The Tribune

By ROMAULD FERREIRA

Environmental campaigner and former Minister of the Environment

PROTECTING the environment of The Bahamas is one of the most important things we can do as a nation.

The environment we live in is who we are. It is the beautiful seas of our country, it is the abundant marine and plant life, it is the connection we have with our country and one of the reasons we can say it is better in The Bahamas. Preserving that is not something we should take for granted and, in fact, is something that has taken a lot of hard work and pressure by people passionate about their nation and determined to make sure we do not lose what we have. We must also be careful not to undo the work that has already been done or ignore the times when we can see the risk of damage ahead.

In 2019, when I was Minister for the Environment, the government passed a compendium of 10 environmental bills with the goal of protecting our environment and holding those who damage our Bahamas accountable.

At the time, I spoke of how we must make sure that the days of The Bahamas being the Wild Wild West of development must come to an end, and the laws meant that those who cause the most damage to our environment could be fined up to $30m and jailed for up to ten years.

Crucially, that legislation also added more transparency to the Environmental Impact Assessment process and sought to give developers a better road map when seeking approvals.

Too often we have seen developers come in, up-end communities, then the development comes to a halt, leaving Bahamians to pick up the pieces. You get half-built projects, people who moved to jobs that are no longer there, and communities left burned by yet another development that ended up going nowhere.

Recently, there have been a number of cases where transparency and public consultation have been crucially important, and yet the public has felt sidelined.

Amendments to the Environmental Impact Assessment process eliminated the need for mandatory public consultation on development and investment projects – the key word there being mandatory. That means it has become a decision in the hands of the director of the Department of Environmental Planning and Protection whether a public consultation is required, and the process under which such a consultation will be carried out.

Transparency was an issue when a massive oil spill happened in Exuma. On 22nd July 2022, an oil tanker spilled 30,000 gallons of diesel into pristine waters, causing huge environmental damage. The parties involved were FOCOL and BPL. The matter ultimately ended up in court and resulted in the offending parties having to pay a fine. The Attorney General, Ryan Pinder, chose to keep the amount of the fines secret by way of a confidential settlement, eroding public trust and ultimately protecting the interests of the offending parties by shielding them from public scrutiny. Ultimately, this perverted the objects of the Environmental Planning and Protection Act 2019.

The point of laws is to protect our environment. If we water down the need for transparency and consultation or fail to implement the fines that those laws permit, then that protection is not going to exist.

In Green Turtle Cay, a project has been proposed at Gillam Bay where it was decided unilaterally that there was no need for an Environmental Impact Assessment study. It must have come as a shock to residents at a Town Hall meeting there that such a process would not be needed for a project that would see nine 1,900-square-foot villas being built, as well as a single-storey clubhouse with a restaurant and bar, administrative office and a back-of-house facility. The advantage of an EIA being carried out is that it informs the public as well as assessing the dangers.

Over in Eleuthera, people are concerned about a resort proposal including a casino at Governor’s Harbour. A crowded meeting saw residents and the developer at odds and lots of remaining unanswered concerns over the project itself.

The point of introducing laws to protect our environment was to make sure the mistakes of the past cannot be repeated and to hold those who damage our nation to account, including financially, whenever that happens.

There was a famous case at Blackbeard’s Cay where the Supreme Court quashed all of the project’s approvals, but it continued to operate for more than two years afterwards without action being taken.

Development is something our country needs and should be encouraged, but it should not be done carte blanche with no limits. That is the way we damage the environment that makes our country so special. That is the way we lose what we have.

There are many developers who see and appreciate what we have in our country, and we welcome those. But doing it the wrong way will harm Bahamians, drive out the developers doing it the right way, and leave us with nothing.

Transparency is key. No one knows the landscape better than local Bahamians and residents. Being clear and up front with them about the impact of a development and listening to their voices is the best possible way of getting the right outcome. We must not diminish that.