Permits and flooding: Moya doesn’t pay here

Today, we are witnessing how the argument has been presented in public debate that we are facing excessive permitting that hinders investment projects, including, importantly, environmental permits. This debate over permits attempts to deregulate the impacts that certain investment projects would cause, avoiding including the deterioration of ecosystems and life systems associated with them in the economic equation, thus consolidating the old tragedy of the commons or the well-known saying “let Moya pay.”

Well, in recent days and months, we’ve seen that Moya isn’t the one who bears the brunt, as the lack of regulation in investment projects is the responsibility of the users and the ecosystems. It’s the users who, trusting that the authorities granted permits based on the best information and regulations, bought houses and apartments in what, after the heavy rains, are branches of rivers, floodplains, and collapsed dunes.

Did the regulations not foresee that this could happen? Were the effects of climate change not recognized? Did the necessary construction permits not incorporate these possibilities? Were they insufficient? Is economic growth not affected by these human-made (non-natural) disasters? Who pays?

It’s not about standing still in the face of an era of global turmoil, nor about normalizing the effects of climate change (intense rainfall, heat waves, etc.), but rather about acting with the awareness that we are in a situation where we must change the way we have been doing things, where we plan cities and territories based on the natural characteristics and ecological functions that contribute to the well-being of communities.