Tough decision needed

Many Bahamians believe that it would be a good thing if the economy were supported by more than two dominant sectors, tourism and financial services.

Hence, the relentless call for the development of additional economic sectors. For some then, oil drilling will be music to their ears.

Nearly all Bahamians believe that food security is critically important and call for Bahamians to grow and harvest more food locally.

And a significant number of Bahamians believe that manufacturing and light industry could be expanded into a major economic sector.

Many other Bahamians believe that our best prospects lie in the provision of services.

And after too many years of being buffeted by increasingly dangerous summer storms, most Bahamian believe that protection of the environment is vital to our survival – a belief that has convinced many of the urgency to act to reduce the risks caused by climate change and sea level rise.

And very particularly, many Bahamians have become committed to altering human behaviors which contribute to environmental degradation.

These include the conservation of the physical landscape, extending protection to native flora, fauna and other native species marine mammals and other marine life, the elimination of single-use plastics from our daily lives, and the reduction in the use of fossil fuels, a significant contributor to greenhouse gasses which accelerate the warming of the planet causing increased desertification, sea level rise, and more frequent, stronger and destructive weather patterns.

Our beliefs include contradictions.

Large scale tourism employs many but also offends.

Not only does it pose a threat to cultural integrity, but poor regulation, especially in the cruise sector, seriously threatens our marine environment.

Financial services while providing lucrative jobs for many also makes us the target of international financial institutions and agencies from developed countries jealous of missed opportunities they would prefer to harness for themselves.

Both large scale agriculture and fisheries are packed with environmental and labor concerns.

And, where fisheries practices are not sustainable, entire species become endangered.

Management of waste by-products in these sectors combined with waste from manufacturing and industrial processes multiply legitimate concerns over air quality and depletes, and sometimes contaminates, freshwater lenses; not to mention soil exhaustion.

Such contradictions confound governments around the world as they have bedeviled Bahamian governments.

Now, a decision by the present government to permit oil exploration on the Bahamian seabed is attracting objections from a wide cross-section of Bahamian conservationists with strong support from the international environmental community.

Developed societies are moving away from the use of fossil fuels to satisfy the world’s insatiable need for power and energy precisely because they have determined that the costs and liabilities of exploiting these, whether coal or oil, are far too high.

Still, the allure of “black gold” has proven difficult for most countries to ignore notwithstanding the environmental horrors of busted oil tankers leaking their lethal cargo into the world’s ocean, the catastrophic losses that resulted from the Deepwater Horizon 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or, here at home, the still undetermined toll of the oil spill at Equinor’s South Riding Point depot in Grand Bahama caused by Hurricane Dorian.

We accept that this is not an easy decision for the government.

The recent ability of Cuba and Guyana, like Trinidad and Tobago at an earlier time, to use fossil fuel exploitation to their financial benefit is no doubt attractive and very promising, especially in these difficult economic times.

Blessed with an abundance of sunshine and well placed to harness the energy of the sun and the wind to generate clean, renewable energy, we are not persuaded that the future economic development of The Bahamas should be hitched to a dying technology.

Instead, we believe that much is to be gained by embracing substantially increased opportunities for the provision of a myriad of services. 

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/tough-decision-needed/