The Secretary of State for the Environment, Federico Ramos, accompanied by the general director of Environmental Quality and Assessment and the Natural Environment, Guillermina Yanguas and the director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Sonia Castañeda, has begun the new periodic meetings to be carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment with the Environmental Foundations, following the will transmitted by the minister, Isabel García Tejerina, in the recent conference on the role of these foundations hosted by the Ministry, on 19 January, to “strengthen collaboration and promote our dialogue with foundations that work in the defence 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.

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.