MEXICO CITY —No place attracts more foreign investment in tourism in Mexico than the state of Baja California Sur, where developers are trying to replicate the success of top resort destinations like Los Cabos and Cabo San Lucas. The state brought in a leading $783.3 million between January and September last year, with figures in the third quarter of 2024 accounting for more than half of Mexico’s total national tourism investment. But the influx of development is also frustrating residents and worrying conservationists, who say that the projects often skirt environmental regulations, encroach on the traditional way of life of local communities and damage protected areas. “There’s condo project after condo project after condo project,” said John Moreno Rutowski, an attorney who has fought development in Todos Santos, a town on the Pacific coast of the peninsula. “They’re just blatantly, nakedly illegal.” Last year, environmental groups sounded the alarm on the “Kuni” megaproject, which would have involved developing 1,600 hectares (3,953 acres) for hotels inside of the Balandra Protected Natural Area, a strip of coast near the state capital of La Paz that features dunes, mangroves, reefs and scrubland. Construction would have required more than 10,000 cubic meters of water and a massive desalination effort resulting in a brine discharge harmful to marine ecosystems, according to the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA), which called for a public consultation between residents and the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat). There are currently 28,000 hotel rooms across Baja California Sur, CEMDA…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Baja California tourism poses mounting challenges for conservation, critics say first appeared on EnviroLink Network.