16 May Organic Law of the Environment
The law establishes the provisions and guiding principles for the management of the environment. Within the framework of sustainable development as a fundamental right and duty of the State and society. To contribute to the safety and achievement of the maximum well-being of the population and to the maintenance of the planet, in the interest of humanity. Likewise, it establishes the norms that develop the constitutional guarantees and rights to a safe, healthy, and ecologically balanced environment.
Right to information
The right to information about the environment must be recognized by each person. The State is the guarantor of its exercise, the reliability of the information, and of its dissemination. This right will be exercised according to the modalities defined in this Law. In the other normative instruments that are issued for this purpose.
The State shall guarantee every person access to environmental information. Unless it has been classified as confidential, in accordance with the law.
Activate Transparency
The authority The National Environmental Authority will establish and maintain an Environmental Information Registry, which must contain biophysical, economic, and social data and legal information related to the environment. The data in the registry are freely available for consultation.
The registry referred to in the previous article must contain at least the following aspects: Inventories of biological diversity and its components; The inventory of sources of emission and contamination of soil, air, and water; Information on the habitat and lands of indigenous peoples and communities duly demarcated.
Right to Participate
Environmental management includes Citizen participation: Active and leading participation in environmental management is a duty and a right of all citizens.
The objectives of environmental management, under the stewardship and coordination of the National Environmental Authority: Promote and stimulate environmental education and the leading participation of society.
The guidelines for environmental planning are Citizen participation and information dissemination, as incorporated processes at all levels of environmental planning.
All people have the right and the duty to participate in matters related to environmental management.
Participation in Activities or Projects
The environmental impact assessment is an early warning process. That operates through a continuous, informed, and objective analysis. This allows for identifying the best options to carry out an action without intolerable damage. Through concatenated and participatory decisions, in accordance with the policies and environmental technical standards.
Participation in Plans, Programs, And Policies
The guidelines for environmental planning are Citizen participation and information dissemination, as incorporated processes at all levels of environmental planning.
The National Environmental Plan is a long-term instrument that guides national environmental policy at the regional, state, municipal and local levels. It will contain the following guidelines: Environmental education and citizen participation.
Environmental organizations, indigenous peoples and communities, communal councils, organized communities, and other associative forms, may develop projects framed in shared environmental management and committed to the conservation of ecosystems, natural resources, and sustainable development under the modalities of self-management and co-management.
The National Executive, through the ministry with competence in environmental matters, will regulate the mechanisms to make effective the legitimate exercise of the right to citizen participation in the formulation, adoption, execution, and control of policies, plans, projects, and other measures aimed at environmental preservation.
Right to Appeal
Every person has the right and the duty to report to the competent authorities. Any fact that threatens a healthy, safe, and ecologically balanced environment.
Responsibility and Evidence in Environmental Damage
Environmental management includes Responsibility for environmental damage: Responsibility for environmental damage is objective. And its repair will be at the expense of the person responsible for the activity or the offender.
The responsibility derived from damage caused to the environment is of an objective nature. The simple existence of the damage determines the responsibility of the damaging agent for having been the cause of that damage. And for such who must compensate for the damages caused by his conduct. Sufficing the simple verification of the performance of the harmful conduct.
In all convictions for crimes in which damage or harm to the environment or natural resources results, the judge will impose on the person or persons responsible the obligation to execute the corresponding restorative measures, repair the damage caused by the crime and compensate the damage.
Environmental Education
Environmental education: Continuous, interactive, and integrating process, through which the human being acquires knowledge. And experiences understand and analyze them. Internalizes, and translates them into behaviors, values, and attitudes. That prepares him to participate as a protagonist in the management of the environment and sustainable development.
Environmental education aims to promote, generate, develop and consolidate citizens’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes to contribute to the transformation of society, which will be reflected in alternative solutions to socio-environmental problems, thus contributing to the achievement of social welfare, integrating itself in the management of the environment through active and leading participation, under the premise of sustainable development.
Indigenous Peoples
Indigenous peoples and local communities have the right and duty to participate in the formulation, application, evaluation, and control of national, regional, and local development plans and programs that may directly affect their lives, beliefs, values, institutions, and spiritual well- being and in the use of the lands and habitats that they ancestrally occupy and use collectively.
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