote our dialogue with foundations that work in the defense of the environment”.
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Federico Ramos, has met with directors and representatives of the Association of Nature Conservation Foundations (AFN), Roberto Lozano and José Luis García Lorenzo, and of the State Forum of Land Stewardship Entities, Antonio Ruiz Salgado.
This meeting discussed the representation of foundations in the Ministry’s participation bodies, the importance of LIFE Projects for the conservation of biodiversity in Spain, Nature Conservation Banks, the inclusion of information on land stewardship in reports on the state of natural heritage and biodiversity, as well as issues related to the Law on Natural Heritage and Biodiversity and its Strategic Plan, and the balance of the day last January.
In this conference on “The role of Foundations in the conservation of natural capital”, the minister expressed the Ministry’s willingness to “intensify our collaboration in the field of research, education and environmental communication” with environmental foundations.
OPEN DOORS OF THE MINISTRY THROUGHOUT THE LEGISLATURE
“We want to work, side by side, with civil society,” said García Tejerina, recalling that since the beginning of this Legislature the Ministry has had its doors open, “and we want to continue strengthening our relationship with citizens to build a more sustainable development model based on the protection of our natural environment,” he added.
The minister stressed the importance of these foundations, because although “public administrations have the obligation to protect nature, we must do so based on the indispensable collective solidarity, and these foundations actively collaborate to achieve results that, alone, would not be easy to achieve”.
EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE OF FOUNDATIONS
Foundations have extensive experience in maximizing the social utility of their activities. According to the Second Report on the Foundation Sector in our country (last June), there are more than 29 million final and direct beneficiaries of the activities of the 14,000 organizations registered in Spain, and the foundations mobilize more than 108,000 volunteers annually, to which must be added some 70,000 trustees.
About 10% of the foundations have as their main purpose the defense of the environment. Of these, only the 16 that make up the Association of Foundations for the Conservation of Nature mobilise more than 82,000 people, of which almost 6,000 are volunteers.
At the meeting held, Federico Ramos was accompanied by the Director General of Environmental Quality and Assessment and the Natural Environment, Guillermina Yanguas, and by the Director of the Biodiversity Foundation, an entity dependent on the Ministry, Sonia Castañeda.
