The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

An activist yesterday accused the major political parties of “failing to recognise that the environment is our main product” in their general election manifestos.

Sam Duncombe, reEarth’s president, told Tribune Business that The Bahamas had “done a really terrible job” when it came to ensuring that its natural environment - upon which the tourism industry relies heavily - stays “ship shape”.

“They have totally failed to recognise the environment is our business,” she said of the Free National Movement (FNM) and Progressive Liberal Party (PLP). “Our main product is our environment whether people want to disregard it or not. 

“The point is that we have to go out of our way to keep our product ship shape and we’ve not done that. We’ve done a really terrible job at it. I don’t understand why that’s such a hard concept for people to grasp.”

The FNM’s manifesto contained two pages focusing on renewable energy and the environment, although more attention seemed to be paid to the former. As for the environment, the FNM pledged to “increase penalties for illegal dumping” and “ensure there are proper waste management sites across the Family Islands”.

It also committed to “rigorously enforce environmental laws and rules” and to “create robust waste-to-energy programmes around the country in partnership with the private sector in order to provide electricity to landfill sites and surrounding areas”.

The Progressive Liberal Party’s (PLP) “blueprint”, meanwhile, did not include the environment as a standalone category. Mrs Duncombe, though, also questioned whether the Government had “given the responsibility for environmental protection” over to foreign investors given that all comments and feedback on Disney Cruise Line’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) were collated and published via the developer’s website.

“How is it that these companies who wish to come in here and build, we have to submit comments to their website?” she asked. “The Department of Environmental Planning and Protection (DEPP) is supposed to be the lead agency, but it literally seems that they’ve given the reins of operation to outsiders, and that’s a major problem.”

Mrs Duncombe also urged the administration elected on September 16 to establish policies where incoming investors were directed “to places that have been cleared already” rather than permitted to build at new sites. She added that The Bahamas was instead allowing persons to develop on “virgin land and sea bed”, with the country “giving it all away”.