Would anyone say that the Amazon rainforest is an abandoned forest? Or that the protected areas of Costa Rica and Borneo are abandoned? Have we declared natural parks because Pagoeta and Aiako Harria are abandoned forests? In all these areas is the natural forest or the natural forest is being recovered.

That is what the Council of Gipuzkoa is telling us: That the areas under naturalization in Gipuzkoa are abandoned areas. The forest is our natural ecosystem and, without human intervention, our territory tends to become a forest. To naturalize, to acquire its own character, to abandon it is, in the words of our Member, because the forest that is not for wood production seems to be worthless.

The Member does not want forests, wants tree plantations for wood. You can't have a more productivist view, you can't show a more devastating view of your own territory. Those who claim our homeland, our language and our culture, do not want our forests, do not love the biodiversity that is ours. “There are people who, as they go through the forest, see nothing but firewood,” wrote the writer Lev Tolstoi. There was no shortage of reasons.

Tree plantations are not forests. Like all the activities aimed at the exploitation of the natural environment, the wood sector also has negative effects, and when, as in ours, it is carried out in an industrial way, by means of monoculture and heavy machinery, the soil’s own fertility is impaired and every life system is put at risk.

More than ever, we need natural, natural forests. On the threshold of climate change, as this pandemic has shown, we are condemned to live unforeseeable biological and ecological catastrophes if we do not prevent the global loss of biodiversity and natural heritage. So welcome to be those abandoned forests.

These spaces that are being naturalized are in the hands of private owners, according to the Provincial Council, who are abandoned. It is up to us to thank society for its refusal to obtain an economic benefit. The Administration should reward this beneficial fact for society as a whole: less taxes linked to property, paying for the ecosystem services that these spaces offer us.

With regard to areas in the public domain, municipalities and parliamentarians should quickly abandon those areas which are not in the process of naturalisation. Wood is not today a wealth for society. We need natural forests, fires, droughts… in general, areas of high ecological value that allow us to deal with natural disasters and that is the path that the Council calls ‘abandonment’.

We call on the Administration to seek ways of rewarding abandonment, to devote the money of the citizens, to those who have renounced the benefits of wood, to reward ecosystem services (air and cleaning, quality landscape, food, biodiversity …) that favour everyone in the recovery of forests.

However, if their choice is wood production, we know that the intensive single-crop environmental model is not compatible with the conservation of biodiversity and natural heritage. The circular economy or the bioeconomy based on this exploitation model are not options for tackling climate change or the global ecological crisis. We therefore call on the administration to allocate subsidies to the promotion of a sustainable energy model that takes account of environmental damage.