By: dontpaveparadise.ky
To pave the way for more development, Cayman’s elected government and a group of developers seem to want us to believe in the bogeyman, or more accurately, in bogeymen.
Those bogeymen go by the names the National Conservation Act (NCA), the National Conservation Council (NCC) and the Department of Environment (DoE), which includes bogeywoman DoE Director Gina Ebanks-Petrie.
Their story is that these supposedly dangerous bodies are conspiring to hinder development, and the only way to rescue us from traffic gridlock and housing shortages caused by out-of-control population growth is for them to neutralise the power of the bogeymen.
But proclaiming this bogeyman fallacy is just a way to make development easier, which is more likely to worsen our problems than solve them.
To understand why their stance is false, it is useful to understand what the National Conservation Act is and what it isn’t.
Limited powers
First, the NCA is really an environment conservation law, not an environmental protection act, which means that its main goals are to preserve ecosystems, biodiversity and natural habitats for future generations.
The NCA’s powers are limited in terms of what areas it can protect and the ways it can protect them. For example, the NCA does not allow the NCC (or any of the bogeymen) the ability to identify privately owned land as protected area or critical habitat against any landowner’s will. Nor can the NCC take anyone’s land through compulsory acquisition.
In a small number of instances where a proposed development would impact a protected area or critical habitat for a protected species, the NCC can direct refusal of that development, but that has only happened nine times – out of more 11,000 planning applications – since the NCC was given the legislative power to do that.
Not the decision-maker
What the NCA does allow the NCC to do is to require an Environmental Impact Assessment for developments that are likely to have a significant impact on the environment so that the Government can take those impacts into consideration when deciding whether to approve a proposed development.
This is a key point: The NCC is not the decisionmaker in all but a very few instances where developments impact protected areas that have been designated protected areas by the Cayman Islands Government itself.
Not a development plan
The NCA is not a substitute for a development plan or proper planning legislation. Cayman’s current development plan dates back to 1997, when the country’s population was less than 45% of what it is today. Had it been updated and implemented in a timely manner as the population grew, many of the issues plaguing Grand Cayman could have been avoided.
Recognising the need to update Cayman’s development plan, in 2018 the Government launched the “Plan Cayman” exercise to develop a holistic national planning framework that manages development in a way that delivers the most desired balance of economic, social and environmental outcomes.
In March of this year – six years later! – the Government finally released a comprehensive “Planning Statement” that forms the framework for a new development plan. That document is now out for public consultation. Although this can be seen as an important step in the right direction, much of the language in the Planning Statement is vague. When it comes to the enabling legislation, the devil, as they say, will be in the details of how the law is written.
Increasing sustainability
None of this, however, requires significant amendments to the NCA. Everyone involved with the NCC understands the need to balance economic and social considerations when it comes to future developments.
They understand, for example, that extending the East-West Arterial road eastward so that it opens up solutions for more affordable housing in the Eastern Districts without a long commute in bumper-to-bumper traffic is something that is wanted and needed on Grand Cayman. All our environmental experts are saying is that the government and its citizens should know in advance what the environmental consequences of building that road – or any other development or project that will significantly impact the environment – are in advance, and how, if possible, to best mitigate or avoid those consequences.
If that makes these experts who are trying to conserve what’s left of Grand Cayman’s natural environment for future generations bogeymen, then perhaps we should all start rooting for the bogeymen.
