Poppyshow at Runaway Bay
John Maxwell
Perhaps the Spaniards were tempting fate by deciding to put a hotel near Runaway Bay, a place with such unfortunate historical associations for them.
Or perhaps they came to avenge a four hundred year old defeat. Whatever it is, the Spanish-owned Bahia Principe at Pear Tree Bottom, near Runaway Bay, has caused more than its fair share of controversy, bad feelings and environmental problems.
On Monday afternoon last more than a hundred people assembled at Runaway Bay for what was advertised as a public consultation on an Environmental Impact Assessment of certain aspects of the hotel. That was what it was supposed to be.
It was, instead, a shambolic, confused, totally irrelevant melange of misconceptions and confusions, good-natured for the most part but occasionally spiced with a little malice. The meeting was conducted – if that’s the word – with splendid incomprehension of what a public EIA consultation should be.
I won’t blame the people on the platform, two of whom (Jamaicans) represented the Spanish interests and one, the chair, the interests of the local Chamber of Commerce. The people to blame were the National Environmental Planning Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Authority(NRCA/NEPA) who miserably abdicated their legal responsibility.
There was an apology for absence from NEPA/NRCA which was perhaps understandable. They managed to foul up almost every aspect of the regulation of the hotel including the EIA, the fact that the hotel is built on a public beach, illegally, and the sanitary arrangements and otherenvironmental protections which ought to have been built into any permit for any hotel anywhere in the world, but especially in an environmentally sensitive and important Jamaican wetland, fronting a world famous and scientifically important coral reef.
Certain elements of the meeting were apparently brought there to give (largely muscular) testimony on behalf of the hotel and the bottom line. People like Dr the Rev Frank Lawrence, Diana MacCaulay , Wendy Lee and myself were portrayed as being simply anti-development. A simple question from Dr Lawrence about the capacity of the hotel’s sewage system was never answered. It was the first question asked.
I attempted to point out that a public consultation was supposed to be an important and integral part of the developmental decision making process as recognised in the NRCA Act, in the Treaty of Rio and a slew of other treaties, conventions and international protocols.
An Environmental Impact Assessment is first of all, supposed to decide whether any development is really necessary, whether it is necessary in any specific place and whether it is worth the investment that the community is asked to make in surrendering space, amenity and foreclosing alternative uses, to accommodate ‘development’.
When I was Chairman of the NRCA thirty years ago we had precious little legal weaponry to stop bad developments. However, by suasion and by mobilising public opinion we were generally able to get developers (with the exception of the UDC) to obey the laws and common sense, to realise that allowing hotels to defecate on their own doorsteps was not wise or healthy, that it was crazy to dig up the Negril Morass for massively polluting peat and so forth. We even managed to get Doctors’ Cave Bathing Club to obey the law and stop discriminating against Jamaicans.
The new NRCA/NEPA, armoured and equipped with all kinds of heavy legal weaponry, seems to have no clue as to how to employ its power to advise and if necessary, to compel developers to behave as if they were civilised. A very distinguished scientist who helped advise the NRCA during my time, has told me that the only way to go now was to abolish the present NRCA/NEPA and replace it with the kind of professional organisation we had in the 70s.
The problem with the NRCA is not only with its regulatory negligence. Thirty years ago the NRCA was able to mobilise public opinion on the question of Kingston Harbour and we were only frustrated by the intervention of the IMF which managed to halt almost every progressive impulse of the then government by the simple means of economic threats and menaces.
That is no longer possible.
Access to Justice
Developers in Europe now have to deal with, among other things, the Arhus Convention, which legally guarantees the rights of ordinary people in the developmental process.
This convention is global in its dimensions and almost certainly applies to the activities of European entities outside of Europe and therefore to the owners of the Bahia Principe.
“ It is by far the most impressive elaboration of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration, which stresses the need for citizen's participation in environmental issues and for access to information on the environment held by public authorities." These principles, believe it or not, are also enshrined in the Jamaican NRCA’s guide to the conduct of Environmental Impact Assessments.
“The Convention adopts a rights-based approach. Article 1, setting out the objective of the Convention, requires Parties to guarantee rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters. It also refers to the goal of protecting the right of every person of present and future generations to live in an environment adequate to health and well-being, which represents a significant step forward in international law.” (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe http://www.unece.org/env/pp/contentofaarhus.htm)
The Spanish Costa del Sol is more than 400 miles of beach and rugged coastline, once admired for its ravishing views, and the grandeur of its landscape.Its attractiveness to visitors has dropped precipitously, because, over the past forty years in the name of development, Spanish local and central government authorities have allowed this coastline to be disfigured and exploited and uglified by get rich quick hoteliers and real estate salesmen.
Dynamite and the Concrete Coast
The Costa del Concrete – Concrete Coast – as it is now nicknamed, is a soulless parade of concrete monstrosities, fencing off the local populations from their beaches and repelling tourists by its industrial character.
Public revulsion has driven the Spanish government to take action. All along this 400 mile coast, hotels and illegally built condominiums and holiday cottages are being razed, bulldozed or dynamited, in an attempt to recapture, some vestige of the real Costa del Sol.
The Costa del Sol is only a fraction of Spanish seacoast.
Jamaica’s entire coastline is 480 miles, and only about 40 miles of that is beach of any kind. When I was fired from the NRCA by Mr Seaga, 28 years ago, the public had guaranteed access to 20 miles of fishing and bathing beach. No one can now tell you how much of that is still open to the ordinary Jamaican or ordinary visitor who is not a guest in a sea-front hotel.
Things may get better. According to the Christian Science Monitor – a month ago, Spain and its neighbours along all 29,000 miles of Mediterranean shore have agreed that no construction is to be permitted on the 100 meters (about 328 feet) of land nearest the water.
At a meeting in Almeira, on the Costa del Concrete, one of the prime movers in this initiative was Jose Fernåndez Pérez, Director of Coasts in Spain’s ministry of Environment. He implored his international colleagues to initiate “radical change” in coastal management. “The old models of managing the coastline are exhausted”, he said.
Someone ought to inform the Spanish Ambassador here about his government’s policies. The new injunction not only preserves the coastline for the public, it protects the investments from most of the serious damage likely to be caused by global warming, sea-level rise and related effects such as hurricanes and storm surge.
The government of Jamaica should pay attention. Now that we have been dragged unprotesting into the latest incarnation of the viciously predatory MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) via the exploitative Economic Partnership Agreements, the sole benefit is that we now have access to the Arhus Convention and to the European Court.
That should make life very interesting for developers public or private, who want to steal our patrimony, disfigure our landscape and degrade our environment and for their abettors. The Runaway Bay meeting was a nullity, illegal and a comprehensive waste of money and everybody’s time.
Copyright©2008 John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com
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