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.

Disaster Management

Public Convergence. A friend telephoned me yesterday. She was all worked up. She was in a state of agitation. Had I seen the latest edition of the Official Gazette? The one dated 31 October? No, I had not. What was the problem? The House of Assembly had gone and included ‘riots and public convergence” in the definition of “disasters and threats of disasters” in the Disaster Management Act. What does that mean? That the Governor can declare a state of emergency the next time the workers from a hotel or construction project march in demonstration of their disquiet over some aspect of their lives or work. That was her concern.

Well, it did not seem very likely to me. So, I went and got a copy of the Gazette. And, there it is. The Act is the Disaster Management Act, No 11 of 2007. The long title says the Act is meant to "provide for the effective preparedness, management, mitigation of, response to and recovery from emergencies and disasters, natural and man-made, in Anguilla”. I read the whole Act. It is 24 pages long. There are 47 sections and 2 Schedules. Anyone committing an offence under the Act faces a fine of $5,000.00 or two years imprisonment. Needless to say, the Act mainly deals with hurricanes and the like.

We already have an Emergency Powers Act. This empowers the Governor to declare a “state of emergency”. During the period of any state of emergency our fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to assemble and to march, can be abrogated for the period of the state of emergency. The state of emergency lapses after a maximum of 90 days. Every democratic country has similar legislation. A “state of emergency” is a condition well known and recognised in law. There is an extensive body of public law dealing with the proper way for such situations to be dealt with. It has in the past been used both in times of natural disaster and in times of civil unrest to give the police and other government agencies extended power to deal with the emergency. For example, the St Kitts government declared a state of emergency when Anguilla seceded from the Associated State in 1967.

What is offensive to anyone concerned with basic human rights is that this new Act permits the government (section 26(1)(b)) to simply broadcast on the radio an announcement that there is a threat of civil disorder (Schedule 2). Anyone not obeying government orders will immediately be in breach of the Act and risk incurring the penalty. Perhaps the most offensive aspect of the statute is that there are few or no definitions. Public convergence is not defined. There are no limits. The Act can be used to ban marching or demonstrating for an unlimited period of time, in the discretion of the government of the day. There are no restrictions. By necessary implication, the government is permitted to do anything it wants to any of us for any period of time it chooses under this Act. The Emergency Powers Act has been drastically amended.

This Act seems to me to conflict with our constitutionally guaranteed rights of freedom of assembly and of movement. It drastically increases the powers of the government to curtail freedom of expression. It goes beyond the limits normally seen in state of emergency legislation. I am not at all sure that a court of law would uphold this Act if it were to be used the next time the Indians decide to march. Or, the next time Anguillians decide to march. But, I submit, that was clearly the intention of the person who gave instructions for this Act to be drafted.

House of Commons

Guest Editorial.

House of Commons Debate Tuesday, 6 November 2007 Andrew MacKinlay (Thurrock, Labour):

"The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs has embarked, to some extent at my prompting, on a review of our overseas territories. I think that the House has abdicated its responsibilities to the few thousand people peppered around the globe in the very small, residual, United Kingdom territories. People say, "Well, they have their own legislative councils." Indeed they do, but their Parliament is this Parliament. If our country goes to war, the people of Bermuda, Gibraltar, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Falkland Islands do not sit it out; they are committed by the actions taken by our Government and Parliament.

There is great disparity in the wealth of our overseas territories. Some are demonstrably wealthy and self-sufficient, although the distribution of that wealth leaves an awful lot to be desired in some places; there are great disparities within those territories. Other territories are dependent on funding from London, and their people are in what you and I would consider to be poverty, Madam Deputy Speaker. They are out of sight and out of mind. The House should put aside some time for the subject, and there should probably be an institutional committee with ongoing oversight of the conduct, stewardship and governance of our overseas territories. At present we are singularly failing. That is in contrast to other countries: the United States, France, Spain and the Netherlands have the equivalent of overseas territories, but they give them some limited representation in their national legislatures. We are not fulfilling our moral obligations to people in our overseas territories, and it is time that the House did so."

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Mr. MacKinlay is a member of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee and is the former Chairperson All-Party Gibraltar Group, 1999-2000. He is one of the few truly independent members of New Labour.

It is not clear whether he is advocating an elected OT representative in Parliament. Do Bermudians, Anguillians and Tristanians have a common policy on Afghanistan? How would we determine one if we needed to? Who would such a representative take instructions from? What influence could he or she have? Or would he or she be more of a lobbyist?

Some of the OTs have London representatives, while some are unrepresented. Of those that are, some are representatives are effective, some act like minor clerks and, in the case of Anguilla, what our representative does and how he came to his position is a State Secret. I know more about the mysterious Masonic Order than I do our UK representative.

Mr. MacKinlay seems to be suggesting that an All-Party Select Committee be formed to have oversight of the residue of Empire, having "ongoing oversight of the conduct, stewardship and governance" of the OTs. There are presently such All-Party Committees for some of the OTs, but not for others. Some are quite active while others seem to be an excuse to visit a tropical island during the cold and grey English winter. There seems to be no coordination between these Committees.

I don't know if it would further the views of the Pitcairners or Saints with regard to foreign policy on Afghanistan, but an OT Select Committee has enormous potential to correct the present serious neglect of the important environmental and cultural treasures of the OTs. I hope Mr. MacKinley's suggestion will be encouraged by those who will soon be presenting oral testimony to the Foreign Affairs Committee.

NICA

NICA Saga Continues. Last evening, the general meeting of shareholders in the distressed company, the National Investment Company of Anguilla, continued. The meeting was nearly a fiasco. Only the good sense of the temporary Chair, Navine Kissob, saved the day. The company had originally arranged this general meeting two weeks ago. The notice calling the original meeting had been published in the newspapers. Paragraph 3:3 of the company’s by-laws says each shareholder is entitled to receive a written notice. A notice published in the newspaper cannot replace the mandated individual written notice. So, the meeting was not a properly called one. Any decision taken at it would have been invalid. The Agenda included electing new directors and appointing a new Auditor. These are sufficiently serious matters to require that any meeting arranged to accomplish them should be properly called!

In the event, there were not enough shareholders present at the original meeting when it began two weeks ago. The by-laws require 51% of the shares to be represented. Only about 45% turned up. So, the meeting was adjourned for two weeks to last evening. No notice of the adjourned meeting was necessary, according to the statute and the by-laws. In their wisdom, the company decided to publish a new notice of the meeting. They did not advertise it as the “adjourned” meeting. They advertised it as, in effect, a new meeting! And, they changed the Agenda published in the newspaper! For example, they omitted from the adjourned Agenda the item of election of new directors which had been on the original Agenda. So, it was not an adjourned meeting. It was a new meeting.

We all turned up to what should have been the adjourned meeting in numbers yesterday evening. It seemed to me that there were many more shareholders present than at the first meeting two weeks ago. The Chair agreed that as neither of these meetings had been called in accordance with the by-laws there could be no question of electing new Directors or appointing new Auditors. The meeting continued on the basis that it was to be held purely to listen to the financial status of the company and to discuss options for the way forward. The long-suffering company accountant, Felicia Hill, bore the brunt of revealing to the shareholders the status of the company’s accounts. She held up well to the pressure, I must say!

She told us that the land at Sandy Ground had been bought in 1989 for EC$284,000.00, and the warehouse built for EC$735,000.00. That was a total of EC$1,019,000.00. The land and building had just been valued at EC$3,306,000.00. So, after nearly 20 years, this investment has shown a 300% increase. I do not know what this amounts to, when you realize that the dollar lost 25% of its purchasing power last year alone. A barrel of oil has jumped from $30.00 to $90.00, or an increase of 300%, in that time.

She told us that the Lockrums, or Gibbons Estate, land was bought for EC$1,523,000.00. It has now through the effluxion of time been given an increased value of EC$10,055,000.00. Without a stroke of action by the Board, this asset has increased in value by 700%. You might well say, thank heavens they did not touch it! It would almost invariably have lost value if they had.

She told us that NICA has shares in various companies that it originally bought for EC$1,339,000.00. The value of these shares may have gone up, or they may have gone down. On the other side of the balance sheet, NICA has overdrafts of EC$403,000.00. An overdraft in my business days attracted interest of nearly 20%. Why NICA would hold shares in companies that may or may not pay dividends and simultaneously carry an overdraft of nearly a half-million dollars for over 15 years, is a complete mystery to me! She told us the Board had decided to liquidate some of the investments and to clear the overdraft. That is at least fifteen years too late.

She then told us that the directors were considering three different options for the future progress of the company. One was a 100% “buy out”. Two was a partial buy-out. And, three was a voluntary liquidation. She did explain that it was only in the third option that the shareholders can be sure that the full and true value of the assets of the company can be ascertained. Worse, she told us that the directors were discussing with “new investors” the partial buy-out option. Partial buy-out? First time we are hearing about this! Those shareholders who want desperately to sell will have someone to sell to? What measure will these new “investors” use to decide how much to offer for our shares? There was no hint of the identity of these new “investors”. Some unknown person is going to come and make some private deal with the poorest of the shareholders and, basically, con them out of their shares? Over my dead body! The only way we shareholders can be sure that we get value for our investment is for the total assets of the company to be sold in the open market and the proceeds divided among us. That is called a “voluntary winding-up”. It is the only clean, transparent, above-board, and fair way of realizing the value of our investment. That is option number three.

Under the chairmanship of Bob Rogers the shareholders will meet at Upper Level, English Rose, at 5:00 pm on Tuesday 13 November to agree on the wording of a requisition to summon a meeting of shareholders to decide on this very solution. We need 5% of the shareholders in NICA to sign that requisition. We can only hope that in the meantime the Board of NICA does not give away the warehouse!

I had to leave the meeting early to take Bob home. If there is any important matter discussed at the meeting after that, would some shareholder who was present please inform us?

Anguilla/UK

UK Relations. My impression over the past months is that we in Anguilla have no interest in our relations with the UK. Other than a few constitutional lawyers, no one in Anguilla is even aware of the UK. We read a Dutch daily newspaper which carries US and international news. We look at US television. We have no British papers in circulation. We never hear any government official speaking about our relationship with the UK. The issue is a dead one. All talk about modernizing our Constitution has gone silent.

So, my attention was caught by an item in today’s issue of BVI News Online. Premier Ralph O’Neal has just announced that he has made a submission to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The Committee is conducting an Inquiry into the Overseas Territories [link here]. This is one of the most senior committees of the UK Parliament. The last time it made a similar inquiry, it was followed by the momentous paper “Partnership for Progress and Prosperity”. This paper completely restructured the way Britain saw its relationship with the Overseas Territories. Ten years having passed, the Committee is now reviewing the exercise by the FCO of its responsibilities in relation to the OTs. The most important of these are the security and good governance of the OTs. The Committee will focus on standards of governance and transparency. It will make recommendations on the role of Governors and other office-holders appointed by the UK government. It will focus on the regulation of the financial sector in the OTs. It will propose new procedures for the amendment of our Constitutions. It will consider the application of international treaties and conventions to us.

But, we in Anguilla have no views on any of these topics. We are numb about our relationship with the FCO. We have no ideas on improving that relationship. We have never even thought about the subject. We have no views to communicate. Our preferred strategy is to wait and see what the Committee recommends for us, and then the shouting will begin. That will occur in the first half of 2008.

Environmental Plan

Commitment No 3: To Ensure that Environmental Considerations are Integrated within Social and Economic Planning Processes, Promote Sustainable Patterns of Production and Consumption within the Territory. This was the third 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. This 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].

According to the Report, Anguilla has done very poorly in meeting this commitment.

We do not have a Country Plan or strategic plan that refers to the Environmental Charter and its commitments.

We have not ensured that environmental considerations have been integrated into social and economic planning processes.

We have not ensured that activities are undertaken in a sustainable manner in such sectors as waste management, water resources management, tourism, fishing, and power generation.

Not that most of the other BOTs are much better than we are. Falkland Islands is the most progressive, followed by Bermuda. Cayman Islands, TCI and and BVI are at least reviewing and revising their arrangements. We appear to be simply not trying.

Protected Areas

Commitment No 2: Ensure the Protection and Restoration of Key Habitats, Species and Landscape Features through Legislation and Appropriate Management Structures and Mechanisms, Including a Protected Areas Policy, and Attempt the Control and Eradication of Invasive Species. This was the second 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. His 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].

According to the Report, we have not done very well in meeting this second commitment. The report records that Anguilla “lacks legislation to designate terrestrial protected areas, but such legislation has been drafted and awaits being put before the Legislative Assembly”. So, though we have six designated protected areas, they are not protected by law. That makes us the lone BOT, other than St Helena, with 0 acres of nature protected areas. Unlike most of the other territories, we have 0 key species with conservation action plans developed, completed, or being implemented. We have, unlike most of the other territories, done nothing to update our legislation to fill gaps in nature protection. We have not completed a review of invasive species problems. We appear to have no action plan to deal with invasive species.

I remember after Hurricane Louis. The green iguana, Iguana iguana [link here], arrived on our beaches floating on logs that came from Guadeloupe and Dominica where they had been uprooted by the storm and washed out to sea. Illegal immigrants! We were warned at the time that they posed a threat to our indigenous iguana, Iguana delicatissima [link here]. No one seems to be paying attention. Today, you can buy a locally bred illegal immigrant in any pet shop on the island. They are now considered almost local!

When I asked the Anguilla National Trust if they had any comment, they replied, “While HMG and UKOTCF would like to see Anguilla implement more of the Charter, the truth is that Anguilla is in fact spending more resources implementing the St. George’s Declaration (SGD) and the National Environmental Management Strategy (NEMS) which all OECS countries signed back in 2001. The Principles of the SGD are far more relevant to our needs at this time and there is greater support coming from the OECS-ESDU. In fact, Anguilla has received several commendations from OECS with respects to the SGD & NEMS. Only St. Lucia (home of OECS Secretariat) is more advanced than us in the SGD’s implementation. What this report has not pointed out is that while Anguilla appears to have performed poorly, HMG has been reducing funding via its Overseas Territories Environment Programme (a funding facility) and that the same UKOTCF competes with UKOTs for funds from this facility to implement projects in UKOTs.”

Now, I know that the ANT is a statutory corporation and not a branch of government. But, the ANT is, in the Department of the Environment, the executive arm of government that implements the policies and programmes of government. Government is its largest funding source. The ANT speaks for government in the area of the environment. So, I suppose that reaction was only to be expected.

I do hope that when we make commitments we will put aside the funding to meet them.

Is that not what we are all supposed to do in our daily personal lives?