They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

If you want to do something really worthwhile in Tenerife this weekend, may I recommend that you join the demonstration FOR protected species - FOR compliance with the law - and NO to the Granadilla Port.

Saturday, March 14th, 12:00 mid-day, from the Plaza Militar to the Presidencia del Gobierno, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife  (see map).

Joni Mitchell got the idea for the song, "Big Yellow Taxi", during a visit to Hawaii. She looked out of her hotel window at the spectacular Pacific mountain scenery, and then down to a parking lot, apparently.

And I can't help thinking that there are numerous similarities to be drawn between Hawaii in the Pacific - where you'll find the world's #1 and #2 volcanos and Tenerife, in the Atlantic, where you'll find volcano #3, Mount Teide.

Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" was released way back in 1970 (that should make a few of you feel pretty old), so the problem isn't new, nor is it exclusive to volcanic islands that attract tourists either, but by now, you'd think we'd know better than to destroy the very nature and beauty that attracted those visitors in the first place and, there seems no worse example (to me) than the project for, not a parking lot this time, but the Granadilla industrial port.

The story so far, for those not familiar with the controversy that has been going on for years, is that the authorities in Tenerife want to built it and nobody else wants it; not scientists, not ecologists, not residents and, if only they knew about it, I'm absolutely certain that tourists too would be none to happy about the idea of such a facility only a few miles from tourist beaches either ...

"Bring the family, see the passing container ships, free oil slick." NOT!

Tenerife already has a port in Santa Cruz and there are some very serious questions over whether there would be any need for another one.

In a post aptly entitled, Tenerife vacaciones en el paraíso, el paraíso de la corrupción (Tenerife holidays in paradise, the paradise of corruption), Canarias Insurgente point to a new blog, in German, Teneriffa, Apocalypse Now!, timed, given that the German press is silent on the Granadilla issue and that the most important tourism fair in the world, Internationale Tourismusbörse (ITB) is currently talking place in Berlin (11 Mar 09 - 15 Mar 09).

Island Connections call the port the Worst job creation project, calculating the cost per employee of the controversial port to 622,000 eu­ros per job.

We've looked at the coast that will be destroyed before, when the Canarian Government's Minister of the Environment, Domingo Berriel, (conveniently) signed an order to declassify as an endangered species, the Cymodocea nodosa. Perhaps it does not seem important but this sea grass is "the equivalent of laurel forest in the marine environment of the Canary Sebadales, the problem is that it is not visible and therefore its value is not so easily seen."

"The most interesting part of this protected species is the plant itself, but the whole ecosystem is as important, in the same way that there are more than just the trees in a forest." [Source] And I don't think you need to understand the science to "get" that it wasn't listed as a protected species for no reason at all, but that there has to be something fishy about removing such classification.

... and as the lyrics say: "That you don't know what you've got till it's gone."

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,
With a pink hotel, a boutique,
And a swinging hot spot.
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Work on the port is currently suspended: work had been allowed to start (last Friday 13th) after the highly contentious declassification of the sea grass, Cymodocea nodosa - described at the time by Ben Magec-Ecologistas en Acción (Ecologists in Action in Tenerife), as "one of the most evident presumed illegalities in the recent history of the environment in the Canaries."

Saturday's demo is all the more vital to ensure work remains stopped, forever.

No al puerto de Granadilla. Carnaval 2009. Pictured are José Mesa's incredibly artistic - and ecological - cardboard Caballitos de mar (Seahorses); costumes made for the carnaval to also make a statement against the port, which  seemed like a wonderfully peaceful way of making the point and it's also interesting to see just how many people were happily taking and wearing stickers about the demonstration. Join them on Saturday and take a stand.

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