Standing for direct unconstitutionality action in environmental criminal mattersLegitimación para acción de inconstitucionalidad directa en materia penal ambiental

*090070970007CO* Res. Nº 2009011093 SALA CONSTITUCIONAL DE LA CORTE SUPREMA DE JUSTICIA. San José, at twelve hours and thirty minutes on the tenth of July, two thousand nine.

An action of unconstitutionality brought by Emily Jeanne Yozell Wolf, of legal age, single, Teacher, resident of Santo Domingo de Heredia, identity card number 8-0087-0192, in her capacity as President with Powers of General Attorney-in-fact without limit of sum of the Association Justice against Nature (Asociación Justicia contra la Naturaleza) against Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law No. 7317 (Ley de Conservación de la Vida Silvestre N.7317), as amended by Law 8689 of December 4, 2008.

Resultando:

1.- By writing received in the Secretariat of the Chamber at 11:30 hours on May 11, 2009, the claimant requests that the unconstitutionality of Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law be declared, for being contrary to Articles 11, 39, 45 and 50 of the Political Constitution. She alleges that the infraction of numeral 11 occurs because the challenged norm violates Articles 15, 16 and 17 of the General Law of Public Administration (Ley General de la Administración Pública), which require that for determining the existence of a wetland, there must be a series of technical criteria, based on irrevocable principles and that do not injure principles of logic and technique, and that allow concluding, without room for doubt, that a specific site is a wetland, according to the definitions clearly established in this regard by various legal texts, such as the Organic Law of the Environment (Ley Orgánica del Ambiente) in its Articles 36 and 42 and the Biodiversity Law (Ley de Biodiversidad) in its Article 58. She alleges that Article 98 of Law No. 8689 also conflicts with Article 7 subsection h) of the Wildlife Conservation Law, which expressly provides that it is by Executive Decree (Decreto Ejecutivo) that the presence of a wetland is determined. Even though that norm is currently challenged as unconstitutional, and regardless of whether it is declared as such, the determination of the existence of a wetland cannot be left to the discretion of anyone; rather, a technical criterion of value for the specific wetland is necessary, otherwise, under the conditions of national reality, it would be allowing the declaration, by "rule of thumb" (ojo de buen cubero), that more than half the country is a "wetland," and therefore, imposing a dangerous limitation on the majority of the socio-productive activities of national life, which in the opinion of her represented association leads to a flagrant violation of Articles 45 and 69 of our Magna Carta. The Secretariat of the Ramsar Convention has disseminated a series of measures that have been identified by the member countries to permit the establishment and management of an effective and complete national network of wetland reserves. Among these stand out measures for the elaboration of national inventories that detail the location and characteristics of wetlands and allow the establishment of networks of wetland reserves, the development of conservation education programs, the taking of adequate legal measures, and the establishment of appropriate management plans. In the case of Costa Rica, a contracting party to the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar) since 1991, as a result of a process of information gathering for the development of an Inventory of the Wetlands of Costa Rica (Inventario de los Humedales de Costa Rica), around 350 documented wetlands have been identified in this inventory, 264 of which are located in the different Conservation Areas of the National System of Conservation Areas (Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación). The total area of said wetlands is approximately 350,000 hectares, equivalent to 7% of the national territory. However, this Inventory did not consider the marine extensions of both coasts, Pacific (1,248 Km) and Caribbean (212 Km) (posterior limits of marine seagrasses or coral reefs, or in their absence, up to the limit of six meters at low tide") and, only for Isla del Coco, were the riverbeds considered as wetlands. This decision left out of the Inventory the coral areas of both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, the inlets of the Central Pacific, and all continental rivers and streams that, by definition, are authentic, clearly identifiable wetlands, which could easily add another 7% of the national territory. (MINAE/SINAC-UICN/HORMA. Wetlands Inventory of Costa Rica (Inventario de los Humedales de Costa Rica); ed. By Rocío Córdova Muñoz, Néstor J. Windevoxhel L – 1st. Ed. – San José, C.R.: UICN, 1998). With that information, the first "Map of Wetlands of Costa Rica" (Mapa de Humedales de Costa Rica) was elaborated, in addition to a guidance document with "Complementary Information" (Información Complementaria). Subsequently, the "Manual for the Identification and Classification of Wetlands in Costa Rica" (Manual para la Identificación y Clasificación de Humedales en Costa Rica) was carried out, the purpose of which is to provide an instrument to technicians responsible for managing and protecting resources, researchers, professionals in the field, administrators, legislators, and users in general that allows understanding the subject of wetlands and identifying the different types of ecosystems existing in the field. Despite the clarity of the recommendations of the Ramsar Secretariat, the institutions and entities obligated to pour these criteria into legal and technical currents have been negligent, which implies the unconstitutionality of Article 98 of Law No. 8689, since the declaration of the existence of a wetland must be duly supported by technical criteria, which our legislation lacks. Consequently, the norm incurs a violation of the principle of legality enshrined in Article 11 of the Political Constitution, as it is establishing penalties, including prison terms, without having clearly established when we are in the presence of a wetland, and considering that the mere fact of saying it is a wetland is sufficient cause for imposing penalties of deprivation of liberty on the offender, in addition to patrimonial consequences, which is evidently unconstitutional and harmful to the rights of citizens. She considers that Article 98 of Law No. 8689 conflicts with Article 58 of the Biodiversity Law; and Articles 36 and 42 of the Organic Law of the Environment, since all of them emphasize that, prior to determining the creation of a protected wild area (área silvestre protegida), a series of technical criteria must exist which must emanate precisely from the governmental authorities with competence for it -the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC)-, with the purpose not only of the creation of the area itself, but of the form of management that can be given to it, once its characteristics are known. However, Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law opposes these guidelines that the legislation established at the time, by including in its text the phrase "declared or not as such" (declarados o no como tales), since this also contradicts Article 7 subsection h) of the same Wildlife Conservation Law. She affirms that the challenged article eliminates the requirement for technical criteria to determine a site as a wetland and leaves this determination to the free will of the official, which violates Article 11 of the Constitution, for being contrary to Articles 15, 16 and 17 of the General Law of Public Administration, and to Articles 58 of the Biodiversity Law, and 36 and 42 of the Organic Law of the Environment. The infraction of Article 39 of the Political Constitution. Article 39 of the Political Constitution provides that no one shall be made to suffer a penalty except for a crime, quasi-crime, or misdemeanor, after the opportunity granted to the accused to exercise his defense and through the necessary demonstration of guilt. Article 98 of Law No. 8986 violates this constitutional principle, as it limits itself to establishing the respective penalties and fails to state in a taxative manner, as must be done in criminal matters, why the alleged accused has incurred a crime, since neither the norm challenged here nor any other legal body has made known to the alleged accused a list that enumerates in a taxative manner the technical criteria that must be taken into account to know if we are or are not in the presence of a wetland, and based on this, to be able to establish if a determined action is lawful or not. If such a list existed, no one could plead ignorance of the Law, and the corresponding sanctions would be applied. Therefore, in her judgment, Article 98 of Law No. 8986 causes legal uncertainty in the administered person, which also makes it unconstitutional, and she thus requests that it be so declared. The claimant indicates that Article 98 of Law No. 8986, in her judgment, also violates the right of property, enshrined in numeral 45 of the Magna Carta. She affirms that the limitations to the property right must be based on a norm of legal rank, through which the governed is told that the exercise of his property right will be limited because another right of equal rank merits it and because there are a series of technical and scientific guidelines and criteria enumerated or duly identified in that legal norm, which support the limitation being made to his property right. For this reason, given the absence of those criteria that allow establishing if a specific area of a property anywhere in the country can be considered a wetland, one cannot proceed to impose that limitation without violating Article 45 of the Political Constitution. The essential content of the property right is the prohibition for the legislator to restrict, arbitrarily and without subjection to the constitutional principles of reasonableness and proportionality, the content of the entire property right or of some of the legal powers that comprise it (disposal, alienation, transformation, etc.), the same as in the possibility of conforming or limiting it through administrative acts or those authorized by norms of legal rank and, of course, in the absolute prohibition of eliminating such powers. Hence, a limitation to the property right, such as the one that Article 98 of Law No. 8986 could contain, constitutes a violation of the property right of the administered persons, if previously there is no legal norm that lays down the technical foundations of why a specific piece of land, owned by a private individual, must be considered a wetland, because otherwise the determination thus made would be evidently unconstitutional in a double sense: first, because there is no express legal norm that determines the technical criteria to know when we are in the presence of a wetland, and second, because it would imply a violation of the private property right consecrated in Article 45 of the Political Constitution. The claimant alleges the infraction of Article 50 of the Political Constitution, for the following reasons: to achieve sustainable development, it is necessary for the State to guarantee that the ecosystems on which life on our planet depends will be preserved. This implies making an adequate valuation of vital spaces, for which technical and scientific criteria are required to permit the issuance of appropriate regulation. She considers that the determination of a protected wild area cannot be left to the free will of untrained officials, without considering technical matters that allow for a proper classification and identification of these areas. To advance sustainable development, a balance is necessary between Article 50 and Articles 45 and 69, all of the Political Constitution, which establish the rational use of resources and respect for the right to private property, setting limits based on legal norms that leave no room for doubt and that compel compliance, by avoiding constitutional conflicts. The principle of rational use of natural resources is being violated by the regulation challenged here - Article 98 of Law No. 8986 -. Both the Political Constitution and the Ramsar Convention in its Article 3 provide that the contracting parties must elaborate and apply their management plans in such a way that the conservation of the humid zones inscribed in the "List" is favored and, whenever possible, the rational exploitation of the wetlands in their territory. That obligation is being disrespected by our country, since, as has been indicated, there is no governmental policy for the rational use of wetlands, because as long as the technical foundations to determine whether or not we are in the presence of a wetland are lacking, it is also difficult to give them rational and sustainable use. She reiterates that only specialists can truly establish when there is a wetland in a specific place, also attending to the specific characteristics of the zone where it is located. Article 98 of Law No. 8986 does not establish the differentiation that the Ramsar Convention itself does make, which is why she also alleges violation of Article 7 of the Political Constitution, for openly conflicting with these principles of the Ramsar Convention. For all the foregoing reasons, she requests that the action be granted and that Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law be declared unconstitutional.

2. In order to substantiate the standing held by the petitioner to bring this action of unconstitutionality, she points out that because this is an environmental matter, she is filing the action directly.

3.- Article 9 of the Law of Constitutional Jurisdiction (Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional) empowers the Chamber to reject on procedural grounds or on the merits, at any time, even from its presentation, any petition brought to its attention that proves to be manifestly unfounded, or when it considers that there are sufficient grounds for judgment to reject it, or that it is the simple reiteration or reproduction of a previous, identical or similar, rejected petition.

Drafted by Magistrate Calzada Miranda; and,

Considerando:

I.- Inadmissibility of the action. Article 75 of the Law of Constitutional Jurisdiction regulates the assumptions that determine the admissibility of actions of unconstitutionality, requiring the existence of a matter pending resolution, whether in an administrative or judicial venue, unless the promoters find themselves in any of the assumptions established in the second paragraph of the cited article, that is, that they hold a diffuse interest or one that concerns the community as a whole, or that due to the nature of the matter, there is no individual or concrete injury; or that the action is presented by certain officials, namely the Procurador General, Contralor General, or Fiscal General of the Republic, or the Defensor de los Habitantes, in these latter cases, within their respective competencies, as provided in the third paragraph of the cited numeral. From the foregoing, it follows that the general rule points to the need for a prior matter, the possibilities of going directly to the Constitutional Chamber being exceptional. Regarding the content of the aforementioned second paragraph, this Chamber has previously indicated that according to the first of the assumptions provided for in paragraph 2 of Article 75 of the Law of Constitutional Jurisdiction, the questioned norm must not be susceptible to concrete application, which would then allow the challenge of the applicative act and its consequent use as a base matter. The text in question provides that it proceeds when "due to the nature of the matter, there is no individual or direct injury," that is, when by that very nature, the injury is collective (antonym of individual) and indirect. This would be the case of acts that injure the interests of certain groups or corporations as such, and not properly of their members directly. Secondly, the possibility of action in defense of "diffuse interests" (intereses difusos) is provided; this concept, the content of which has been gradually delineated by this Chamber, could be summarized in the terms used in judgment number 3750-93 of this court, at fifteen hours on July thirtieth, nineteen ninety-three:

"... Diffuse interests, although difficult to define and more difficult to identify, cannot be in our law – as this Chamber has already said – merely collective interests; nor so diffuse that their ownership is confused with that of the national community as a whole, nor so concrete that in front of them, determined or easily identifiable persons, or personalized groups, are identified or easily identifiable, whose standing would derive, not from diffuse interests, but from corporate ones that concern a community in its entirety. It is therefore a matter of individual interests, but at the same time, diluted in more or less extensive and amorphous groups of people who share an interest and, consequently, suffer a harm, actual or potential, more or less equal for all, which is why it is rightly said that they are identical interests of the groups that find themselves in certain circumstances and, at the same time, of each one of them. That is, diffuse interests participate in a double nature, since they are at once collective – being common to a generality – and individual, which is why they can be claimed in such character." In summary, diffuse interests are those whose ownership belongs to groups of people not formally organized, but united around a specific social need, a physical characteristic, their ethnic origin, a specific personal or ideological orientation, the consumption of a certain product, etc. The interest, in these cases, is blurred, diluted (diffuse) among an unidentified plurality of subjects. In these cases, of course, the challenge that a member of one of these sectors could make, protected under paragraph 2 of Article 75, must necessarily be related to provisions that affect them as such. This Chamber has enumerated various rights to which it has given the qualification of "diffuse," such as the environment, cultural heritage, defense of the territorial integrity of the country, and proper management of public spending, among others. In this regard, two clarifications must be made: on the one hand, the referred assets transcend the sphere traditionally recognized for diffuse interests, since they refer in principle to aspects that affect the national community and not particular groups thereof; environmental harm does not merely affect the inhabitants of a region or the consumers of a product, but rather harms or puts at serious risk the natural heritage of the entire country and even of Humanity; similarly, the defense of the proper management of public funds authorized in the Budget of the Republic is an interest of all inhabitants of Costa Rica, not just any one group of them. On the other hand, the enumeration that the Constitutional Chamber has made is no more than a simple description inherent to its obligation – as a jurisdictional body – to limit itself to hearing the cases submitted to it, without it being possible in any way to be understood that only those rights that the Chamber has expressly recognized as such can be considered diffuse rights; the foregoing would imply an undesirable change in the scope of the Rule of Law, and of its correlative "State of rights," which – as in the case of the Costa Rican model – starts from the premise that what must be express are the limits to freedoms, since these underlie the very human condition and therefore do not require official recognition. Finally, when paragraph 2 of Article 75 of the Law of Constitutional Jurisdiction speaks of interests "that concern the community as a whole," it refers to the legal assets explained in the preceding lines. It is therefore not the case that any person can go to the Constitutional Chamber in protection of any interests (popular action), but rather that every individual can act in defense of those assets that affect the entire national community, without any attempt at a taxative enumeration being valid in this field either." (Judgment number 8239-2001, at 16:07 hours on August 14, 2001) II.- In the present case, the Chamber estimates that the claimant does not have the standing to bring this demand directly, precisely because of its object, since she questions as unconstitutional Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law No. 7317, as amended by Law 8689, which is in effect as of June 23 of the current year. The norm punishes with a prison sentence of one to three years anyone who, without prior authorization from the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC), drains, dries, fills, or eliminates lakes, non-artificial lagoons, and other wetlands, declared or not as such. In addition, it establishes the obligation for the offender to leave things in the state they were before starting the works affecting the wetland and, for this purpose, empowers the National System of Conservation Areas to carry out the corresponding works at the cost of the offender. The challenged regulation is perfectly susceptible to individual application and may directly affect the legal sphere of singular persons, such that it can give rise to jurisdictional processes, from which actions of unconstitutionality could be brought against it. Indeed, it would suffice, for example, for criminal proceedings to be brought against a single citizen based on the norm questioned here for there to be a process that serves as a basis for the action. The Chamber disagrees with the claimant, who points out that because it is an environmental matter, she can challenge the norm directly, since insofar as it sanctions anyone who, without authorization from the competent authority, affects the ecosystems described therein, this provision aims to protect these ecosystems; thus, upholding the claimant's pretension would result in a detriment to the protection instruments established by the Costa Rican State to ensure their preservation. Therefore, as the hypotheses that would allow excepting the existence of a base process do not concur, for the reasons stated, what is appropriate is to dismiss the demand for lack of standing of the claimant.

Por tanto:

The action is rejected outright.

Ana Virginia Calzada M. Presidenta a.i.

Luis Paulino Mora M. Adrián Vargas B.

Gilbert Armijo S. Ernesto Jinesta L.

Fernando Cruz C. Rosa María Abdelnour G.

Nº 2009011093 CONSTITUTIONAL CHAMBER OF THE SUPREME COURT OF JUSTICE. San José, at twelve hours and thirty minutes on the tenth of July, two thousand nine.

An action of unconstitutionality filed by Emily Jeanne Yozell Wolf, of legal age, single, Teacher, resident of Santo Domingo de Heredia, identity card number 8-0087-0192, in her capacity as President with powers of Generalísima Attorney-in-Fact without limit of sum of the Association Justicia contra la Naturaleza, against Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law (Ley de Conservación de la Vida Silvestre) No. 7317, amended by Law 8689 of December 4, 2008.

**Resultando:** **1.-** By written submission received at the Secretariat of the Chamber at 11:30 a.m. on May 11, 2009, the petitioner requests that the unconstitutionality of Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law (Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre) be declared, for being contrary to Articles 11, 39, 45, and 50 of the Political Constitution. She alleges that the violation of numeral 11 occurs because the challenged rule violates Articles 15, 16, and 17 of the General Law of Public Administration (Ley General de la Administración Pública), which require that for determining the existence of a wetland (humedal), there must be a series of technical criteria, based on irrevocable principles that do not harm principles of logic and technique, and that allow concluding, without room for doubt, that a specific site is a wetland (humedal), according to the definitions that various legal texts clearly establish in this regard, such as the Organic Environmental Law (Ley Orgánica del Ambiente) in its Articles 36 and 42 and the Biodiversity Law (Ley de Biodiversidad) in its Article 58. She alleges that Article 98 of Law No. 8689 also conflicts with Article 7, subsection h) of the Wildlife Conservation Law (Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre), which expressly provides that it is by Executive Decree (Decreto Ejecutivo) that the presence of a wetland (humedal) is determined. Although that rule is currently challenged as unconstitutional, and regardless of whether it is declared as such, the determination of the existence of a wetland (humedal) cannot be left to the discretion of just anyone; rather, it is necessary that there be a technical criterion of value for the specific wetland (humedal), since otherwise, and under the conditions of the national reality, it would be allowing to declare, by rule of thumb, that more than half of the country is a "wetland (humedal)," and therefore, imposing a dangerous limitation on the majority of the socio-productive activities of national life, which in the opinion of her represented entity leads to a flagrant violation of Articles 45 and 69 of our Magna Carta. The Ramsar Convention Secretariat has disseminated a series of measures that have been identified by member countries to permit the establishment and management of an effective and complete national network of wetland (humedal) reserves. These measures emphasize the preparation of national inventories detailing the location and characteristics of wetlands (humedales) and allowing the establishment of networks of wetland (humedal) reserves, the development of education programs on conservation matters, the adoption of adequate legal measures, and the establishment of appropriate management plans. In the case of Costa Rica, a contracting party to the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar) since 1991, as a result of a process of information gathering for the creation of an Inventory of Wetlands of Costa Rica, around 350 wetlands (humedales) documented in this inventory have been identified, 264 of which are located in the different Conservation Areas of the National System of Conservation Areas (Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación, SINAC). The total area of said wetlands (humedales) is approximately 350,000 hectares, equivalent to 7% of the national territory. However, this Inventory did not consider the marine extensions of both the Pacific coast (1,248 km) and Caribbean coast (212 km) ("posterior limits of marine seagrasses or coral reefs, or, in their absence, up to the six-meter depth limit at low tide") and, only for Coco Island were river channels considered as wetlands (humedales). This decision left out of the Inventory the coral areas of both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, the coves of the Central Pacific, and all the continental rivers and streams that, by definition, are authentic, clearly identifiable wetlands (humedales), which could easily add another 7% of the national territory. (MINAE/SINAC-UICN/HORMA. Inventory of Wetlands of Costa Rica; ed. By Rocío Córdova Muñoz, Néstor J. Windevoxhel L – 1st. Ed. – San José, C.R.: UICN, 1998). With this information, the first "Map of Wetlands of Costa Rica" was prepared, in addition to a guide document with "Complementary Information." Subsequently, the "Manual for the Identification and Classification of Wetlands in Costa Rica" was carried out, the purpose of which is to provide an instrument to technicians responsible for managing and protecting resources, researchers, professionals in the field, administrators, legislators, and users in general that allows understanding the subject of wetlands (humedales) and identifying the different types of ecosystems existing in the field. Notwithstanding the clarity of the recommendations of the Ramsar Secretariat, the institutions and entities obligated to pour these criteria into the legal and technical currents have been neglectful, which implies the unconstitutionality of Article 98 of Law No. 8689, because the declaration of the existence of a wetland (humedal) must be duly supported by technical criteria, which our legislation lacks. Thus, the rule incurs a violation of the principle of legality enshrined in Article 11 of the Political Constitution, since it is setting sanctions, including prison sentences, without having clearly established when we are in the presence of a wetland (humedal) and considering that the mere fact of saying it is a wetland (humedal) is sufficient reason for imposing penalties of deprivation of liberty on the offender, in addition to patrimonial consequences, which is evidently unconstitutional and harmful to the rights of citizens. She considers that Article 98 of Law No. 8689 incurs clashes with Articles 58 of the Biodiversity Law (Ley de Biodiversidad); and 36 and 42 of the Organic Environmental Law (Ley Orgánica del Ambiente), because in all of them emphasis is placed on, prior to determining the creation of a protected wilderness area (área silvestre protegida), there must exist a series of technical criteria which must emanate precisely from the governmental authorities with competence for this – the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) –, with the purpose not only of the creation of the area itself, but of the form of management that can be given to it, once its characteristics are known. However, Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law (Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre) opposes these guidelines that the legislation established at the time, by including in its text the phrase "declarados o no como tales" (declared or not as such), because this even contradicts Article 7, subsection h) of the same Wildlife Conservation Law (Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre). She affirms that the challenged article eliminates the requirement for technical criteria that determine a site as a wetland (humedal) and leaves this determination to the free will of the official, which violates Article 11 of the Constitution, for being contrary to Articles 15, 16, and 17 of the General Law of Public Administration (Ley General de la Administración Pública), and to Articles 58 of the Biodiversity Law (Ley de Biodiversidad), and 36 and 42 of the Organic Environmental Law (Ley Orgánica del Ambiente). The violation of Article 39 of the Political Constitution. Article 39 of the Political Constitution provides that no one shall be made to suffer a penalty except for a crime, quasi-crime, or misdemeanor, prior opportunity granted to the accused to exercise their defense and through the necessary demonstration of guilt. Article 98 of Law No. 8986 violates this constitutional principle, because it limits itself to establishing the respective penalties, and fails to expressly state, as must be the case in criminal matters, why the alleged accused has incurred a crime, since neither the rule challenged here nor any other legal body has made known to the alleged accused a list that exhaustively enumerates the technical criteria that must be taken into account to know whether or not we are in the presence of a wetland (humedal), and based on that, to be able to establish whether a specific action is lawful or not. If such a list existed, no one could claim ignorance of the Law, and the corresponding sanctions would be applied to them. Therefore, in her judgment, Article 98 of Law No. 8986 causes legal uncertainty for the citizen, which also makes it unconstitutional, and she requests that it be declared as such. The petitioner indicates that Article 98 of Law No. 8986, in her judgment, also violates the right to property, enshrined in numeral 45 of the Magna Carta. She affirms that limitations on the right to property must be based on a norm of legal rank, through which the governed individual is told that the exercise of their property right will be limited because another right of equal rank merits it and because there exists a series of guidelines and technical and scientific criteria enumerated or duly identified in that legal norm, which support the limitation being imposed on their property right. Therefore, given the absence of those criteria that permit establishing whether a specific area of a property anywhere in the country can be considered a wetland (humedal), it is not possible to proceed to impose that limitation, without harming Article 45 of the Political Constitution. The essential content of the property right is the prohibition for the legislator to restrict arbitrarily and without subjection to the constitutional principles of reasonableness and proportionality, the content of the entire property right or some of the legal powers that comprise it (disposition, alienation, transformation, etc.), the same as in the possibility of shaping or limiting it through administrative acts or those authorized by norms of legal rank and, of course, in the absolute prohibition of eliminating such powers. Hence, a limitation on the property right, such as the one that Article 98 of Law No. 8986 could contain, constitutes a violation of the property right of citizens, if there does not previously exist a legal norm that establishes the technical foundations of why a specific piece of land, owned by a private individual, must be considered a wetland (humedal), because otherwise the determination thus made would be evidently unconstitutional in a double sense: first, because there is no express legal norm that determines the technical criteria to know when we are in the presence of a wetland (humedal), and second, because it would imply a violation of the private property right enshrined in Article 45 of the Political Constitution. The petitioner alleges the violation of Article 50 of the Political Constitution, for the following reasons: to achieve sustainable development, it is necessary for the State to guarantee that the ecosystems upon which life on our planet depends will be preserved. This implies making an adequate valuation of vital spaces, for which technical and scientific criteria are required that allow issuing a well-aimed regulation. She considers that the determination of a protected wilderness area (área silvestre protegida) cannot be left to the free will of officials without training, without considering matters of a technical nature that allow for a proper classification and identification of those areas. To carry forward sustainable development, a balance is needed between Article 50 and Articles 45 and 69, all of the Political Constitution, which establish the rational use of resources and respect for the right to private property, establishing limits based on legal norms that leave no room for doubt and that compel compliance, since no constitutional-level clashes occur. The principle of rational use of natural resources is being violated by the regulation challenged here – Article 98 of Law No. 8986. Both the Political Constitution and the Ramsar Convention, in its Article 3, provide that contracting parties shall elaborate and apply their management plans in such a way as to favor the conservation of wetlands (zonas húmedas) inscribed on the "List" and, whenever possible, the wise use (explotación racional) of wetlands (humedales) in their territory. This obligation is being disrespected by our country, since, as has been indicated, there is no governmental policy for the wise use of wetlands (humedales), because as long as there is a lack of technical foundations to determine whether or not we are in the presence of a wetland (humedal), it is also difficult to give them a rational and sustainable use. She reiterates that only specialists can truly establish when there is a wetland (humedal) in a determined place, also considering the characteristics specific to the zone where it is located. Article 98 of Law No. 8986 does not establish the differentiation that the Ramsar Convention itself does make, so she also alleges violation of Article 7 of the Political Constitution, for openly conflicting with these principles of the Ramsar Convention. For all the foregoing reasons, she requests that the action be granted and that Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law (Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre) be declared unconstitutional.

**2.** In order to substantiate the standing held by the petitioner to bring this action of unconstitutionality, she indicates that because it concerns environmental matters, she files the action directly.

**3.-** Article 9 of the Law of Constitutional Jurisdiction (Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional) empowers the Chamber to reject outright or on the merits, at any time, even from its presentation, any petition submitted for its consideration that proves to be manifestly improper, or when it considers that there are sufficient elements of judgment to reject it, or that it involves the simple reiteration or reproduction of a previous, identical, or similar petition that was rejected.

Drafted by Magistrate Calzada Miranda; and, **Considerando:** **I.-** Inadmissibility of the action. Article 75 of the Law of Constitutional Jurisdiction (Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional) regulates the prerequisites that determine admissibility in actions of unconstitutionality, requiring the existence of a pending matter to be resolved, whether in an administrative or judicial venue, unless the petitioners fall within one of the prerequisites established in the second paragraph of the cited article, that is, that they hold a diffuse interest (interés difuso) or one that concerns the community as a whole, or that due to the nature of the matter there is no individual or concrete injury; or that the action is filed by certain officials, namely the Attorney General, Comptroller General, or Prosecutor General of the Republic or the Ombudsman, in these latter cases, within their respective competencies, as provided in the third paragraph of the cited numeral. Based on the foregoing, the general rule points to the need to have a prior pending matter, with the possibilities of approaching the Constitutional Chamber directly being exceptional. Regarding the content of the mentioned second paragraph, this Chamber has previously indicated that according to the first of the scenarios provided for by paragraph 2 of Article 75 of the Law of Constitutional Jurisdiction (Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional), the challenged rule must not be susceptible to concrete application that would subsequently allow the challenge of the applicatory act and its consequent use as a base matter. The text in question provides that it proceeds when "due to the nature of the matter, there is no individual or direct injury," that is, when, by that same nature, the injury is collective (antonym of individual) and indirect. This would be the case for acts that injure the interests of specific groups or corporations as such, and not properly those of their members directly. Secondly, the possibility of resorting in defense of "diffuse interests (intereses difusos)" is foreseen; this concept, whose content has been gradually delineated by the Chamber, could be summarized in the terms used in the judgment of this tribunal number 3750-93, at fifteen hours on July thirtieth, nineteen ninety-three: "… Diffuse interests (intereses difusos), although difficult to define and more difficult to identify, cannot be in our law – as this Chamber has already stated – merely collective interests; nor so diffuse that their ownership is confused with that of the national community as a whole, nor so concrete that in their presence determined persons, or personalized groups, are identified or easily identifiable, whose standing would derive not from diffuse interests (intereses difusos), but from corporate ones that concern a community in its entirety. It involves, then, individual interests, but at the same time, diluted in more or less extensive and amorphous groups of persons who share an interest and, therefore, receive an actual or potential harm, more or less equal for all, for which reason it is rightly said that they are equal interests of the groups that are in certain circumstances and, at the same time, of each one of them. That is, diffuse interests (intereses difusos) partake of a dual nature, since they are at once collective – for being common to a generality – and individual, for which they can be claimed in such character." In summary, diffuse interests (intereses difusos) are those whose ownership belongs to groups of persons not formally organized, but united based on a specific social need, a physical characteristic, their ethnic origin, a specific personal or ideological orientation, the consumption of a certain product, etc. The interest, in these cases, is blurred, diluted (difuso) among an unidentified plurality of subjects. In these cases, clearly, the challenge that a member of one of these sectors could make, protected under paragraph 2 of Article 75, must necessarily refer to provisions that affect them as such. This Chamber has enumerated various rights to which it has given the designation of "diffuse," such as the environment, cultural heritage, the defense of the territorial integrity of the country, and the proper management of public spending, among others. In this regard, two clarifications must be made: on the one hand, the referred goods transcend the sphere traditionally recognized for diffuse interests (intereses difusos), as they refer in principle to aspects that affect the national community and not particular groups within it; environmental damage does not merely affect the residents of a region or the consumers of a product, but injures or puts at serious risk the natural heritage of the entire country and even of Humanity; similarly, the defense of the proper management of public funds authorized in the Budget of the Republic is an interest of all the inhabitants of Costa Rica, not just of any group of them. On the other hand, the enumeration that the Constitutional Chamber has made is nothing more than a simple description inherent in its obligation – as a jurisdictional body – to limit itself to hearing the cases submitted to it, without it being possible in any way to understand that only those that the Chamber has expressly recognized as such can be considered diffuse interests (intereses difusos); the foregoing would imply an undesirable overturning of the scope of the Rule of Law, and of its correlative "State of rights," which – as in the case of the Costa Rican model – starts from the premise that what must be explicit are the limits on freedoms, since these underlie the very human condition and therefore do not require official recognition. Finally, when paragraph 2 of Article 75 of the Law of Constitutional Jurisdiction (Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional) speaks of interests "that concern the community as a whole," it refers to the legal goods explained in the preceding lines. It is not, therefore, that any person can come to the Constitutional Chamber to protect any interests (popular action), but rather that every individual can act in defense of those goods that affect the entire national community, without any attempt at a exhaustive enumeration being valid in this field either." (Judgment number 8239-2001, at 16:07 hours on August 14, 2001) **II.-** In the present case, the Chamber considers that the petitioner does not have standing to bring this claim directly, precisely due to its object, since she challenges as unconstitutional Article 98 of the Wildlife Conservation Law (Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre) No. 7317, amended by Law 8689, which is effective as of June 23 of the current year. The norm sanctions with a prison sentence of one to three years, anyone who, without prior authorization from the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC), drains, dries, fills, or eliminates non-artificial lakes, lagoons, and other wetlands (humedales), whether declared as such or not. In addition, it establishes the obligation for the offender to leave things in the state they were in before beginning the works affecting the wetland (humedal) and for this purpose, the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) is empowered to carry out the corresponding works, at the offender's expense. The challenged regulation is perfectly susceptible to individual application and can directly impact the legal sphere of singular persons, such that it can give rise to jurisdictional processes, based on which actions of unconstitutionality could be brought against it. Indeed, it would suffice, for example, that a single citizen be criminally prosecuted based on the rule challenged here, for there to exist a process that serves as the basis for the action. The Chamber disagrees with the petitioner, who points out that because it concerns environmental matters she can challenge the rule directly, since insofar as it sanctions anyone who, without authorization from the competent authority, affects the ecosystems it describes, this provision aims to protect these ecosystems, so that granting the petitioner's claim results in a detriment to the protection instruments established by the Costa Rican State to seek their preservation. Therefore, as the hypotheses that would allow an exception to the existence of a base process do not concur, for the reasons expressed, what is appropriate is to dismiss the claim for lack of standing of the petitioner.

**Por tanto:** The action is rejected outright.

Ana Virginia Calzada M.

President a.i.

Luis Paulino Mora M. Adrián Vargas B.

Gilbert Armijo S. Ernesto Jinesta L.

Fernando Cruz C. Rosa María Abdelnour G.

*090070970007CO* **Exp: 09-007097-0007-CO** **Res. Nº 2009011093** **SALA CONSTITUCIONAL DE LA CORTE SUPREMA DE JUSTICIA. San José, at twelve hours and thirty minutes of the tenth of July of two thousand nine.**    Acción de inconstitucionalidad filed by Emily Jeanne Yozell Wolf, of legal age, single, Teacher, resident of Santo Domingo de Heredia, identity card number 8-0087-0192, in her capacity as President with Powers of Unlimited General Attorney-in-Fact of the Asociación Justicia contra la Naturaleza against Article 98 of the Ley de Conservación de la Vida Silvestre N.7317, amended by ley 8689 of December 4, 2008.

**Resultando:** **1.-** By written brief received in the Secretariat of the Chamber at 11:30 a.m. on May 11, 2009, the petitioner requests that the unconstitutionality of Article 98 of the Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre be declared, for being contrary to Articles 11, 39, and 45 and 50 of the Constitución Política. She alleges that the violation of numeral 11 occurs because the challenged norm violates Articles 15, 16, and 17 of the Ley General de la Administración Pública, which require that for the determination of the existence of a wetland (humedal), there must be a series of technical criteria, founded on irrevocable principles and not undermining principles of logic and technique, and that allow for concluding, without doubt, that a specific site is a wetland, according to the definitions that various legal texts clearly establish in this regard, such as the Ley Orgánica del Ambiente in its Articles 36 and 42 and the Ley de Biodiversidad in its Article 58. She alleges that Article 98 of Ley No. 8689 also conflicts with Article 7, subsection h) of the Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre, which expressly provides that it is by Decreto Ejecutivo that the presence of a wetland is determined. Although that norm is currently challenged as unconstitutional, and regardless of whether it is declared as such, the determination of the existence of a wetland cannot be left to anyone's discretion, but rather a technical criterion of the specific wetland's value is necessary, because otherwise, and under the conditions of the national reality, it would be allowing the declaration, "by rule of thumb," that more than half of the country is a "wetland," and therefore, imposing a dangerous limitation on the majority of the country's socio-productive activities, which, in her represented association's view, leads to a flagrant violation of Articles 45 and 69 of our Carta Magna. The Secretariat of the Ramsar Convention has disseminated a series of measures that have been identified by member countries to permit the establishment and management of an effective and complete national network of wetland reserves. Notable among these are measures for the development of national inventories detailing the location and characteristics of wetlands, enabling the establishment of networks of wetland reserves, the development of conservation education programs, the adoption of adequate legal measures, and the establishment of appropriate management plans. In the case of Costa Rica, a contracting party to the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar) since 1991, as a result of an information gathering process for the development of an Inventory of Wetlands of Costa Rica, around 350 documented wetlands have been identified in this inventory, 264 of which are located in the different Conservation Areas of the Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación. The total area of these wetlands is approximately 350,000 hectares, equivalent to 7% of the national territory. However, this Inventory did not consider the marine extensions of both coasts, the Pacific (1,248 km) and Caribbean (212 km) (the posterior limits of marine seagrasses or coral reefs, or in their absence, up to the six-meter limit at low tide) and, only for Isla del Coco were the riverbeds considered as wetlands. This decision left out of the Inventory the coral areas of both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, the coves of the Central Pacific, and all continental rivers and streams that, by definition, are authentic, clearly identifiable wetlands, which could easily add another 7% of the national territory. (MINAE/SINAC-UICN/HORMA. Inventario de los Humedales de Costa Rica; ed. Por Rocío Córdova Muñoz, Néstor J. Windevoxhel L – 1st. Ed. – San José, C.R.: IUCN, 1998). With this information, the first "Mapa de Humedales de Costa Rica" was prepared, in addition to a guide document with "Complementary Information." Subsequently, the "Manual for the Identification and Classification of Wetlands in Costa Rica" was carried out, whose purpose is to provide an instrument for technicians responsible for managing and protecting resources, researchers, field professionals, administrators, legislators, and general users to allow them to understand the topic of wetlands and identify the different types of existing ecosystems in the field. Despite the clarity of the recommendations from the Ramsar Secretariat, the institutions and entities required to translate those criteria into legal and technical frameworks have been neglectful, which implies the unconstitutionality of Article 98 of Ley No. 8689, since the declaration of the existence of a wetland must be duly supported by technical criteria, which our legislation lacks. Thus, the norm violates the principle of legality (principio de legalidad) enshrined in Article 11 of the Constitución Política, since it is setting sanctions, including prison sentences, without having clearly established when a wetland is present and considering that the mere fact of stating it is a wetland is sufficient reason to impose sanctions of deprivation of liberty on the offender, in addition to asset-related consequences, which is clearly unconstitutional and harmful to citizens' rights. She considers that Article 98 of Ley No. 8689 conflicts with Articles 58 of the Ley de Biodiversidad and 36 and 42 of the Ley Orgánica del Ambiente, because all of them emphasize that, prior to determining the creation of a protected wild area (área silvestre protegida), there must be a series of technical criteria which must emanate precisely from the competent governmental authorities - the Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación (Sinac) - with the purpose not only of the creation of the area itself, but also of the management approach that can be given to it, once its characteristics are known. However, Article 98 of the Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre opposes these guidelines that the legislation established at the time, by including in its text the phrase **"declared or not as such,"** because this even contradicts Article 7, subsection h) of the same Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre. She affirms that the challenged article eliminates the requirement for technical criteria to determine a site as a wetland and leaves that determination to the free will of the official, which violates Article 11 of the Constitution, for being contrary to Articles 15, 16, and 17 of the Ley General de la Administración Pública, and to Articles 58 of the Ley de Biodiversidad, and 36 and 42 of the Ley Orgánica del Ambiente. The violation of Article 39 of the Constitución Política. Article 39 of the Constitución Política provides that no one shall be made to suffer a penalty except for a crime, quasi-crime, or infraction, after prior opportunity afforded to the indictee to exercise their defense and through the necessary demonstration of guilt. Article 98 of Ley No. 8986 violates this constitutional principle, because it merely establishes the respective penalties, and omits to state exhaustively, as must be done in criminal matters, why the presumed accused has committed a crime, since neither the norm challenged here nor any other legal body has informed the presumed accused of a list exhaustively enumerating the technical criteria that must be taken into account to know whether or not we are in the presence of a wetland, and based on that, to establish whether a specific action is lawful or not. If such a list existed, no one could claim ignorance of the Law, and the corresponding sanctions would be applied. Therefore, in her judgment, Article 98 of Ley No. 8986 causes legal uncertainty (inseguridad jurídica) for the administered party, which also makes it unconstitutional, and she thus requests that it be so declared. The petitioner indicates that Article 98 of Ley No. 8986, in her judgment, also violates the right to property (derecho de propiedad), enshrined in numeral 45 of the Carta Magna. She affirms that limitations on the right to property must be based on a legal norm, through which the governed person is told that the exercise of their property right will be limited because there is another right of equal rank that merits it and because there is a series of technical and scientific guidelines and criteria enumerated or duly identified in that legal norm, which support the limitation being placed on their property right. Therefore, given the absence of those criteria that allow establishing whether a specific area of a property anywhere in the country can be considered a wetland, it is not possible to proceed to impose that limitation without violating Article 45 of the Constitución Política. The essential content of the right to property is the prohibition for the legislator to arbitrarily restrict, without subjection to the constitutional principles of reasonableness and proportionality, the content of the entire property right or of some of the legal powers that comprise it (disposition, alienation, transformation, etc.), as well as in the possibility of shaping or limiting it through administrative acts or acts authorized by legal norms, and, of course, in the absolute prohibition of eliminating such powers. Hence, a limitation on the right to property, such as the one that Article 98 of Ley No. 8986 could contain, constitutes a violation of the administered parties' right to property, if a legal norm does not previously exist that sets forth the technical foundations of why a specific piece of land, owned by a private individual, must be considered a wetland, because otherwise the determination so made would be evidently unconstitutional in a double sense: first, because there is no express legal norm that determines the technical criteria for knowing when a wetland is present, and second, because it would imply a violation of the private property right (derecho de propiedad privada) enshrined in Article 45 of the Constitución Política. The petitioner alleges the violation of Article 50 of the Constitución Política for the following reasons: to achieve sustainable development, it is necessary for the State to guarantee that the ecosystems on which life on our planet depends will be preserved. This implies making an adequate assessment of vital spaces, for which technical and scientific criteria are required that allow for issuing appropriate regulation. She considers that the determination of a protected wild area cannot be left to the free will of untrained officials, without considering technical matters that allow for a proper classification and identification of those areas. To carry forward sustainable development, a balance is needed between Article 50 and Articles 45 and 69, all of the Constitución Política, which establish the rational use of resources and respect for the right to private property, establishing limits based on legal norms that leave no room for doubt, and that compel compliance, avoiding constitutional-level conflicts. The principle of rational use of natural resources is being violated by the regulation challenged here - Article 98 of Ley No. 8986. Both the Constitución Política and the Ramsar Convention in its Article 3 provide that contracting parties must develop and apply their management plans in such a way as to promote the conservation of wetlands inscribed on the "List" and, to the extent possible, the rational use of wetlands in their territory. This obligation is being disrespected by our country, since, as indicated, there is no governmental policy for the rational use of wetlands, because as long as the technical foundations for determining whether or not a wetland is present are lacking, it is also difficult to give them rational and sustainable use. She reiterates that only specialists can truly establish when a wetland exists in a specific location, taking also into account the specific characteristics of the area where it is located. Article 98 of Ley No. 8986 does not establish the differentiation that the Ramsar Convention itself makes, therefore she also alleges a violation of Article 7 of the Constitución Política, by openly conflicting with these principles of the Ramsar Convention. For all the above reasons, she requests that the action be declared with merit and that Article 98 of the Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre be declared unconstitutional.

**2.** In order to substantiate the standing that the petitioner holds to promote this acción de inconstitucionalidad, she indicates that because it involves environmental matters, she files the action directly.

**3.-** Article 9 of the Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional empowers the Chamber to reject outright or on the merits, at any time, even from its presentation, any petition brought before it that proves to be manifestly improper, or when it considers that there are sufficient elements of judgment to reject it, or that it involves the simple reiteration or reproduction of an earlier, identical or similar petition that was rejected.

Drafted by Magistrate **Calzada Miranda**; and, **Considerando:**    **I.-** **Inadmissibility of the action.** Article 75 of the Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional regulates the requirements that determine admissibility in acciones de inconstitucionalidad, demanding the existence of a pending matter to be resolved, whether in administrative or judicial proceedings, unless the proponents fall under one of the conditions established in the second paragraph of the cited article, namely, that they hold a diffuse interest (interés difuso) or one that concerns the community as a whole, or that by the nature of the matter there is no individual or concrete injury; or that the action is presented by certain officials, namely the Procurador, Contralor or Fiscal Generales de la República or the Defensor de los Habitantes, in the latter cases, within their respective competencies, as provided in the third paragraph of the cited numeral. Based on the foregoing, the general rule points to the need to have a prior matter, with the possibilities of directly appealing to the Sala Constitucional being exceptional. Regarding the content of the mentioned second paragraph, this Chamber has previously indicated that in accordance with the first of the conditions provided for by paragraph 2 of Article 75 of the Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional, the questioned norm must not be susceptible to concrete application, which would later allow the challenge of the application act and its consequent use as a base matter. The text in question provides that it proceeds when "by the nature of the matter, there is no individual and direct injury," that is, when by that same nature, the injury is collective (antonym of individual) and indirect. This would be the case for acts that injure the interests of certain groups or corporations as such, and not properly those of their members directly. Secondly, the possibility of acting in defense of "diffuse interests" is provided for; this concept, whose content has been gradually delineated by the Chamber, could be summarized in the terms used in the judgment of this court number 3750-93, of three o'clock in the afternoon of July thirtieth, nineteen ninety-three: *"...Los intereses difusos, although of difficult definition and even more difficult identification, cannot be in our law – as this Chamber has already stated – purely collective interests; nor so diffuse that their ownership merges with that of the national community as a whole, nor so concrete that against them, specific individuals or personalized groups are identified or easily identifiable, whose standing would derive, not from diffuse interests, but from corporate interests concerning a community as a whole. It then involves individual interests, but at the same time, diluted in more or less extensive and amorphous groups of people who share an interest and, therefore, suffer an injury, actual or potential, more or less the same for everyone, so it is rightly said that these are equal interests of the groups found in certain circumstances and, at the same time, of each one of them. That is, diffuse interests partake of a dual nature, since they are at once collective – for being common to a generality – and individual, so they can be claimed in such capacity."* In summary, diffuse interests are those whose ownership belongs to groups of persons not formally organized, but united based on a specific social need, a physical characteristic, their ethnic origin, a particular personal or ideological orientation, the consumption of a certain product, etc. The interest, in these cases, is diffused, diluted (diffuse) among an unidentified plurality of subjects. In these cases, of course, the challenge that a member of one of these sectors could bring under paragraph 2 of Article 75 must necessarily refer to provisions that affect them as such. This Chamber has enumerated various rights that it has qualified as "diffuse," such as the environment, cultural heritage, the defense of the country's territorial integrity, and the proper management of public spending, among others. In this regard, two clarifications must be made: on the one hand, the referred goods transcend the sphere traditionally recognized for diffuse interests, since they refer in principle to aspects that affect the national community and not particular groups thereof; environmental damage does not affect only the residents of a region or the consumers of a product, but rather injures or puts at serious risk the natural heritage of the entire country and even of Humanity; likewise, the defense of the proper management of public funds authorized in the Presupuesto de la República is an interest of all the inhabitants of Costa Rica, not just of any one group of them.

Furthermore, the enumeration that the Constitutional Chamber has made is nothing more than a simple description inherent to its obligation – as a jurisdictional body – to limit itself to hearing the cases submitted to it, without it being possible in any way to understand that only those rights that the Chamber has expressly recognized as such can be considered diffuse rights; the foregoing would imply an undesirable upheaval in the scope of the Rule of Law, and of its correlative “State of rights,” which – as in the case of the Costa Rican model – is based on the premise that what must be express are the limits on freedoms, since these underlie the very human condition and therefore do not require official recognition. Finally, when paragraph 2 of Article 75 of the Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional speaks of interests “that concern the community as a whole,” it refers to the legal interests explained in the preceding lines.

It is therefore not a matter of any person being able to resort to the Constitutional Chamber in protection of any interests whatsoever (actio popularis), but rather that every individual may act in defense of those interests that affect the entire national community, nor is it valid in this field to attempt any sort of exhaustive enumeration. (Judgment number 8239-2001, of 16:07 hours on August 14, 2001) II.- In the present case, the Chamber considers that the plaintiff lacks standing to bring this action directly, precisely by reason of its object, since she challenges as unconstitutional Article 98 of the Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre, N.7317 as amended by Ley 8689, which takes effect as of June 23 of the current year. The provision punishes with a prison sentence of one to three years anyone who, without prior authorization from the Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación, drains, dries up, fills in, or eliminates lakes, non-artificial lagoons, and other wetlands, whether declared as such or not. Furthermore, it establishes the obligation for the offender to return things to the state they were in before commencing the works affecting the wetland and, for this purpose, the Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación is empowered to carry out the corresponding works at the offender’s expense. The challenged regulation is perfectly susceptible to individual application and can directly affect the legal sphere of singular persons, such that it can give rise to jurisdictional proceedings, from which actions of unconstitutionality against it could be brought. Indeed, it would suffice, for example, for criminal proceedings to be brought against a single citizen based on the provision challenged here for there to exist a proceeding that serves as the basis for the action. The Chamber disagrees with the plaintiff, who asserts that because this is an environmental matter she may challenge the provision directly, since insofar as it punishes anyone who, without authorization from the competent authority, affects the ecosystems described therein, this provision seeks to protect these ecosystems, so that granting the plaintiff’s claim results in a diminution of the protection instruments established by the Costa Rican State to seek their preservation. Consequently, since the hypotheses that would permit waiving the existence of an underlying proceeding are not present, for the reasons stated, the appropriate course is to dismiss the action for lack of standing of the plaintiff.

Por tanto:

Se rechaza de plano la acción.

Ana Virginia Calzada M.

Presidenta a.i.

Luis Paulino Mora M. Adrián Vargas B.

Gilbert Armijo S. Ernesto Jinesta L.

Fernando Cruz C. Rosa María Abdelnour G.

*090070970007CO* *090070970007CO* Res. Nº 2009011093 SALA CONSTITUCIONAL DE LA CORTE SUPREMA DE JUSTICIA. San José, a las doce horas y treinta minutos del diez de Julio del dos mil nueve.

Acción de inconstitucionalidad promovida por Emily Jeanne Yozell Wolf, mayor, soltera, Profesora, vecina de Santo Domingo de Heredia, cédula de identidad número 8-0087-0192, en su condición de Presidenta con Facultades de Apoderada Generalísima sin límite de suma de la Asociación Justicia contra la Naturaleza contra el artículo 98 de la Ley de Conservación de la Vida Silvestre N.7317, reformada por ley 8689 de 4 de diciembre del 2008.

Resultando:

1.- Por escrito recibido en la Secretaría de la Sala a las 11:30 horas del 11 de mayo del 2009, la accionante solicita que se declare la inconstitucionalidad del artículo 98 de la Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre, por ser contrario a los artículos 11, 39 y 45 y 50 de la Constitución Política. Alega que la infracción al numeral 11 ocurre porque la norma impugnada viola los artículos 15, 16 y 17 de la Ley General de la Administración Pública, que imponen que para la determinación de la existencia de un humedal, haya una serie de criterios técnicos, fundados en principios irrevocables y que no lesionen principios de la lógica y la técnica, y que permitan concluir, sin lugar a dudas, que un sitio determinado es un humedal, al tenor de las definiciones que al respecto establecen con claridad diversos textos jurídicos, como la Ley Orgánica del Ambiente en sus artículos 36 y 42 y la Ley de Biodiversidad en su artículo 58. Alega que el artículo 98 de la Ley No. 8689 también riñe con el artículo 7 inciso h) de la Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre, que dispone en forma expresa que es por Decreto Ejecutivo que se determina que estamos en presencia de un humedal. Si bien esa norma está actualmente impugnada por inconstitucional, e independientemente de que sea declarada como tal, no puede dejarse al arbitrio de cualquiera la determinación de la existencia de un humedal, sino que es necesario que exista un criterio técnico de valor del humedal específico, pues de lo contrario, y bajo las condiciones de la realidad nacional, se estaría permitiendo declarar a “ojo de buen cubero”, que más de la mitad del país es un “humedal”, y por ende, imponiendo una peligrosa limitación a la mayoría de las actividades socio-productivas de la vida nacional, lo cual en criterio de su representada lleva a una flagrante violación de los artículos 45 y 69 de nuestra Carta Magna. La Secretaría de la Convención Ramsar, ha difundido una serie de medidas que han sido identificadas por los países miembros para permitir el establecimiento y manejo de una red nacional de reservas de humedales eficaz y completa. Destacan las medidas para la elaboración de inventarios nacionales que detallen la ubicación y las características de los humedales y permitan el establecimiento de redes de reservas de humedales, el desarrollo de programas de educación en materia de conservación, la toma de medidas jurídicas adecuadas y el establecimiento de planes de manejo apropiados. En el caso de Costa Rica, parte contratante de la Convención sobre los Humedales de Importancia Internacional especialmente como hábitat para aves acuáticas (Ramsar) desde 1991, como resultado de un proceso de recopilación de información para el levantamiento de un Inventario de los Humedales de Costa Rica, se han identificado alrededor de 350 humedales documentados en este inventario, 264 de los cuales se encuentran ubicados en las diferentes Áreas de Conservación del Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación. El área total de dichos humedales es de aproximadamente 350.000 hectáreas, equivalentes al 7% del territorio nacional. Sin embargo, este Inventario no consideró las extensiones marinas de ambas costas, Pacífica (1.248 Km) y Caribe (212 Km) (límites posteriores de fanerógamas marinas o arrecifes de coral, o en su ausencia, hasta el límite de seis metros en marea baja”) y, solamente para la Isla del Coco se consideraron los cauces de los ríos como humedales. Esta decisión dejó por fuera del Inventario, las áreas coralinas tanto de la costa caribe como de la pacífica, las caletas del Pacifico Central y todos los ríos y quebradas continentales que, por definición, son auténticos humedales claramente identificables, los cuales podrían fácilmente adicionar otro 7% del territorio nacional. (MINAE/SINAC-UICN/HORMA. Inventario de los Humedales de Costa Rica; ed. Por Rocío Córdova Muñoz, Néstor J. Windevoxhel L – 1ª. Ed. – San José, C.R.: UICN,1998). Con dicha información se elaboró el primer “Mapa de Humedales de Costa Rica”, además de un documento guía con “Información Complementaria”. Posteriormente, se llevó a cabo el “Manual para la Identificación y Clasificación de Humedales en Costa Rica”, cuyo propósito es el de brindar un instrumento a técnicos encargados de manejar y proteger los recursos, investigadores, profesionales en el campo, administradores, legisladores y usuarios en general que permita conocer la temática de los humedales e identificar los diferentes tipos de ecosistemas existentes en el campo. No obstante la claridad de las recomendaciones de la Secretaría del Ramsar, las instituciones y entidades obligadas a verter esos criterios en las corrientes jurídicas y técnicas han sido omisas, lo que supone la inconstitucionalidad del artículo 98 de la Ley No. 8689, pues la declaratoria de existencia de un humedal debe estar debidamente respaldada por criterios técnicos, de los cuales adolece nuestra legislación. De manera que la norma incurre en violación al principio de legalidad consagrado en el artículo 11 de la Constitución Política, ya que está fijando sanciones, incluso pena de prisión, sin tener claramente establecido cuándo estamos en presencia de un humedal y considerando que el sólo hecho de decir que es un humedal es motivo suficiente para que se impongan sanciones de privación de libertad para el infractor, además de consecuencias patrimoniales, lo cual es evidentemente inconstitucional y lesivo a los derechos de los ciudadanos. Considera que el artículo 98 de la Ley no. 8689, incurre en roces con los artículos 58 de la Ley de Biodiversidad; y 36 y 42 de la Ley Orgánica del Ambiente, pues en todos ellos se hace énfasis en que, previo a determinar la creación de una área silvestre protegida, deben existir una serie de criterios técnicos los cuales tienen que emanar precisamente de las autoridades gubernamentales con competencia para ello -el Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación (Sinac)-, con el propósito no sólo de la creación en sí del área, sino de la forma de manejo que se le puede dar a la misma, una vez conocidas sus características. Sin embargo, el artículo 98 de la Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre, se opone a estos lineamientos que en su momento estableció la legislación, al incluir en su texto la frase “declarados o no como tales”, pues esto inclusive, se contrapone con el artículo 7 inciso h) de la misma Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre. Afirma que el artículo impugnado elimina la exigencia de criterios técnicos que determinen un sitio como humedal y deja al libre albedrío del funcionario esa determinación, lo cual viola el artículo 11 de la Constitución, por ser contrario a los artículos 15, 16 y 17 de la Ley General de la Administración Pública, y a los artículos 58 de la Ley de Biodiversidad, y 36 y 42 de la Ley Orgánica del Ambiente. La infracción al artículo 39 de la Constitución Política. El artículo 39 de la Constitución Política dispone que a nadie se le hará sufrir pena sino por delito, cuasidelito o falta, previa oportunidad concedida al indiciado para ejercitar su defensa y mediante la necesaria demostración de culpabilidad. El artículo 98 de la Ley No. 8986 violenta este principio constitucional, pues se limita a establecer las penas respectivas, y omite enunciar en forma taxativa, como debe ser en materia penal, porqué el presunto imputado ha incurrido en delito, ya que ni la norma aquí impugnada ni ningún otro cuerpo legal, ha puesto en conocimiento del presunto imputado una lista que enumere en forma taxativa los criterios técnicos que deben tomarse en cuenta para saber si estamos en presencia o no de un humedal, y con base en ello poder establecer si determinada acción es lícita o no. Si la misma existiera, nadie podría alegar ignorancia de la Ley, y se le aplicarían las sanciones correspondientes. Por ello, a su juicio el artículo 98 de la Ley No. 8986 provoca inseguridad jurídica en el administrado, lo que lo hace también inconstitucional, y así solicita que sea declarado. Señala la accionante que el artículo 98 de la Ley No. 8986, a su juicio viola también el derecho de propiedad, consagrado en el numeral 45 de la Carta Magna. Afirma que las limitaciones al derecho de propiedad deben estar fundamentadas en una norma de rango legal, mediante la cual se le diga al gobernado que el ejercicio de su derecho de propiedad se va a ver limitado en razón de que existe otro derecho de igual rango que lo amerita y que existen una serie de lineamientos y criterios técnicos y científicos enumerados o debidamente identificados en esa norma legal, que sustentan la limitación que se le está haciendo a su derecho de propiedad. Por eso, ante la ausencia de esos criterios que permitan establecer si una determinada área de una propiedad en cualquier parte del país puede considerarse un humedal, no se puede proceder a imponer esa limitación, sin lesionar el artículo 45 de la Constitución Política. El contenido esencial del derecho de propiedad es la prohibición para el legislador de restringir de manera arbitraria y sin sujeción a los principios constitucionales de razonabilidad y proporcionalidad, el contenido de todo el derecho de propiedad o de algunos de los poderes jurídicos que lo integran (disposición, enajenación, transformación, etc.), lo mismo que en la posibilidad de conformarlo o limitarlo mediante actos administrativos o autorizados por normas de rango legal y, desde luego, en la prohibición absoluta de eliminar tales poderes. De ahí que una limitación al derecho de propiedad, como la que podría contener el artículo 98 de la Ley No. 8986, constituye una violación al derecho de propiedad de los administrados, si en forma previa no existe una norma legal que siente los fundamentos técnicos del porqué un determinado terreno, propiedad de un privado, deba ser considerado un humedal, pues de lo contrario la determinación que así se hiciere sería evidentemente inconstitucional en un doble sentido, primero porque no existe norma legal expresa que determine los criterios técnicos para saber cuándo estamos en presencia de un humedal y segundo, porque implicaría violación al derecho de propiedad privada consagrado en el artículo 45 de la Constitución Política. Alega el accionante la infracción del artículo 50 de la Constitución Política, por las siguientes razones: para lograr el desarrollo sostenible, es necesario que el Estado garantice que los ecosistemas, de los cuales depende la vida en nuestro planeta, se van a preservar. Ello implica hacer una valoración adecuada de los espacios vitales, para lo cual se requiere de criterios técnicos y científicos que permitan emitir una regulación atinada. Considera que no puede dejarse al libre albedrío de funcionarios sin capacitación, la determinación de un área silvestre protegida, sin entrar a considerar asuntos de carácter técnico que permitan hacer una debida clasificación e identificación de esas áreas. Para llevar adelante el desarrollo sostenible es preciso un equilibrio entre el artículo 50 y los artículos 45 y 69, todos de la Constitución Política, que establecen el uso racional de los recursos y el respeto al derecho a la propiedad privada, estableciendo límites con base en normas legales que no dejen lugar a dudas, y que obliguen a su acatamiento, al no darse roces de carácter constitucional. El principio de uso racional de los recursos naturales, se está viendo violentado por la normativa aquí impugnada -artículo 98 de la Ley No. 8986-. Tanto la Constitución Política como la Convención Ramsar en su artículo 3 dispone que las partes contratantes deben elaborar y aplicar sus planes de gestión de tal forma que se favorezca la conservación de las zonas húmedas inscritas en la “Lista” y, siempre que ello sea posible, la explotación racional de los humedales de su territorio. Esa obligación está siendo irrespetada por nuestro país, ya que como se ha indicado, no existe una política gubernamental de uso racional de los humedales, pues en tanto se carezca de los fundamentos técnicos para determinar si estamos en presencia o no de un humedal, es difícil también darles un uso racional y sostenible. Reitera que sólo los especialistas pueden establecer verdaderamente cuándo hay un humedal en un lugar determinado, atendiendo también las características propias de la zona donde el mismo se ubica. El artículo 98 de la Ley No. 8986 no establece la diferenciación que sí hace la propia Convención Ramsar, por lo que alega también violación al artículo 7 de la Constitución Política, por reñir abiertamente con estos principios de la Convención Ramsar. Por todas las razones anteriores solicita que se declare con lugar la acción y se declare inconstitucional el artículo 98 de la Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre.

2. A efecto de fundamentar la legitimación que ostenta la gestionante para promover esta acción de inconstitucionalidad, señala que por tratarse de materia ambiental, interpone la acción en forma directa.

3.- El artículo 9 de la Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional faculta a la Sala a rechazar de plano o por el fondo, en cualquier momento, incluso desde su presentación, cualquier gestión que se presente a su conocimiento que resulte ser manifiestamente improcedente, o cuando considere que existen elementos de juicio suficientes para rechazarla, o que se trata de la simple reiteración o reproducción de una gestión anterior igual o similar rechazada.

Redacta la Magistrada Calzada Miranda; y,

Considerando:

I.- Inadmisibilidad de la acción. El artículo 75 de la Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional regula los presupuestos que determinan la admisibilidad en las acciones de inconstitucionalidad, exigiendo la existencia de un asunto pendiente de resolver, sea en sede administrativa o judicial, salvo que los promoventes se hallen en alguno de los presupuestos establecidos en el párrafo segundo del citado artículo, sea que se ostente un interés difuso o que atañe a la colectividad en su conjunto, o que por la naturaleza del asunto no exista lesión individual o concreta; o que la acción sea presentada por determinados funcionarios, sea el Procurador, Contralor o Fiscal Generales de la República o el Defensor de los Habitantes, en estos últimos casos, dentro de sus respectivas competencias, según lo dispone el párrafo tercero del citado numeral. A partir de lo antes dicho, se tiene que la regla general apunta a la necesidad de contar con un asunto previo, siendo excepcionales las posibilidades de acudir a la Sala Constitucional en forma directa. En cuanto al contenido del mencionado párrafo segundo, esta Sala ha señalado con anterioridad que de acuerdo con el primero de los supuestos previstos por el párrafo 2° del artículo 75 de la Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional, la norma cuestionada no debe ser susceptible de aplicación concreta, que permita luego la impugnación del acto aplicativo y su consecuente empleo como asunto base. Dispone el texto en cuestión que procede cuando “por la naturaleza del asunto, no exista lesión individual ni directa”, es decir, cuando por esa misma naturaleza, la lesión sea colectiva (antónimo de individual) e indirecta. Sería el caso de actos que lesionen los intereses de determinados grupos o corporaciones en cuanto tales, y no propiamente de sus miembros en forma directa. En segundo lugar, se prevé la posibilidad de acudir en defensa de “intereses difusos”; este concepto, cuyo contenido ha ido siendo delineado paulatinamente por parte de la Sala, podría ser resumido en los términos empleados en la sentencia de este tribunal número 3750-93, de las quince horas del treinta de julio de mil novecientos noventa y tres: ”... Los intereses difusos, aunque de difícil definición y más difícil identificación, no pueden ser en nuestra ley –como ya lo ha dicho esta Sala– los intereses meramente colectivos; ni tan difusos que su titularidad se confunda con la de la comunidad nacional como un todo, ni tan concretos que frente a ellos resulten identificados o fácilmente identificables personas determinadas, o grupos personalizados, cuya legitimación derivaría, no de los intereses difusos, sino de los corporativos que atañen a una comunidad en su conjunto. Se trata entonces de intereses individuales, pero a la vez, diluidos en conjuntos más o menos extensos y amorfos de personas que comparten un interés y, por ende reciben un perjuicio, actual o potencial, más o menos igual para todos, por lo que con acierto se dice que se trata de intereses iguales de los conjuntos que se encuentran en determinadas circunstancias y, a la vez, de cada una de ellas. Es decir, los intereses difusos participan de una doble naturaleza, ya que son a la vez colectivos –por ser comunes a una generalidad– e individuales, por lo que pueden ser reclamados en tal carácter”.

En síntesis, los intereses difusos son aquellos cuya titularidad pertenece a grupos de personas no organizadas formalmente, pero unidas a partir de una determinada necesidad social, una característica física, su origen étnico, una determinada orientación personal o ideológica, el consumo de un cierto producto, etc. El interés, en estos casos, se encuentra difuminado, diluido (difuso) entre una pluralidad no identificada de sujetos. En estos casos, claro, la impugnación que el miembro de uno de estos sectores podría efectuar amparado en el párrafo 2° del artículo 75, deberá estar referida necesariamente a disposiciones que lo afecten en cuanto tal. Esta Sala ha enumerado diversos derechos a los que les ha dado el calificativo de “difusos”, tales como el medio ambiente, el patrimonio cultural, la defensa de la integridad territorial del país y del buen manejo del gasto público, entre otros. Al respecto deben ser efectuadas dos precisiones: por un lado, los referidos bienes trascienden la esfera tradicionalmente reconocida a los intereses difusos, ya que se refieren en principio a aspectos que afectan a la colectividad nacional y no a grupos particulares de ésta; un daño ambiental no afecta apenas a los vecinos de una región o a los consumidores de un producto, sino que lesiona o pone en grave riesgo el patrimonio natural de todo el país e incluso de la Humanidad; del mismo modo, la defensa del buen manejo que se haga de los fondos públicos autorizados en el Presupuesto de la República es un interés de todos los habitantes de Costa Rica, no tan solo de un grupo cualquiera de ellos. Por otra parte, la enumeración que ha hecho la Sala Constitucional no pasa de una simple descripción propia de su obligación –como órgano jurisdiccional– de limitarse a conocer de los casos que le son sometidos, sin que pueda de ninguna manera llegar a entenderse que solo pueden ser considerados derechos difusos aquellos que la Sala expresamente haya reconocido como tales; lo anterior implicaría dar un vuelco indeseable en los alcances del Estado de Derecho, y de su correlativo “Estado de derechos”, que –como en el caso del modelo costarricense– parte de la premisa de que lo que debe ser expreso son los límites a las libertades, ya que éstas subyacen a la misma condición humana y no requieren por ende de reconocimiento oficial. Finalmente, cuando el párrafo 2° del artículo 75 de la Ley de la Jurisdicción Constitucional habla de intereses “que atañen a la colectividad en su conjunto”, se refiere a los bienes jurídicos explicados en las líneas anteriores. No se trata por ende de que cualquier persona pueda acudir a la Sala Constitucional en tutela de cualesquiera intereses (acción popular), sino que todo individuo puede actuar en defensa de aquellos bienes que afectan a toda la colectividad nacional, sin que tampoco en este campo sea válido ensayar cualquier intento de enumeración taxativa." (Sentencia número 8239-2001, de las 16:07 horas del 14 de agosto del 2001) II.- En el presente caso, la Sala estima que la accionante no se encuentra legitimada para deducir esta demanda en forma directa, precisamente en razón de su objeto, toda vez que cuestiona por inconstitucional el artículo 98 de la Ley de Conservación de Vida Silvestre, N.7317 reformada por Ley 8689, que rige a partir del 23 de junio del año en curso. La norma sanciona con pena de prisión de uno a tres años, a quien, sin previa autorización del Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación, drene, seque, rellene o elimine lagos, lagunas no artificiales y los demás humedales, declarados o no como tales. Además, establece la obligación para el infractor de dejar las cosas en el estado en que se encontraban antes de iniciar los trabajos de afectación del humedal y para ello, se faculta al Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación, a fin de que efectúe los trabajos correspondientes, a costa del infractor. La normativa impugnada es perfectamente susceptible de aplicación individual y puede incidir directamente en la esfera jurídica de personas singulares, de modo que puede dar origen a procesos jurisdiccionales, a partir de los cuales cabría deducir acciones de inconstitucionalidad en su contra. En efecto, bastaría, por ejemplo, con que a un solo ciudadano se le siguiera causa penal con fundamento en la norma aquí cuestionada, para que exista un proceso que sirva de fundamento a la acción. Discrepa la Sala de la accionante, que señala que por tratarse de materia ambiental puede impugnar la norma en forma directa, ya que en tanto sanciona a quien sin autorización de la autoridad competente, afecte los ecosistemas que allí describe, ésta disposición pretende proteger estos ecosistemas, de manera que acoger la pretensión de la accionante, redunda en un menoscabo de los instrumentos de protección instaurados por el Estado Costarricense para procurar su preservación. Por ende, al no concurrir, por las razones expresadas, las hipótesis que permitirían exceptuar la existencia de un proceso base, lo que cabe es desestimar la demanda por falta de legitimación de la accionante.

Por tanto:

Se rechaza de plano la acción.

Ana Virginia Calzada M.

Presidenta a.i.

Luis Paulino Mora M. Adrián Vargas B.

Gilbert Armijo S. Ernesto Jinesta L.

Fernando Cruz C. Rosa María Abdelnour G.

2295-3696/2295-3697/2295-3698/2295-3700. Fax: 2295-3712. Dirección electrónica: www.poder-judicial.go.cr/salaconstitucional