The Tribune

By Ian Bethell Bennett

University of The Bahamas Northern Campus has hosted its first Sustainable Grand Bahama conference drawing people from many walks of life including the ministry of Tourism, Environment and Bahamas National Trust, as well as private sector agencies and companies. Of course, studies pointed out various aspects of sustainable development and what should be taken on board in the case of Grand Bahama. There were a number of points that stood out: a major one was that in the space of colonialism, can a culture really be sustainable? The second was, can an island be sustainable when it is controlled by a last-century vision?

Sustainable Tourism

Discussion demonstrated that rather than focus on numbers of tourists arriving, one must consider the quality of visitors. The quantity of visitors only leads to a diluted and exploited product that undermines the infrastructure of the place. While, attention is paid to the quality of visitor, the destination can charge higher prices for the product and the environment less degraded. Environmental degradation is a serious concern with large scale, quantity-driven tourism developments. Tourism cannot be allowed to destroy the environment tourists come to enjoy.

Governance

In Grand Bahama the fact that there are two simultaneous and overlapping systems of government where multinational and transnational corporations enter and leave at will already complicates the sustainability of culture and place. In “Postcolonial Remains” Robert Young points out:

It also becomes clear that the same paradigm of sovereignty through dispossession applies to many nonsettler colonies, where indigenous minorities or historically excluded groups have found the freedom of a postcolonial sovereignty to mean comparable or even worse forms of oppression than under colonial rule, even if the political structure is that of a democracy (Young, 2012, p 25).

This is Grand Bahama’s reality, sustainability seems automatically compromised by a mixed and yet unsustainable and irreconcilable governance structure. Freeport and Grand Bahama should be synonymous, but they are almost two distinct countries - when used in the widest sense of two distinct yet equally exploited cultural spaces governed by “external” powers.

Grand Bahama, it seems, is currently sustainable through dominating and extraction of its wealth, and the further impoverishment of its population. The population is deeply divided between those with access in Freeport and those on the margins in areas outside of Freeport like West End, Pinder’s Point or even in East End. While declaring sustainable development to be their aim, government announced yet another extractive and destructive process of colonialism with Oban.

The lack of sustainability also became apparent when we headed to the airport for a 2pm flight on the national flag carrier and were told the flight would be slightly delayed. That slight delay resulted in a poorly communicated, no respect given, no food, no water provided for a seven hour “delay”; not a real delay, but a choice not to put on a flight! Disregard for all was clearly communicated by the airline staff.

Such governance and function results in the disenfranchisement of all bodies involved in the fight to create a sustainable home and future for themselves and their families. Notwithstanding governments’ pronouncements, there seems to be a continued centre periphery paradigm that allows the colonial/postcolonial dichotomy to undermine the sustainable future of the island. Nassau is one centre that refuses to provide Grand Bahama with adequate resources and service, while claiming to value Grand Bahama’s participation in the national project.

Old models, new reality

So, as Bahamasair strands people in the middle of a tin-shop airport and Freeport dominates landscape of a people, central government of the larger space continues to use old models to move forward, damaging and limiting potential for real and sustainable development as they go. Development does not mean every square mile need be consumed by cement; a lesson can be learned from other countries.

The giants of leadership, however, know better than international experience and best practices. They remain steadfast in their efforts to use outdated environmentally harmful, mechanism that provide temporary, low-yield returns, which really translates into exploitation.

World Trade Organisation (WTO) and The Bahamas

An invaluable lesson is learned in the Business Panel. Current national sustainability concepts are mismatched with WTO. Sad that the room was small and the crowd shocked by the revelations. We have been hearing this talk for years: The Bahamas is acceding to the WTO and we must be ready. Yet, years on, the world stage changes and The Bahamas remains steadfast in its isolation, but joining the organisation.

Ironically, the more we talk about The Bahamas developing for Bahamians the less this is possible. New policies and trade liberalisation require that whatever is given to nationals, be shared with all parties involved in any negotiation: National Treatment. Most Bahamians refuse to understand this. Most governments refuse to truly educate the nation to these new realities.

Bahamians can no longer be protected or favoured in the face of WTO policies when the government has not legislated for this kind of relationship prior to the accession. All nationals from whatever country, all entities be they legal or natural persons, must be treated the same way by the country. Its regulations, policies and laws cannot discriminate to protect Bahamians. These two stipulations, National Treatment and Most Favoured Nation Status, provide international persons unfettered access to The Bahamas and the Bahamian economy.

Internationally, fights are now beginning over such policies as demonstrated by the Brexit debate, as well as tariffs being imposed on China by President Trump. At the same time, The Bahamas relies almost exclusively on import duties and VAT on them, and has refused to overhaul the tax system. Government needs to figure out how to deal with the angry backlash in order to develop a robust resilient country economy that can survive WTO accession, through real talk with the population.

Linkages

Sustainability, an empowering catch phrase, requires inclusion and joining up. The National Development Plan must work with all initiatives and the inverse. Approvals for development should first meet any planned needs and requirements, not just jobs. There is no sustainability without considering how populations factor in. If we consider the WTO and the Economic Partnership Agreement already signed on to, these ephemeral jobs promised by projects like Oban and other tourism-focused programmes, are temporary and not guaranteed for Nationals. Freeport, and development projects already show that most jobs are competed over outside the country. They must be offered to the best candidates and, often, Bahamians are not in this group. Trade policies determine these cannot be held exclusively for Bahamians. Why do the people vying for these jobs think the outcome will be any different post The Pointe or May 2017? WTO policies remain the same.

The conference at UB North demonstrated the hard questions must be asked. It also demonstrated there is real need to complete and enact the National Development plan that should in theory prevent ad hoc and random development schemes. A complete, enacted National Plan takes onboard the UN Sustainable Development Goals, meshes them with the NDP’s priority areas, as discussed in Nassau the day before this conference at a public meeting with the NDP and ECLAC at UB Oakes Field Campus, the cross-cutting nature of these events, the need for inclusion is being missed by the same government that says it wants to enact the plan.

Government seems to be full-steam ahead with “development” without first considering how it fits with the GOALS AND PRIORITY AREAS of either NDP or UN SDGs, though these are meant to guide every and all national decisions. Sustainability is key, but it cannot happen without real and deep integration and inclusion. Freeport may have been developed outside of The Bahamas by a neocolonial incarnation of a different kind of governance, yet the problem was only exacerbated when the lease was renewed without any real changes in scope, except to add more land to the colonial area. There can be no sustainability without inclusion, awareness, education and training.

Ian Bethell Bennett is an associate professor at the University of The Bahamas. He is trained in gender analysis and mainstreaming, and has worked at the Inter-American Commission of Women. He works around migration, gender related inequalities, gender in development, culture and development. He studied international trade policy, cultural studies with an emphasis on social-history, and the English, Spanish and French Caribbean.