Efforts to amend a raft of laws decreed late last year could reverse advances in coastal-zone and marine-life protection, environmental advocates say.

At issue are 49 laws that President Hugo Chávez approved last November by presidential decree under special powers conferred on him by Venezuela’s new constitution.

Several of the measures seek to benefit campesinos and so-called artesanal or subsistence fishermen by protecting resources on which these groups depend. But business groups and opposition political parties are pressing for changes, charging the laws would do economic harm and violate property rights.

Chávez’s brief ouster from power in April by a coalition of union, business and military forces may have increased the likelihood of such changes. On his return, the president promised to consider reforms and said not even the constitution would be immune.

Political observers say Chávez’s laws, intended to improve the lot of oil-rich Venezuela’s impoverished majority, are unlikely to be altered dramatically if the president maintains his slim majority in the National Assembly. But that majority could vanish if just a small group of legislators shifts allegiances.

Opposition parties propose to amend a number of newly passed laws, among them measures affecting fishing, coastal-zone management and land redistribution. One of their most prominent targets is the country’s new Fishing Law, enacted in November.

Bigger exclusion zone, tougher fines

Aiming to reduce the competition subsistence fishermen face from trawlers and to protect near-shore marine life, the measure prohibits trawling within six miles of Venezuela’s coast and within ten miles of islands. The legislation also sharply increases fines.

The former fishing law, written in 1945, had excluded trawlers from a zone varying from three to five miles offshore, depending on the water depth. However, the restrictions were widely ignored because inflation had reduced fines to near-insignificance—about $20 by the time the new legislation was passed.

The new law boosts fines 1,000-fold and adjusts them for inflation. Meanwhile, confiscation of a vessel’s cargo and equipment has been added as an enforcement option.

Though many here consider such reforms important, the Primero Justicia opposition party denounces them as the death knell of the commercial fishing industry. The party has proposed a revised fishing law that leaves virtually all oversight of the fishing industry to the Production and Commerce Ministry, significantly reducing the Environment Ministry’s role.

Another flashpoint is the Coastal Zones Law, which establishes a range of protections in the area from 260 feet (80 meters) above high water to three miles (five kms) offshore. It marks the first time in Venezuela that coastal protections have been applied to the sea, says Alexis Rengifo, a wildlife-management specialist with the Environment Ministry. “Before, we never took [the sea] into account,” he says. “We just talked about the land side.”

The law prohibits mining, construction, advertising and other activities in the 80-meter-wide coastal band immediately above high water. It also empowers the government to regulate development up to 1,640 feet (500 meters) landward of high water and gives the Environment Ministry two years to categorize coastal areas according to appropriate uses such as conservation, tourism or aquaculture.

Unconstitutional taking charged

Landowners and businesspeople criticize the law as an unconstitutional taking of private property. Last December, the government responded by specifying the law could not threaten existing coastal activities. But opponents continue to call for an overhaul. The Primero Justicia party has introduced an alternative version that would limit the coastal-protection zone to the 80-meter-wide swath above high water and allow authorities to decide what activities to permit there.

A third law attracting opposition is the Land Law, a new measure intended to benefit peasants and boost food production by taking idle land from large landholders and redistributing it to the landless. The law’s stipulation that landowners are to be compensated at market value has not dampened criticism of the legislation as a violation of property rights.

So far, the government has not seized any property. But advocates say that by providing new land to peasants, the law could ease pressure that has prompted peasants to clear and occupy the edges of several national parks. The land law also establishes a citizens’ right to a healthy environment, allowing individuals or groups to claim this right in court.

Eduardo Lapadula, an advisor to the Environment Ministry’s National Office of Biological Diversity and a co-author of the law, acknowledges the measure might pose a threat to protected lands and sustainably managed forests because these might be considered “idle.” But he says he has proposed changing the law to address this problem.