A curious juxtaposition during a television news report last week underlined the observation made by Pat Rahming in his Five Flaws, (the third appears on Wednesday) that jobs are not a sign of economic development. The single minded pursuit thereof often reveals contradictory positions on the environment and hence development itself.
The image was that of the Minister of Financial Services and Investment, Vincent Peet announcing in Rum Cay the start of a new project that would bring the requisite jobs and the requisite millions to the Treasury etc. par for the course for such events, but then with befitting gravity, the Minister intoned that the government would ensure that the project adhered to the required environmental standards.
There was just one dissonant note; even as the Minister waxed grave, parked in the top right background, and just slightly out of focus, was a large yellow bulldozer like some predatory beast, surveying its latest efforts, and before it a denuded brown earth with scraggly trees that escaped its gnawing teeth but not its scraping edge that stripped saplings of their leaves.
Then there is the ongoing battle in Abaco about what can and cannot be built where. In Hope Town there is a move to put in place bylaws that will curtail the continued expansion of what they term “McMansions”. In Guana Cay, the residents have taken a developer to court on the grounds that the project’s footprint is too large and would have lasting effects on the environment that will be detrimental to their community.
What all of these cases indicate, above all else, is the haphazard approach to economic development. Despite the existence of the BEST Commission with its work on wetlands there seems to be no attempt by the relevant officials to ensure that developers who arrive understand that there are certain basic standards.
For example, that instead of bulldozing virgin land of all the trees that have been growing on these virgin tracts for centuries, developers, as was done in Guana Cay and reportedly to be followed on Rose Island, employ teams led by Bahamian experts to identify and tag all flora on the proposed development site and rare and indigenous species and specimens transplanted to an appropriate park land area within the development. For example as a result of this practice, Bahamian horticulturists working on Guana Cay were able to identify scores of plants including orchids that are peculiar to Guana Cay. If what has been done in Rum Cay had been done in Guana Cay those plants would have been lost forever.
Nor should any developer find himself in the untenable position of placing the Government of The Bahamas in danger of violating its international treaty obligations as they pertain to protection of the country’s biodiversity and as it appears could well be the case again in Abaco where a proposed golf course abuts a breeding ground for sea turtles. As a signatory to the relevant treaties for protection of endangered marine life The Bahamas cannot abdicate its obligation on the grounds of jobs or development. And given the direct link between tourism and the environment as the leading destination in the region The Bahamas has to take a leadership role in ensuring that its unique environment with its flora and fauna are preserved and protected from the pursuit of jobs.
Nor should it ever be the case that in order to meet requirements under BEST that a developer company finds itself in danger of undermining the integrity of the dwindling wetlands so rich in bird, plant and marine life. And it appears again that this could well be the case in Abaco where a developer in order to ensure that its proposed marina meets flushing requirements has to build a secondary channel which will affect the wetlands and in the process possibly wipe out what has been described as one of the premier bone fish flats in The Bahamas.
Clearly there is a need for the information that developers require to ensure that their proposed plans are not hijacked or derailed because they were unaware that a neat solution to a challenge could scuttle the project or that that stunning view alongside the 14th hole has to be scrapped because, the view notwithstanding, the cumulative effect of the golf course runoffs of nutrients, herbicides, fertilisers and pesticides will adversely affect the habitat of endangered species.
By: C. E. HUGGINS, Business Editor, The Nassau Guardian
