Nayarit Municipal Development Plan Slammed by Local Organizations

San Pancho, a community within Bahia de Banderas. MILENIO

A development plan for Bahía de Banderas in the Riviera Nayarit has been harshly questioned by groups of residents, activists and environmentalists through an open letter to President Enrique Peña Nieto and state and local authorities.

Last September, the Municipal Plan for Urban Development was presented and voted on in a referendum, but community landowners in Sayulita, which is located within the Bahía de Banderas municipality, contested it and had its implementation suspended by filing a legal claim against it.

Now, at least seven organizations are speaking out against it.

“We completely reject the proposed urban development plan . . . which we find unviable and dangerous,” said the letter.

The proposed plan “infringes the fundamental right to a healthy environment that fosters the development and well-being of society . . . as it puts at risk the natural resources available in this municipality through an unrestrained urbanization strategy that doesn’t take into consideration the environmental equilibrium and sustainability, and the effects of climate change.”

The signatories believe the plan is not sustainable because the diagnostics on which it is based are erroneous.

“Neither the diagnostics nor the plan based on them take into consideration the land’s actual capacity or its available resources, favoring instead real estate market trends . . . the strategy is constrained by a zoning scheme that can be deemed as discretionary and arbitrary, and in the worst case, based on criteria foreign to the common good, because it lacks the moderation needed by sustainability schemes,” continued the letter.

Read the rest at Mexico News Daily.