Bacalar

themselves to their manipulation without verifying sources, in search of a news story shocking enough to sell, which they published and republished in intentional complicity or not, with notes that were half-truths to convince public opinion of a fateful scenario in which the Bacalar Lagoon seemed to be a lawless body of water, and the entire basin a "No Man's Land". With an unprecedented urgency to control the body of water by inventing figures from which sources were rarely or never cited, using again and again half-truth arguments and outright lies..

The lack of critical thinking of those who publish and those who continue to believe in the arguments of the voracious neoliberal environmentalism that these groups represent is worrying, but even more worrying is the excess of brazenness with which supposed researchers, neoliberal environmentalists and authorities are acting in complicity to impose an overregulation for Bacalar.

Their assertion and the way in which they manipulate public opinion is very questionable, if there is something in the Bacalar Lagoon it is overregulation. It was necessary to question the statement of their "experts " (and we would have to question how expert they are, or in what) because they left aside that there are at least 4 validated instruments, decreed and operating in the body of water, not counting all the normative battery that regulates almost every aspect of human activity, biotic and abiotic aspects that exist and can be applied to the lagoon and the basin in general. What there is a lack of governance and leadership, a lack of political will and combating the gigantic amount of corruption that exists among the authorities (See Volume III of this collection).

Hundreds of instruments to regulate and over-regulate almost everything in Bacalar

These are the instruments that are already territorially regulating the body of water and where the Bacalar Lagoon is an Environmental Management Unit (UGA).

5 Ordinances:

1. POET Bacalar, where the Lagoon is the UGA Ff20 2. POEL Othón P. Blanco, the other part of the Lagoon is the UGA 31 3. POE Marine and Regional Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean where the Bacalar Lagoon and its area of influence are the UGA 152 And in 2020,

4. Municipal Territorial Planning Program, Ecological and Urban Development for the municipality of Bacalar (in process) 5. Municipal Program of Territorial, Ecological and Urban Development Planning for the municipality of Othón P. Blanco (in process) The ecological order legally in Mexico is defined as: An instrument of environmental policy whose purpose is to regulate or induce the use of land and productive activities, in order to achieve the protection of the environment and the preservation and sustainable use of natural resources, based on the analysis of trends in deterioration and the potential for their use. These instruments are ALREADY built and in force and apply not only to the body of water, but to the entire basin. The justification for creating the NAP or PROTUR was the lack of "Environmental policy instruments to regulate land use and productive activities in order to protect the environment and the preservation and sustainable use of natural resources ... which is the basis for the creation of the Ordinances that are already decreed and in force. The lagoon, the body of water is split in two by the Ecological Ordinances of each municipality, in force, in this way there is a complex regulation, but in force on it. On the side of Othón P. Blanco, on the east bank of the system, we have a protection policy, on the west bank of the lagoon, the POET Bacalar has a policy and Conservation. This implies that as preponderant activities can be carried out on the eastern bank activities of management and conservation of flora and fauna and which refers to the competence of the constitutional mandate article 27 and the law of national waters (in the part of OPB), other

activities established and regulated by the instruments include natural corridor and alternative tourism, hunting and fishing, with a list of incompatible uses clearly specified. In turn, these instruments incorporate general and specific criteria that involve criteria for cenotes and sinkholes, native aquatic vegetation, waste, wastewater, aquifer use and prevention of aquifer contamination, rainwater harvesting, roads, material banks, species in special category, nurseries, firewood, urban centers, organic fertilizers, recreational activities, archaeological sites, agrochemicals, wetlands and bodies of water, building materials, fisheries, infrastructure, alternative tourism, marine, mangroves, fauna, liquid waste management and flora. For its part, the same body of water is placed as environmental management unit 152 in the Marine and Regional Ecological Management of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, which also refers to general and specific ecological criteria, and a well-delineated list of guidelines associated with ecological strategies, general and specific actions, with their respective strategies, that must be complied with by any project in the body of water and its area of influence.

This instrument published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF) on November 24, 2012 sought to be a planning and policy tool at the regional level to guide in a coordinated manner the use of natural resources and the development of productive activities under principles of sustainability, which consider the conservation of goods and services of coastal and marine ecosystems but also the socioeconomic development of the Gulf region of Mexico and the Caribbean, including territories of coastal and marine influence of 11 states of the country. It was designed to address aspects related to climate change, clean technologies, invasive species, basic services to communities, environmental and territorial planning, productive activities (tourism, urban, industrial, agricultural, fishing), integral waste management, integral water management, vulnerability and risks to both the environment and the population and infrastructure, ecosystem conservation and others..

Unfortunately, the government of Quintana Roo, which participated in the planning and implementation of the instrument and made a commitment to publish it in its official state newspaper, in order to have recognition in local planning instruments, never did. Even so, for federal environmental impact

assessment processes and other procedures that involve the evaluation of the compatibility of environmental policy instruments at the federal level, it is necessary to consider their inclusion in the analyses, but not in state instruments.

The latter is a magnificent example of the basis of the problem with the application of instruments of this type: the complete disarticulation between the instances of government not only between the three levels (Federal, State and Municipal) but within the same levels (between the federal instances, between the state instances and between the same municipal instances) to whom it seems easier to create new instruments than to articulate the existing ones.