The Bahia Negra Municipality is one of the newest in Paraguay, and the largest in size, including almost half of the entire territory of the Department of Alto Paraguay. It is also one of the poorest in the country. IDEA has been providing the Municipality with advice since 2001, helping with the legal constitution of a Civic Committee. After many years of lobbying, on April 21, 2005, Law 2563 passed, elevating Bahia Negra’s status to the Municipality level. Once this was done, IDEA began to help in the designing and implementation of municipal plans for land use planning with the objective to improve the Municipal Government of Bahia Negra’s institutional capacity.
IDEA is currently carrying out capacity building activities for local actors in the legal aspects of land and protected area management, taking into account the latent need to share with the locals a general knowledge of the national legal system while highlighting the more important aspects for this specific community.
The capacity building workshops began in August 2008 with the Municipal officers. The first topic was the Organic Muncipal Law, and all of the Municipal Council members were present. This very same workshop was also carried out for officers working in the liaison office in Asuncion.
This year, IDEA expects to continue with their workshops for Municipal officers in issues related to environmental legislation, the evolution of environmental impacts, land use planning and the creation of bylaws, access to public information, among others.
A number of strategic alliances have been developed, among them alliances with the National Forest Institute (INFONA for its acronyms in Spanish), and the Ministry of Environment (SEAM). Both seek to monitor the enforcement of environmental licenses within the Bahia Negra District.
This is extremely important since through satellite monitoring it is possible to find landowners who have not kept to what was established in their environmental license.
On April 22, 2009, in an extraordinary session, the Municipal Council of Bahia Negra unanimously sanctioned Bylaw 01/09 “Through which the procedure for access to public information in the Bahia Negra District is established”. The Mayor immediately promulgated the Bylaw following the extraordinary session.
The Bahia Negra Access to Public Information Bylaw forces municipal authorities to make available to the public all information coming from the Municipal Council and the Office of the Mayor. For this, the webpage www.bahianegra.gov.py was created, where the Municipal organizational chart is available, as well as an updated and detailed list of all municipal authorities and officers and their salaries. All of the requirements for requesting municipal localization certificates and environmental licenses are also available in this webpage. The latter is extremely important, since part of Paraguay’s biodiversity is located within the district, and the availability of these documents will facilitate the enforcement of environmental laws.
