VI coasts and ocean face serious risks
At the recent Caribbean Summit of Political and Business Leaders on Necker Island, attendees vowed to better protect the region’s coasts and oceans. We welcome this promise, and hope that meaningful action will follow.
Significantly, attendees acknowledged that conserving the region’s marine environment will take the collaboration of governments and the private sector. Their pledge to establish a regional framework to work toward that goal was laudable, even though specifics were lacking.
However, in the VI, as in most of the other nations represented at the summit, proper marine management will require sustained effort and political will that hitherto has been lacking.
Currently, the situation here is dire. Shorelines and other marine ecosystems are increasingly endangered by pollution, irresponsible development, reckless boating practices, overfishing and other threats. One indicator of these challenges’ magnitude is the annual assessment carried out by the non-profit Association of Reef Keepers: Each year, the group records steady degradation of the territory’s coral reefs.
This is not to say that no progress has been made in recent years. One positive step is The Nature Conservancy’s Caribbean Challenge Initiative. The programme, which spawned the Necker meeting, aims to set aside 20 percent of the region’s coastal habitat for conservation by 2020.
And in the VI, the National Parks Trust in 2007 published a 10-year Protected Areas System Plan, which lists about 50 protected zones, including several marine parks.
Unfortunately, though, such safeguards are not always effective. Too often, the laws designed to protect the VI environment are selectively enforced or ignored entirely. This must change.
Additionally, new legislation is urgently needed, as indicated by the Law Reform Commission in 2008. The cornerstone of the LRC recommendations that year was an environmental management bill that would establish a trust responsible for managing the territory’s natural resources.
Starting the same year, government’s annual Speeches from the Throne regularly promised such a law, but it never came, and the promise was dropped last year with no explanation.
This legislation should be among the government’s top priorities, together with amendments to the 2004 Physical Planning Act to strengthen the rules for environmental impact assessments, among other measures.
Meanwhile, the VI government and private sector should continue to work together to foster ever closer regional and community collaboration.
With 10 per cent of the world’s coral reefs, the Caribbean is home to about 1,400 species of fish and marine mammals. Truly, then, the effort to preserve the marine environment is a global battle. This territory is on the front lines.
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