Rhon­dor Dowlat

Sec­re­tary of the en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist group Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) Gary Aboud says his or­gan­i­sa­tion is not sure if it should mourn or cel­e­brate San­dals’ with­draw­al as they wel­come de­vel­op­ment for To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, Aboud said now is the time to have the Buc­coo Reef as an En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Area.

In 2004, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) took steps to des­ig­nate Buc­coo Reef Na­tion­al Park as an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive area (ESA).

“Why was this des­ig­na­tion nev­er en­act­ed? FFOS re­spect­ful­ly call on the Hon Min­is­ter or Plan­ning and the EMA to recom­mence these pro­ceed­ings to des­ig­nate Buc­coo Reef as an ESA. The Buc­coo Reef is unar­guably a unique, com­plex ma­rine ecosys­tem, im­per­a­tive to the coastal pro­tec­tion of south­west To­ba­go and our fish­eries. It ought to re­ceive the high­est form of le­gal pro­tec­tion,” Aboud said.

“There’s a crit­i­cal bal­ance be­tween the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and the eco­log­i­cal jus­tice this we call sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment,” he added.

Aboud even ques­tioned if T&T could have af­ford­ed to build the San­dals ho­tel for “$8 bil­lion” and ques­tioned why wasn’t a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis done.

“When the coun­try is so far in­to debt that one has to won­der why wasn’t the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis done we have seen how the Venezue­lan econ­o­my has gone from rich­es to pover­ty are we sink­ing our na­tion fur­ther and fur­ther in­to the Venezue­lan mod­el,” Aboud said.

On Tues­day, San­dals an­nounced its with­draw­al of its Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) for the con­struc­tion of the San­dals Re­sort in Buc­coo Es­tate, To­ba­go.

Sev­er­al sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment groups have claimed that this re­sort will re­sult in the de­struc­tion of Buc­coo Reef, which was once rat­ed as the “num­ber three spec­tac­u­lar sight to be­hold in the world” by Jacques Cousteau, French Oceanog­ra­ph­er and Ex­plor­er.

“Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea wel­come de­vel­op­ment for To­ba­go, but all projects must con­form to the en­vi­ron­men­tal laws of our coun­try. Our coral reef, man­groves and fish­eries must not be com­pro­mised. It’s more than en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, it’s safe­guard­ing our coun­try for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” Aboud said.