Conservation law marks 10yrs as MPs attack environmentalists
(CNS): Wednesday was the tenth anniversary of the National Conservation Act passing into law, despite the continuing opposition to the legislation and the misrepresentation of how it has impacted development. With former premier Wayne Panton, the architect of the law, laid up after breaking his ribs, there has been no one in parliament this week during the budget debate to defend the need for conservation. Several ministers described local environmentalists as extreme and implied that conservation was hindering development.
Even the new minister responsible for the Ministry of Sustainability and Climate Resiliency, Kathy Ebanks-Wilks, hedged her bets when speaking about her new responsibilities, as she defined sustainability in its broader sense rather than the need to focus on natural resources. She said it meant “a lot of different things to a lot of different people”.
Ebanks-Wilks spoke about sustainable economic growth and the need to dispel the idea that sustainability was about stopping development. She said there was a need to balance the environment with development and population growth, but made no mention of the significant changes and investment that is desperately needed to conserve our dwindling natural resources. However, she did note the challenges coming for Cayman and those who will be impacted by the problems of flooding from king tides, increased heat and more intense storms.
The new sustainability minister also said that the services provided by the mangrove wetlands, ancient forests, arable lands, seagrasses and coral reefs, based on the eco-services accounts from 2020, have a value of some $3 billion in terms of carbon sequestering, coastal protection and tourism attractions. Despite that huge figure, Ebanks-Wilks said the budget for her ministry amounted to 0.5% of that.
The minister stressed the strategic goals of energy, equality and the environment over the coming two years. Despite avoiding talking directly about the existential crisis of climate change and the dramatic changes required, she did stress the efforts the ministry would make and showed more support for taking conservation more seriously than several of her new UPM colleagues.
Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan and Border Control Minister Dwayne Seymour, as well as several other MPs, were highly critical of former premier Wayne Panton’s efforts to promote the environment as an equally important policy issue to the economy, education or social welfare. Ministers and MPs misled the parliament and the public when they accused Panton of driving an extremist agenda and one that had stalled development and construction.
Yet week after week, acres of mangrove wetlands and primary habitat are destroyed under the developers’ bulldozers, coastal projects are constantly given waivers to allow construction too close to the ocean, and the National Conservation Council’s advice continues to be ignored during the planning decisions process.
In a joint press release from the ministry, the DoE and the NCC marking the ten years of the legislation, NCC Chairman Stuart Mailer said that since it was enacted, physical development in the Cayman Islands has not slowed down while construction and development have continued to boom.
“The Department of Environment, under delegated authority from the NCC, has directed
refusal for just 0.23% of over 4,000 planning applications since 2016. This not only counters
the misconception that the NCA is restrictive to the growth of our islands, it reinforces the fact
that the NCA is not a substitute for a national development plan rooted in the principles of
sustainability.
“The NCC and the DoE will continue to do our part to ensure our islands develop
responsibly and sustainably while preserving our native species and habitats for future
generations. We will continue to lead by example to show how balancing our communities, our
economy and our environment can help us build resiliency to the challenges of the future,” Mr.
Mailer said.
In the release, Ebanks-Wilks said that the law helped the government fulfil its duty under section 18 of the Bill of Rights in the Cayman Islands Constitution, which states that the Government shall, in all its decisions, have due regard to the need to foster and protect an environment that is not harmful to the health or well-being of present and future generations, while promoting justifiable economic and social development” — an ambition which many conservationists believe has not been met.
The NCA has provided a path to protecting some important land habitats as well as expanding coastal protections. But even following a major effort to acquire land, Panton and the NCC still only managed to place 11% of all three islands under protection, far short of the 30% seen as the minimum natural land resources that humanity needs to conserve to help us battle climate change.
Since April 2021, the Cayman Islands Government has facilitated the purchase and protection of land in the Salina Reserve, Western Mangroves Area and Central Mangrove Wetlands in Grand Cayman, the East Interior of Little Cayman, and Hemmington Forest in Cayman Brac. Protections for Sand Cay and Tarpon Lake are pending Cabinet approval.
“The natural environment of the Cayman Islands is fundamental to our economy and to protecting our communities,” Mailer said. “Our unique plants and animals underpin our tourism product and are linked to Caymanian culture, traditions and heritage. The National Conservation Act enables us to protect these important natural resources for the benefit of current and future generations.
But Mailer said with just over 11% of terrestrial resources protected, “there is still much to be done”.
Meanwhile, the marine resources are faring slightly better regarding official protection, with 55% of our nearshore waters under lawful protection. However, those protections don’t always ensure that the marine environment is not under threat for coastal development, and even though mangroves are now a protected species, they can be uprooted and sent to the dump as soon as planning permission is granted.
In recognition of the 10-year milestone for the legislation, the National Conservation Council has released a special video celebrating its work for the people of the Cayman Islands. It features the voice of the late McFarlane Conolly, the former NCC chairman who died earlier this year. Mailer and the entire NCC extended their sincere thanks to Mrs Conolly for allowing her husband’s voice to be used in the video.
“This video celebrates the National Conservation Act and the Council while honouring Mr Conolly’s legacy. He was a passionate defender of the National Conservation Act because he knew how important this legislation is to protecting the islands he loved so much. We are honoured to carry his legacy forward,” Mailer said.
See the video below:
- Fascinated
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Bored
- Afraid
Category: Local News
I am praying that some educated, honest, competent Caymanians come forward next election with a new Party that represents the true interests of Caymanians.
Sadly though, I will be just as disappointed then as I will be Christmas morning when Santa does show up!
It’s coming – don’t worry
“National Conservation Council’s advice continues to be ignored during the planning decisions process.”
Has CNS reviewed any CPA Minutes since September? Are you aware of how many applications are being adjourned for Section 41(3) consultations with the National Conservation Council? How does this translate to being ‘ignored’?
8:35 am Excellent note !
The “ignored” part comes after the consultation. Are you being intentionally obtuse?
9:25 am You could only state that if that was fact….however, the fact is those adjourned items have not been returned to the CPA yet, awaiting the consultation results.
Maybe then a design that doesn’t degrade or hurt the environment but rather enhances it would avoid the frustrating delays for some.
There are of course those evil 😈ones who have every intention of doing harm to Maximus ignoramus.
Come on CNS. I thought you could do better than this. Your article contains the following paragraph:
“Even the new minister responsible for the Ministry of Sustainability and Climate Resiliency, Kathy Ebanks-Wilks, hedged her bets when speaking about her new responsibilities, as she defined sustainability in its broader sense rather than the need to focus on natural resources. She said it meant “a lot of different things to a lot of different people”.”
Guess what? The Hon. Minister is absolutely correct !! “Sustainability” is NOT just about conservation of the natural environment. It is about balancing environment, economy, development and community goals. Stop preaching a false narrative and do some proper investigative journalistic research before beating the drums to the wrong tempo and tune. If you are at all interested in this line of research, reply to this comment and I will help get you started.
Give the new Minister a chance to get it right, where the previous Minister (Premier) and so-called “architect” of this faulty law got it terribly wrong, guided by the self-professed “experts” at DOE and the eco-spewing expats in South Sound who were spawn of the rich and shameless who dug up South Sound mangroves for their mansions, then preached to their kids about saving the environment.
And there you have the development lobby defending their recent political acquisitions
I’d like to know what you find “faulty” about the law. Its purpose is to consider and preserve Cayman’s native species and natural environment in all national decision making. It is NOT intended to be a planning law. The whole point is to guide how people and the environment can best coexist.
The DoE teams who review these applications have Masters degrees in their fields of study. They’re biologists and environmental scientists and are almost ALL Caymanians. How is this “self proclaimed” ??
The entire world is looking towards sustainable development and practice in daily life. The NCA is the closest thing we have to actually putting some legal backbone behind this. The Planning Law certainly isn’t cutting it.
We should be marching in the streets to protect this law and even enhance it to so DoE recommendations are binding in more circumstances. Unfortunately, CPA CHOOSE not to make the advice of our own sustainability experts binding in their decisions. Willful ignorance in full effect.
10:34 am The law is “faulty” because it doesn’t happily or operationally co-exist with other laws and these “experts” rarely stay in their own lanes. And you said it the law is NOT intended to be the planning law yet DOE and NCC continue to insist themselves where they shouldn’t ie into the planning law and process. And you seem to miss my original point, as does the DOE and NCC, which is that “sustainability” is NOT just about conserving the natural environment at the expense of other important pillars like the economy and community.
Correct. If the DOE/NCC “experts” could learn to stick to their remit much of this would be avoided. Trouble is, they just can’t help themselves.
Sustainability is defined as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Taking the natural environment out of the discussion, this development narrative of a swinging pendulum of balance to fit an agenda is wrong. Even a blind man can see that the wealth balance is out of alignment in Cayman with the majority of the land ownership sitting with new Caymanians and foreign ownership.
Checkout sustainability and nested interdependence 101 : https://sustainablecayman.org/what-is-sustainability%3F-1
2:15 in this comment thread, no one has suggested taking the natural environment out of the discussion. But, by your Brundtland quoted definition of sustainability (which is correct), the sustainability discussion needs to include development, economy and community needs. The suggestions in the previous comments on this thread have been that the DOE/NCC does not consider the entire definition of sustainability or “Sustainable development” which is defined as “an integrated approach that takes into consideration environmental concerns along with economic development”. The source of this definition is the same as yours.
“Even a blind man can see that the wealth balance is out of alignment in Cayman with the majority of the land ownership sitting with new Caymanians and foreign ownership.”
Utter rubbish and I have access to all land parcel ownership.
Consistency is key,
Kenny & Dwayne have never strayed from their capacity of being impressive f***wits, never not once, their tenacity is to be commended – three cheers for our consistently impressive idiots. 😮💨
And they are about to raid the EPF to buy land for more of their vanity projects.
their biggest intrest is selling out to investors for development.
“Cayman is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise”
Change one word and it fits perfectly. Weird that.
Do these MPs not have constituents?
I can see clearly now that Weeeennn is gone!
Why do we need more development and for whom? That is the dance and song from these unintelligent nimbies running these Islands. They have their heads in the sand ( if they can find some) and cannot even see that what they refer to as “development” has been replaced by “destruction ” . These people don’t have a clue what climate change, resilience, protecting habitat, and conservation mean because very few of them on the government side can read well and understand less. I wonder when was the last time they pickup up a book or watch a documentary on the relevant subjects.
I would bet that the push for more development has more to do with thick brown envelopes handed out by developers behind closed doors than it does with ignorance. With XXXX as a mentor they know perfectly well how to profit from their positions – profit well beyond their ridiculously large pay checks.
Yep, can’t see the forest for the bulldozers.
Cayman is effing doomed with these people in charge. All they want to do is line their pockets now, knowing that when the s**t hits the fan environmentally, they will be rich enough to move somewhere else and leave the rest of us to wade about up to our knees in flooding where our homes used to be.
Greedy, gormless, backward, medieval louts. Combined they nearly have sensibility of a mollusk.
Unabated development the way it is progressing will just end up ruining the rest of Cayman. The impacts are already visible here, flooding during king tides, wildlife populations being forced into residential areas and some critically declining. Coral degradation exasperated by unfiltered land runoff (no mangroves), the list is growing exponentially.
And of course they haven’t the sense to plan critical infrastructure that adequately and proportionally supports the runaway development they want, let alone upgrade the inadequate infrastructure we have currently. They smell the money and are lining their pockets with it too, but we are paying and will pay dearly for their ignorance and greed. When another Ivan scale hurricane hits, and it will, we’ll be expecting a bailout from UK. If it were my decision I’d cut the loss and cut us loose at that point.
It’s an outrage that our corrupt leaders can flout the law and bill of rights like this. This is an opportune time for a suit against Cabinet!
Absolutely moronic!
I don’t think these politicians that are pushing development realise that tourists are not going to be interested in coming to an island that is a concrete jungle. The beaches are being eroded. What is going to attract them here? Also, if they keep destroying mangroves and wetlands, what is going to help protect us from storms?
Eroded? the best thing that could happen to this place would be for that to happen and the entire thing disappear.
Eroded???? They are full. Forget erosion. Between the 500 chairs outside Westin and Ritz, the private owners carefully changing the high water mark depending on the season etc. The BEST thing that could ever happen to this island RIGHT NOW is a CAT5 hurricane that erodes the entire of SMB to put these parasites out to pasture and really tests the last 20 years of quality buildings we have thrown up since Ivan.
Lots of us are desperate to see how much these investors from overseas suffer when their hastily thrown up shoeboxes get their windows blown out or worse.
Cutting off our nose to spite our face is probably not the best thing that could happen to us. – Otherwise I feel you.
You can still buy oceanfront and sandy beach land in the lesser islands. For under CI$300,000. Stop complaining and go buy some before it’s all gone. Houses can be found for under CI$300,000 in Cayman Brac and above 40 feet above sea level. No problem with sea level rise.
We don’t want you on the Brac. You’ve pretty much ruined Grand, and the same will happen here if you buy up everything and make this Little Grand. Leave us in peace.
2.56…Excellent advice. We bought Bluff acres on the Brac costing less than a house lot in South Sound.
It offers a jet service, paved roads, good hospital, school, supermarkets, good utilities supply. No traffic jams no crime to speak of, and no pushy wealthy recent arrivals .
The restaurants serve honest food, not pretentious cuisine, and if you crave traffic, cuisine, crime and pushy nouveau riche, then it’s 15 minutes away by jet.
Nassau, The Bahamas – Prime Minister, Hon. Philip Davis. “At COP28 UAE in Dubai, I stood before the world to share the stark reality faced by The Bahamas due to climate change. We’ve been lucky to avoid catastrophic hurricanes this year, but our fight against rising seas and dying corals continues.
The time for action is now. Our survival depends on immediate global cooperation and meaningful commitments.
For us in The Bahamas, We Simply Want To Live.
WATCH: https://youtu.be/VEE8D1OYF4k?feature=shared
“…and those who will be impacted by the problems of flooding from king tides, increased heat and more intense storms…”
Everyone, is the answer. Everyone will be affected.
Clowns. I don’t see any letup in construction, or ‘development’ as they call it, despite this ultimately leading to islands which won’t be classed as developed, once a significant storm mashes the place up and the floodwaters ruin everything not already done in. Oh we’re going to miss those natural elements that mitigate against extreme weather.
Speaking of selling out, when will the new Parliamentarians Immunity Act come into force?
If there was ever any doubt that the developers have bought many if not most of our politicians it should be gone now.
Not just politicians are bought . Some are more subtle and buy the senior civil servants , and not always with cash.
Elevation to the social high table of the rich and shiny is worth a lot to a civil servant, and it works .
They will of course be dumped when no longer useful.
Some politicians attack environmentalists.
Some politicians attach women.
Some politicians are convicted criminals.
Some politicians are convicted drug dealers.
Some politicians are corrupt to the core.
Few countries have the misfortune to be governed by all of the above.
say it like CMR “lack of political maturity”
Cayman is being run by some of the most thick, corrupt and self-interested people that I have ever seen. So sad to watch this unfold to a beautiful country and yet no protests, no nothing.
There is widespread self interest through development be it high priced beach front, extensive housing complexes or the many duplex buildings. Self interest continues through CUC shareholding supporting continued use of fossil fuels and their proactive moves against alternate solutions.
Those supporting the environment are criticized or abused and this abuse is now being promoted by the countries leaders in our Government.
Thoroughly disgraceful and shameful.
As a small island and vulnerable nation I do wonder what our representatives had to say at COP28 and what future representatives will say when we beg for handouts to protect the shores that we have failed. Those responsible will be long gone and their legacy will be one of greed and stupidity.
We will go the same way as Miami: Profound erosion, wetlands built upon, expansive condos with an amazing view on the coastlines for the rich, government employees comfortable to support those efforts, and the rest, poor and struggling.
What’s wrong with that??
Be careful what you wish for. Such an economy removed from the einvironment is extremely vulnerable to disaster, both manmade and natural. We tend to think of our stores, supplies and supply barges as impervious. We also tend to not learn from history. I hope we soon don’t have to rediscover those lessons.
These dumb dumbs do understand what you’re saying, even if you draw pictures they’ll still draw a blank.
Resistance is futile against this gormless,,, backward, medieval bunch. Won’t be long before dog eats Cayman’s breakfast ,lunch and dinner.
Muppets!