Dear Editor,
Mash it up! Break it down! Yuck it out! Bleach it! Burn it! Throw tar all over it... and while you're at it, protect it from all evil.
The songs says "mass it up", but here we say "mash it up"! If we sell ourselves to "The Boss", we will be saved from eternal poverty and placed in the big house forever more. Yet we are only there as mammy or helper. Our relationship with our selves and our environment is in deep trouble and we seem to be intent on pressing the destruct button.
So much for the environment on which we depend for life! According to the prime minister of The Bahamas, "The number one priority for the PLP is that the beaches and waters given to us by God remain pristine".
Yet, each time we turn around, the government has granted permission to dredge, because the reefs are not protected; clear cut because the trees are not protected; cut channels through the fresh water lens because New Providence is not short on fresh water!
In the meantime, government is selling islands faster than they can grow back. Uber high-end resorts that cater exclusively to the ultra rich are spreading like mushrooms in a damp, faecal mess. In order to build those resorts, locals are sold into low-wage slavery where they have no choice but to take on days work and be thankful for it.
All of this, again, despite the IDB showing that the country does not produce sufficient well-educated, well-trained persons who can work in the five-star environment. Yet the prime minster says: "No effort will be spared to protect our environment and the bio-diversity found here".
All the while, the environment is being destroyed and the famed bio-diversity along with it. Such has been the demise of the reef at Guana Cay, according to scientists, divers and researchers. Government has remained silent.
Take the example of Bimini Bay: the government fought the country and the inhabitants to destroy the environment without permits. The case went as far as the Privy Council and came back again, yet the government says it is protecting the environment and creating jobs.
Justice Conteh in his speech for the Eugene Dupuch Distinguished Lecture series held at the College of The Bahamas spoke to the loss of the natural environment. He questioned the government's or the country's inability to implement a comprehensive piece of legislation that would protect and manage the environment.
As it is, according to Conteh, there exist bits and pieces of legislation that address environmental matters peppered throughout Bahamian laws. Yet, at the same time, there is little or no regulation. One of his main points, though, was whether the court can really be the body that protects the environment, as it is forced into doing by the numerous cases that are brought before it of development gone wild.
The talk was not easy to sit through. The lecture brought back memories of a headline: Court of Appeal Justice Abdulai Conteh told lawyers for the government and Resorts World Bimini that any construction at the resort site could put the entire case at risk.
"In a democracy, no self-respecting government would do anything to jeopardize proceedings before the court," he said. "When there is a contested issue, one should not change the facts on the ground until a decision is made."
How this came to that point in the 21st century is beyond us. What is tragic is that so much of the loss Justice Conteh addressed could be prevented with a little political will.
The evening was hopeful, as depressing as it was, when faced with a reality of unbridled and wanton destruction of the very reason people come to the country. Students from University of Florida participated in the lecture as they had come over as part of a partnership between the College of The Bahamas and that university.
One noted how beautiful and pristine the natural environment is, and how amazed they were snorkeling around the underwater sculptures. However, when they emerged from the water, they were covered in tar. How do we explain this to outsiders? We know that little care has been given to the polluting impact of BEC Clifton Pier plant.
We also know that oil spills and slicks are common, even if not discussed. We also know that this will destroy the environment in that area. What are we doing about it?
As the wild, wild west in The Bahamas continues unchecked, all that is Bahamian is under threat. Unseen is the damage it is doing and has done to the social fabric. It is important to always remember that we live in a much larger context than this country.
What we are doing and are allowing to be done is usually illegal in the rest of the world, unless we are talking about somewhere like the Gaza Strip or what was once a country known as Palestine.
Why then is it so difficult for so many Bahamians to survive in this country? Put a different way, why is it so easy for international persons to arrive here and to flourish, as the old people say, on the backs of the people? We give over to them all our wealth as well as all our ability and resources to create wealth. This is why connecting some dots is important - perhaps this process can answer some serious questions.
The Seventh National Exhibition, Antillean: An Ecology, curated by Michael Edwards and Holly Bynoe fuses some of the above themes discussed by Justice Conteh in a broader context and starts a conversation that is immensely uneasy, but extremely rich and revelatory. Some of the artists in the show on display at the National Art Gallery focus on the lack of acceptance of blackness in The Bahamas.
Dionne Benjamin-Smith deals with concepts of beauty, and Nadine Seymour-Munroe deals with the same issue, but from the perspective of the freak show of the early colonial days, when black females were put on display with their consent, and stared at, poked, and prodded by spectators because they were seen as freaks.
Does this differ in the 21st century? Seymour-Munroe's installation argues that it does not. This is also where we seem to be with our environment. We are saying that our natural beauty is insufficient to attract visitors; yet they come expressly for this beauty: the crystal clear waters, the white-pink sandy beaches, the fabulous coral reefs. But in our rush to "develop" we are destroying the very things that give us life.
In the case of Benjamin-Smith and Seymour-Munroe's work, they show our underlying complicity with our own objectification and destruction. People usually find us attractive because of our differences, but we are afraid or ashamed of those differences, so we do everything to hide them, change them, bleach them.
Can we make this statement about the environment? Is it us who are destroying our home through our lack of planning and preservation?
In the case of historical preservation, we are outdone by the bulldozer, but one would think, given our awareness of the huge impact the environment has on our future, we would be more savvy about developing/destroying it. In an environmental impact assessment conducted on a now-famous gated community project in the Abacos, the primary environmental specialist who did the studied showed how the development has destroyed the local land and sea flora and fauna.
Why do we do this? This case features prominently in Justice Conteh's excellent address. Sullivan-Sealey declares that the development has not lived up to its promise to be a model for sustainable tourism development. They stopped caring, if they ever did, way back in 2009.
We seek development to create jobs, but what kinds of jobs are brought when the very culture of the people is destroyed? This short-sighted development plan will only backfire.
We become wage-laborers in the gated plantation, only this time the work is not meant to be in the hot sun. As a country high on the risk list for disappearing with sea level rise, one would think we would protect our mangroves and coral reefs better, not just blaze a bulldozer trail through them and leave our coasts open to hurricane blasts and storm surges.
We are quickly moving back into the kitchen of the great house - move over Aunt Jemimah and Uncle Tom, we are moving in. It is not necessarily about color or race, but rather about lack of regard for an entire people and the natural environment of the country the supports them.
Our displacement from our land is not only complete because of our shame of blackness and our culture, but because we are giving away the best land for a song. Sadly, they set the tune to which we sing as well.
Our sovereignty, so coveted, has been decimated. Our environment will no longer sustain us. We may have weave and long nails, but gone are Big Game and bone fishing tournaments to the burial yard of dead mangroves and new marinas carved through pristine coral reefs.
Justice Conteh, this is a salute to your incredible insight and impeccable breadth of knowledge. The lecture provided an opportunity for students, the public and the faculty to benefit from such wisdom, and combined with the textures and nuances from Antillean: an Ecology, the horror and shock are real, even if we continue to choose to ignore them as we weave away our cents and bulldoze away our dollars in the name of jobs.
- Ian Bethell-Bennett
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