Legislative Early Warning System (SALT)
With the aim of generating a legislative monitoring tool at a national level, to detect situations of “alert” and “opportunity”, Fundación Plurales, in coordination with the International Land Coalition (ILC) and the Environmental Defenders Program, supported by the Global Alliance for Gender and Climate (GAGGA) and WEDO (Women’s Environment & Development Organization), promoted the creation of the Legislative Early Warning System (SALT). With the intention of an analysis related to human rights and environmental justice and with a gender perspective on bills that are presented at a national level in Argentina, Guatemala or another country where we have a National Land Coalition (CNT), as pilots and with the intention of replicating in the region.
SALT is a tool that facilitates access to substantive and timely information to identify the introduction of legislative proposals to the National Congress, which focus on issues for which we fight and work, analyzing the arguments for their debate and the real possibilities of influencing in time this regulatory framework, its regulations and possible applications.
The creation of a system that can detect and analyze bills in their first steps can allow grassroots communities to get involved and participate directly, providing relevant elements for the legislative debate and decision-making, and/or putting in place crucial mechanisms for influence.
In the case of SALT, the alerts are aimed at observing bills and regulatory provisions that may affect or benefit the environmental/territorial rights of communities, especially those related to access and ownership of land, environmental impact, productive models, installation and development of industries, access and management of water resources. It seeks to facilitate the access of social organizations and environmental defenders to the bills that enter the National Congress, identify the dynamics of debate and argumentation of the different legislative blocks in the different commissions and generate concrete tools to detect threats and opportunities in these projects.
The tool consists of four work stages. First, the cabinet and technical team must obtain the information on the bills that are presented. Once the information is obtained, a filter is proposed to define whether we are interested in following up on that project or not. This is the moment when the ALERT is activated or not. Then, it is developed only if the alert was activated and it focuses on the content of the project, its text (articles and grounds). Through a series of questions, the logic of the “traffic light” (red, yellow or green) is applied to detect which aspects represent an opportunity or a threat. Finally, based on the application of the traffic light, we hope to detect at least two bills that, due to opportunity or risk, challenge us to carry out concrete advocacy and lobbying actions, through a systematic plan.
We spoke with Daniela Atea, a graduate in Political Science and part of the consulting team that designed this tool. “The idea is basically to be able to bring organizations another tool that better positions us when it comes to making legislative or public policy impact. It is a tool that helps to have more and better information and in a timely manner,” she explains.
Daniela explains that “Plurales detected that this does not exist and that it would be very good to have it because many times organizations have every intention of doing some kind of impact process, but sometimes they are late, because the law has already been passed or not.” In addition, she explains, “the project starts in mid-2022, we organized it in stages, the first was exploratory, we were looking to see if there was any similar initiative or tool and although there are many alert systems, they are for other topics. There was nothing like this, it was seen that it was a great opportunity to move forward in this sense. So, a survey was carried out, we extracted from that background information what could be an input to think about our tool and we started working on a draft.” In November of last year, it was presented at the ENI Annual Assembly.
That first approach with the member organizations of ENI aroused “a lot of interest, a lot of enthusiasm. They saw it as very useful, they were very enthusiastic and it was very useful for us as a team to meet the people who are part of these organizations, to listen to them, to see how they put the tool, that draft, to the test. But above all, the high level of training that the people who are part of the organizations have. They have a lot of political training because they participate in many training instances, in everything they can, and they also have a lot of practice.”
“From that meeting we started to work on polishing the system and we already considered it essential to complement it with others, so we developed a proposal for a toolbox,” for example, strengthening their knowledge of national legislative processes, adding training instances, etc. During 2023 “we put it to the test, we did a sweep of all the bills that could interest organizations, that could somehow raise the alert. We presented that list to them at the meeting we had (National meeting to develop the DESC report) and we again confirmed the interest of the organizations in the tool.”
“After that meeting, the idea is to select one or two projects on which to really put the tool into practice and after what emerges from there, the organizations themselves will decide on an advocacy strategy, that is what remains for this year,” concludes Daniela.
SALT from Argentina to the world
This system will always be under constant review and improvement, in a continuous process of improvement. Furthermore, the idea is to replicate this experience in two other countries, Guatemala and Peru, for example. A few weeks ago, Nicolás Avellaneda, a member of Fundación Plurales, presented the tool at the central offices of the Comité Campesino del Altiplano (CCDA), in the Guatemalan department of Sololá. We spoke with Fredy Pérez, facilitator of the CNT Guatemala platform and research consultant of the IDEAR Institute of Agrarian and Rural Studies of the Coordination of NGOs and Cooperatives (CONGCOOP).
“Starting in 2015, Guatemala went through a series of processes of protest and social mobilization in the face of the crisis of democracy caused by corruption and impunity within the State, which was expressed in the closure of civic space and freedom of expression. In the countryside, there were constant attacks on human rights defenders and peaceful resistance at the community level against extractive megaprojects and large agribusiness. In this context, SALT is relevant, as it will allow the systematization of policies and implementation practices related to the rights of indigenous and peasant peoples, and it is important to warn about legislation that is harmful to human rights and democracy in the country,” he explains.
Now, “in the last week, the General Elections were held and it is possible to know the new composition of Congress and there is a great possibility that the new government, particularly the Executive – which will be elected in two months – will promote positive changes in public policy, democracy and the fight against corruption. In this sense, the implementation of SALT will provide capacities and knowledge that will allow us to continue implementing the tool for legislative analysis in a new context and analyze the type of changes that occur.”
Fredy says that it has not yet been implemented, “but one of our ILC member organizations, the CCDA, has already begun a consultation and research process that allows us to identify legislation of interest for the tool. The other members of the platform and allied organizations were also invited to participate in the process of gathering and facilitating information, hoping that, with the first results, a collective analysis can be carried out to improve the implementation.”
Fredy explains that the CCDA exchanged information with CONGCOOP on SALT, “the methodology to be implemented being interesting, since a global analysis of the Guatemalan legislation that could benefit or affect the indigenous and rural population had not been carried out before. Various local leaders were interested and expressed their willingness to learn and collaborate in its implementation.”
SALT for and by the territories
Something worth highlighting is that, as designed in this way, the instrument does not require having a good Internet connection, since the original Excel spreadsheet can be downloaded once to a computer or notebook and used indefinitely. Nor does it require having a special program or application. However, we are analyzing the possibility of generating a simple application for cell phones that performs the function of data loading and visibility of the traffic light in order to “make the format as friendly” as possible.
We find ourselves with increasingly complex societies that, crossed by social, economic and political conflicts that transcend the borders of countries, dramatically expose the confrontation of interests and perspectives on the best ways to resolve the dilemmas and respond to the needs of the entire community. In this context, the questions about the ways to strengthen democracies and the participation of citizens so that decisions benefit the majority are key if we intend to guarantee the effective exercise of the rights of all people and sectors.
Plurales Foundation has been promoting different strategies to strengthen grassroots organizations, individuals and groups grouped around the defense of territory, human rights, environmental assets and economic justice, of historically disadvantaged sectors. From a gender perspective, we support rural communities by promoting participatory governance of natural assets such as safe water, land and the incorporation of appropriate technologies that generate more sustainable production systems. One of the axes is to strengthen networking and develop programs that provide a social fabric of support in conflicts and actions of resistance to situations and measures of oppression. In this framework, the Early Legislative Alert System (SALT) will help generate concrete evidence for the realization of public advocacy actions.
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