The Tribune

By MALCOLM J STRACHAN

WHILE the Bahamas was largely spared the widespread disaster and damage that the now historic category five Hurricane Irma was capable of, people of the Southern Bahamas – namely Ragged Island and Acklins – are left with the heavy burden of putting their lives back together. This is an enormous task for these families – one they are surely facing with some trepidation.

Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis understood that fear when he made his address in the House of Assembly last week.

The people of Salina Point, Acklins suffered extensive damage to their homes. Ragged Islanders experienced far worse. Many of the 1,000 evacuees who were airlifted to the capital prior to the landfall of the hurricane, have nothing left. We can only imagine how heart-wrenching it is to hear that the place you once called ‘home’ is now uninhabitable.

There is little doubt though that many lives would have been lost had the prime minister not made the decision to evacuate those persons to Nassau prior to the hurricane. The government has received nation-wide praise for its handling of this, its first major test.

The prime minister, unlike his predecessor, has shown that he can be a man of action. His decisiveness in the lead up to the storm may have thwarted what could have been a national catastrophe had Ragged Island and Acklins been left fully inhabited during Hurricane Irma. However, it cannot go without mentioning that Prime Minister Minnis has also been a man of big promises, the latest, a promise of a sustainable Ragged Island.

Dr Minnis said, “In partnership with the residents of Ragged Island, my government proposes to transform Ragged Island into the first fully green island in the region, utilising renewable energy and smart technologies from solar energy to sustainable water purification systems.”

However, creating a sustainable, “fully green” Ragged Island is no small feat. What’s more is that the reality of “hurricane proofing” any coastal region is rather impractical, if not almost impossible. However, the government can do its best to mitigate losses and decrease the need for the hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with the after-effects as was the case in the last three hurricane seasons. It can potentially create a model for sustainable development for the entire Bahamas, as rebuilding a sustainable Ragged Island – even though it is a high priority – is still a very tiny cog in a massive wheel.

Climate change/global warming is probably the world’s most controversial issue. People fear gloom and doom and are not comfortable talking about the severity of the worst-case global warming scenarios. Even the president of the United States does not acknowledge that climate change is a real issue. But as temperatures increase every year and as carbon dioxide emissions continue to flood the ozone layer, Mother Nature will continue to seek retribution.

The Bahamas, as a low-lying country, nestled in a hurricane belt does not have the luxury to continue to be reactive to climate change. The reality is that our good fortune of not having the entire country ravaged by Hurricane Irma was not of our doing, despite what the church or prayer warriors might tell you. A hurricane is a force of nature and though predictions are made which inform our behaviour we have no control of the hurricane itself. We need to be more proactive in how we deal with hurricanes; it’s as simple as that.

That being said, much is required to keep the government’s promise to the people of Ragged Island.

There has to be a great deal of research behind what other countries have done to make themselves more sustainable, particularly countries with similar infrastructural and economic makeup as ours.

Bonaire, a low-lying island in the Leeward Antilles with an economy that thrives on tourism, has been a model for environmental sustainability in the Caribbean. About ten years ago, the island’s government agreed to an ambitious project of moving away from its dependence on fossil fuel energy towards developing a sustainable energy system supported by the utilisation of wind energy and a biodiesel plant.

Although Bonaire is outside of the hurricane belt and its initiatives stemmed from the local government’s desire to preserve the natural beauty of its environment, our predicament creates a demand that is more out of a necessity than aesthetics.

However, hurricanes existed prior to the industrial revolution that has been a large contributor to global warming. This means that no matter how much money the government spends to make the island greener, that will not fix the problem. Ragged Island, and all islands of the Bahamas, ought to move towards not only becoming sustainable, but also, as much as humanly possible to implement, hurricane proof solutions as best we can.

Considering this, what would a sustainable, hurricane proofed Ragged Island look like?

Prime Minister Minnis shared that he noticed during the government’s assessment of damage by Hurricane Irma, that many of the homes destroyed were not built to code.

Now left with a blank canvas, the government has a rare opportunity to start anew. They will need to explore various options of foreign companies that are experts at building hurricane proof homes at a reasonable cost.

Cubicco, a Dutch sustainable construction company, which already has residential projects underway in the Bahamas, is a company seemingly purposed in doing just that – providing higher end, hurricane resistant housing for a “relatively decent price per square foot.” In an article on Business Insider’s website published at the climax of last year’s hurricane season, Cubicco CEO, Marcio Gomes da Cruz, explained the “future-proof” design of homes that are able to withstand 185-mph winds, outfitted with impact-resistant windows and can be elevated off the ground. The homes are prefabricated and come in a flat-pack, similar to the business model of Dutch furniture brand, IKEA, which allows for a local building crew, once trained, to assemble the units. Cubicco homes also make options available for homeowners to increase their homes sustainability by including water reclaiming systems, spots for solar panels and open slats for geothermal heating and cooling.

The Minnis administration will need to consider such alternatives where they can not only rebuild sustainable and hurricane resistant homes, but also derive the best value for money and decrease further financial overreach.

Aside from building homes that are structurally capable of withstanding hurricane-force winds, the constructing of a hydroponics farm on Ragged Island would also provide great benefits; among them, the decrease of fossil fuel usage. Such an initiative can serve the local community and decrease dependence on the nation’s capital. As islands affected by hurricanes continue to be more susceptible to flooding, hydroponic farming methods of stacking crops vertically (in protected farmhouses of course) could prevent losses of crops that would not survive if grown traditionally.

Further, as the government seeks to expend all of its resources to fulfill this promise, it may also need to explore building a sea wall across the span of the eastern end of the island, as sea surge also presents a potentially catastrophic issue for flooding whenever a storm hits. Although not a full proof prevention to flooding they would certainly buffer the coastline and protect any roads that line them.

Certainly, some descendants of the survivors of Texas’ barrier-island city of Galveston would agree after having heard the stories of how their forefathers and mothers suffered a category four hurricane 117 years ago that killed more than 6,000 people and was recorded as being “the most destructive and costly natural disaster in American history.” The island city, which still has the memory of the destruction caused by the September 8, 1900 hurricane, owes much of its current existence to a 10-mile-long seawall built by its surviving residents to guard the city from massive flooding.

While this, or any other singular method of hurricane protection may not provide a cookie cutter solution to hurricane proofing Ragged Island, certainly an holistic approach would draw the line between unsustainable and sustainable, and in the worst case; life and death.

Prime Minister Minnis has promised Ragged Islanders that the government has not abandoned them and that their homes will be restored. Every Bahamian should take Ragged Island as a lesson. We hope that the promises made to Ragged Island will be fulfilled, and lessons learned for how we allow new construction to proceed in this country.