All of last week we reported on the Causeway controversy at Port Coral - and the adjoining North Drowned Caye.
On one side, the developer says he has an approved Environmental Compliance Plan, the Ministry of Sustainable Development agrees, but can't find it, while the environmentalists says - show me it!
Appearing this morning on Sunup on 7 to make clear the position of the Coalition of Environmental NGO's was Vice President of Oceana Janelle Chanona.
She told our hosts that she's yet to see an ECP for these causeways and can only hope that G.O.B. isn't deliberately withholding:
Janelle Chanona, Vice President, Oceana
"The topic today is, are these causeways but this is really just one more case study in a system that needs to be overhauled, needs to be looked at, needs to be revamped because we keep coming back to these things and to use a word that you mentioned, we don't want to be constantly perceived as any kind of proposal to development, we want to be partners, we want to be collaborators in national development and we want to be at the table because once the toothpaste is out you can't get it, if you've ever been there you can't get it back in. It's really about us being all around the table discussing how these shared resources so that future generations of Belizeans can rely on them in the way we are now and talking about the brand of toothpaste, talking about the flavor of the toothpaste, talking about the color of the toothpaste, and making sure it's the right toothpaste for us. And it's really about bringing that conversation to the fore because one of the things that I am very concerned about this the precedence of all of this. The minute we start accepting or tolerating or allowing and it's a very slippery slope and we don't know what's at the bottom we could get into a whole and continue going. So it's really about looking very holistically at all these projects, all the smaller tourism development projects, the major projects, the new ones like the causeway and see how do we plan, because if we fail to plan we are planning to fail and that's just the cut of it. we really embrace the mantra of if we put the environment first, development last well into the future and we know there are these existential threats related to climate change, and if we don't take care of ourselves, I shudder whenever you see these news stories of these migrant caravans coming from South America, Central America heading for a better future. There are climate refugees already happening and we yes we are not major contributors at this point but we can get there it can always get worse. So, we have to take care of ourselves, we have to look a food security like what's happening in the fish market, we need to pay attention to what's happening with these developments and we need to be aware that our voice is as strong as that."
The entire show repeats at 8:00 pm tonight.
