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OECS
Director General Urges Rethink of Development Approach |
Posted January 21, 2008 -Source OECS
 Roseau,
Dominica: OECS Director
General Dr. Len Ishmael is expressing concern over the
potential long term negative effects of the current boom in
development in some OECS Member States.
Addressing Wednesday night’s opening ceremony of the
forty-sixth meeting of the OECS Authority in Roseau,
Dominica, Dr. Ishmael pointed in particular to the booming
resort developments; the growing tendency of the developers
to restrict beach access to locals or to create gated inland
communities, and how this is rapidly reducing the realistic
chances of locals to enter the land owning class and to
utilize their country’s assets.
“All of our beaches, including most remote ones are
surrounded either by plans for a new resort or by resorts –
some of which are installing their beach furniture right
down to the waters edge as if in first line defense to deter
a wandering local public; others are erecting fences and
gates on the beach with security guards posted at the
entrances,” Dr. Ishmael told the audience. “Hikes through
the rain forests reveal mile after mile of newly surveyed
acreages earmarked for eco resorts, villa development and
the like; huge signs emblazoned with the London and USA
addresses proclaim that the world’s foremost real estate
entities are buying and selling our land to an international
clientele. Seemingly overnight, one after another , they
have set up expansive operations to oversee booming sales –
one such entity boasting recently of US thirty million
dollars in pre-construction sales in one day. Our islands
are being bought and sold day and night”, Dr. Ishmael said.
Dr. Ishmael noted that while some of this money will trickle
through the economies and some jobs will be created, several
negative effects are fast emerging. |
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“The first is the
fact that land prices have no realistic basis anymore, and
the average OECS woman and man is finding it increasingly
impossible to break into the class of land owners within
their own countries making home ownership – an indisputable
social objective for all Member States, increasingly out of
their reach.”
Another effect comes from the sale of the lands on the
foreign market. “When it leaves local ownership once, it is
never traded on the local market again.” Additionally, “huge
acreages of scenic landscape are being alienated from the
quiet use and enjoyment by locals as increasingly large
chunks of countryside are being developed, fenced and
gated.”
“What are we doing in the name of development?” she asked
the audience. “At what price is development? Is no price too
high? Is alienation of the rights of islanders a realistic
price for what we define as progress? After the land is
gone, what’s left?”
Dr. Ishmael said she is not unmindful of the daunting task
faced by OECS leaders of balancing the need for foreign
exchange, employment creation and infrastructural
development, with the need to advance and safeguard the
heritage of the people. In that regard, she has put forward
for discussion some possible new approaches drawn from small
island governments in various parts of the world, including
Anguilla and Tobago in the Caribbean. These include a
moratorium on the construction of resorts directly on
beaches; provision of development rights as opposed to
free-hold tenure for certain types of investments; inclusion
of conditions in the planning permission granting rights to
develop which clearly articulate the rights of the local
population and requirements for certain types of social
investments. The suggestions also include delimitation of
the physical areas within which certain types of development
are to be encouraged and ensuring that certain types of
tourism related investments are reserved for locals.
Dr. Ishmael said the “tiny specks in the Caribbean sea” are
all we have and “we have an ethical and moral responsibility
to ensure that the fruits of development which we see around
redound to the benefit of every man, woman and child in the
OECS first and foremost.
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