"Threatened wetlands in Paraguay’s Lake Ypacaraí raise legal questions", 25 February 2022

...Wetlands around Lake Ypacaraí are being filled in to allow for the construction of housing and tourism projects despite a series of environmental recovery measures that prohibit development in the area...

Work on the new construction projects could endanger the as many as 79 species of fish that live in the lake, as well as the many mammals that the lake supports... Wetlands surrounding the lake also act as a filter for freshwater and help control flooding and erosion...

In 2014, the area was declared a “Managed Resources Reserve” in the hopes of allowing dwindling biodiversity rates and water quality to recover...[T]he area should be free of development until 2024.

Nevertheless, complaints about new construction work started coming into the National Commission for the Administration and Management of Lake Ypacaraí and its Basin (Conalaypa) as early as last December...

Part of the confusion is that land titles belonging to property owners around the lake were issued before the protected area was declared, with some titles extending into the water, theoretically allowing for private development...

Last month, several congressmen requested an official explanation from Minister of Environment Ariel Oviedo about how the environmental impact studies were carried out and how he made sense of them in the context of the laws protecting the lake...