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The Bahamas emphasizes importance of environment with establishment of new ministry
Having spent three years as minister of agriculture and fisheries, Deveaux has a wealth of experience in environmental issues and is sensitive to the direction The Bahamas needs to be taking.
As minister of agriculture and fisheries, Deveaux was instrumental in making some important, lasting contributions for preservation and conservation.
Last year, The Bahamas became the first country to declare the Nassau Grouper as a protected species during its spawning aggregation. According to Deveaux, there are about 30 spawning aggregations in the Bahamas and this year the protection of the fish has been extended to include four aggregations. “We also created the first five of a network of marine protected areas in The Bahamas,” he said.
“These two measures were significant by world standards and obviously important for our country. By doing this we signaled the preservation of what we think the second most important asset in The Bahamas, the environment.”
He noted, as do many corporate executives, that the most important asset The Bahamas has is its people.
Deveaux said that the need for a Ministry of the Environment grew out of a rising concern over the government’s ability to reconcile technical and scientific issues with its policy decisions to ensure protection of the environment for future generations.
The Bahamas Government took the first step toward acknowledging the importance of the environment in 1989, when the National Government Coordinating Scientific Committee was formed. This organization led to the 1994 founding of Bahamas Environment, Science and Technology Commission, a semi-private organization providing advice the government about environmental issues and serving as a focal point for international commitments. BEST, with the help of the private sector, provided environmental impact studies and sensitized the Bahamian public on environmental concerns.
According to Deveaux, through BEST’s work, it became clear that a ministry was needed to cope with policy issues.
“As a result of widespread development and the need to focus not only on domestic issues but on international ones, we have had increasing necessity to bring focus to our environmental policies and to provide statutory authority to the requirement for environmental impact assessment,” said Deveaux.
When the new Ministry of the Environment is established, it will deal with development issues, ensuring that where new projects are constructed the environment will not be poorly affected. “We need to be infinitely more creative in the way that we manage development,” noted a concerned Deveaux. He pointed out that the government does not want to impede development, just make sure that it is responsible.
The ministry will also bear responsibility for ensuring that The Bahamas complies with the more than 18 international protocols involving the environment in the international arena and the variety of international conventions, such as the Convention on Trade and Endangered Species that it is a part of. It will also oversee water management, waste management, forestry issues and the coastal environment, among other issues.
After a survey done of the damage from Hurricane Floyd, the ministry plans to install a nationwide coastal defense system to avoid erosion and to work on a coastal zone management system to ensure the protection of mangrove swamps, sand dunes and estuaries.
Deveaux noted that the marine environment is essential to The Bahamas way of life and development. “In my opinion, the environment is our single greatest gift from God.” He notes that The Bahamas is attracting and will continue to attract business because of its natural beauty. “The extent to which we protect our environment, marine and otherwise, is the extent to which we will be able to make our lifestyles comfortable and worthwhile.”
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Table of Contents The Bahamas: An established tourism and tax-free financial services center experiences a renaissance |
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On the Jan. 10, 2000, Dr. Earl Deveaux, former minister of agriculture and fisheries, began the process of transforming what is now a coordinating body for environmental concerns into a new full-fledged ministry.