Mexican President’s ‘Mayan Train’ multi-billion dollar project dealt new legal blow

FILE Picture – Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends a news convention at a military foundation in Apodaca, on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico May 13, 2022. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril

MEXICO Town, May well 30 (Reuters) – A Mexican Courtroom ruling that indefinitely suspended development of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s flagship “Mayan Educate” rail project around environmental concerns was welcomed by activists on Monday.

The 1,470-km (910-mile) railway project, which has been trumpeted by Lopez Obrador as a cornerstone of his options to create the country’s poorer southern states, aims to hyperlink tourist scorching places and spur progress on the Yucatan Peninsula.

The court docket ruling states that Mexico’s National Tourism Advertising Fund’s (Fonatur) programs for the railway do “not comply with the proceedings of the environmental impact evaluation,” according to a statement from Defending the Ideal to a Safe Ecosystem (DMAS), an environmentalist group who argue the task is triggering deforestation and wildlife disruption.

The legal dispute is centered on the 121-km (75-mile) “section 5” of the venture, connecting the vacation resort metropolitan areas of Cancun and Tulum in Quintana Roo point out, exactly where building was at first suspended in April more than a absence of environmental permits.

Fonatur explained in a assertion on Monday that it was self-confident it could “overcome” the indefinite suspension, noting the Ecosystem Ministry was presently examining its environmental software for the multi-billion dollar railway.

The court’s ban on further building stands “only until eventually the project’s Environmental Effects Statement…is entirely solved,” mentioned Fonatur.

Nonetheless, the ruling is a setback for Lopez Obrador, who has pledged to full the railway by the conclusion of 2023 and claims the railway has produced 105,000 jobs.

The authorities lately also clashed with environmentalists in excess of a failed electric power reform invoice, which would have enhanced investment in fossil fuels. L1N2Uk1I0

Reporting by Adriana Barrera and Isabel Woodford Modifying by Anthony Esposito and Diane Craft

Our Specifications: The Thomson Reuters Belief Rules.