There is in social life the well-known phenomenon of the free rider, the kind of person who enjoys the use of a service without having to pay a price for the pleasure. Take for example the case of the person who goes beaching, enjoys his day out and leaves behind litter and other debris. As far as he is concerned, cleaning up the beach is somebody else’s business.
Successive governments have failed miserably as far as the environment is concerned. Apparently convinced that an ‘any thing goes’ approach should be the order of the day, successive regimes have been at best lukewarm about putting in place adequate safeguards for the protection of the environment.
While littering of the nation’s beaches is one of the more visible expressions of this problem of social indiscipline and environmental degradation, there are other examples of what can happen when greed and ignorance cross paths. Both of these – incidentally – are directly opposed to what might be called civilization. To our way of thinking, when people are allowed to do whatever, whenever and however, chaos is not far behind. The core issue, then, turns on what should be done to see to it that The Bahamas is saner, safer, healthier and wealthier.
Our considered judgement is that this country would be better off economically, socially and culturally if Bahamians were taught the crucial lesson that there is a price to be paid for lawbreaking. Just as there are laws for road users, there should be laws for other areas of civil life, including the uses to which beaches are put. In this regard, then, we would not be pushing the point if we were to suggest that there should be beach wardens detailed to oversee public beaches and empowered to enforce no littering laws. In the same way that people are ticketed for breaches of road rules, so too might they be cited for breaches of public health rules.
While, ideally, there should be no need for direct action by the state, we do not live in a perfect place. As in other countries, laws must be enforced. The fact of the matter, too, is that there must be both will and capacity for this to be done. For whatever reason, successive governments have routinely failed to do the right thing and so have – by omission – neglected to do what they should have done, which is to put in place and enforce relevant laws for the protection of the environment.
The point must be made too that while making and enforcing laws is important, it is vitally important for the public to be better educated about the need for citizens to take care of the environment, which brings us to the role of schools in this process of purposeful change.
Very often when people live a certain way, they do so out of the purest ignorance, oblivious of the damage they are causing themselves and others. Put crudely, it is a certain truth that many people who routinely mess up the place do not know any better. The essence of the matter – then – is that the nation’s educational system can and should be better utilized in the war against ignorance. While this is admittedly a long-term solution, its significance should not be underestimated: when people know better, they often do better. Even more importantly, there is an abundance of evidence to suggest that good lessons learned in infancy often bring with them life long dividends.
So, whether attention is focused on the need for people to be stewards of the environment, that they strive to live in harmony with nature or that they work to leave behind some good, people act upon what they have learned. Their instruction begins at home and ends abroad, thus the importance of the truth that cleanliness is nest to Godliness. In the Bahamian context, this is somehow quite ironic when reference is made to the high religiosity which so pervades social life in these islands. In this regard, it is most ironic to note that much of the litter left behind on this nation’s beaches this past weekend would have been left by picnickers professing allegiance to the faith of their fathers.
This bleak picture of indiscipline, was relieved by the wonderful news that over the weekend, there were no major crime incidents, suggesting that Bahamians can do better and often do succeed. This underscores our considered conclusion that while things might be bad in some areas of social life in this country, the situation is far from hopeless.
An Editorial from The Bahama Journal
