Environmental Impact

Commitment No 4: Ensure that Environmental Health Impact Assessments are Undertaken before Approving Major Projects and while Developing our Growth Management Strategy. This was the fourth commitment made by the government of Anguilla, like other OT governments which in the year 2001 signed up to an Environmental Charter [link here] .

Dr Mike Pienkowski is the Chairman of the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum. He was engaged as a consultant to examine how we were performing under our Charter. He prepared a Report of August 2007. The Report measures performance by the year 2007 of UKOTs and the UK Government in implementing the 2001 Environment Charters. A copy of his 19-page Report can be read [link here]. We return to looking at how Anguilla measured up.

According to the Report, Anguilla is not faring very well in this area. Of the 10+ development projects studied by Dr Pienkowski he concluded that development projects had often been effectively approved prior to any EIA that might be required. He also found that any EIAs that had been produced were inadequate. He could only find two publicly available EIAs. He comments that Anguilla has no list of major potential and actual threats to the environment, detailing threatened species, ecosystems and landscapes prepared prior to proposed development schemes, so that these can be considered in context. Most of the other territories have such protections in place, even if there are problems in practice, or the position is actively under review.

A recent National Geographic survey [link here] points out that small island destinations like ours are just the ones most prone to tourism overkill. A combination of population pressure, climate change, storm damage, invasive species, and now tourism put our environment at risk. Resort development and multiple cruise-ship crowds have ruined St Thomas and Dutch Sint Maarten.

With development of large hotel resorts now rushing forward at breakneck speed the need for EIAs has never been greater. Yet, this is the very time in Anguilla when they are completely ignored by both the Planning Department and the Executive Council. Anguilla can be expected soon to lose the desirable position it has held for so many years as an exclusive, up-market destination. Without environmental impact assessments, we will ruin the very pristine and natural beauty that the most discerning visitors come here to experience in the first place.