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To my Bahamian friends:

No country in the world does a good job of protecting their environment, and none has adequate water quality standards that protect coral reefs. No country deals with human waste treatment adequately, and none even addresses the issues of animal wastes and fertilizers seriously. None has ever made any effort to map the nutrient sources or attempt to control them. So you must base your policies on what is best to save what you have left, not by copying what other people are (not) doing.

But with regard to coral reef and coastal zone protection, let's look at how the Bahamas' neighbors deal with these issues.

1. Turks and Caicos

I recently submitted the National Coral Reef Assessment and Management and Restoration Strategy to the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) of the Government of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI). Once this has been approved I will be able to send you a copy. TCI is the only place I have ever seen in the world that makes all major developers build package secondary sewage treatment plants on their property and recycle all of the waste water on their own property as irrigation for plants and lawns.

I have seen a tiny handful (and that is the hand the barracuda bit my finger off) of extremely conscientious developers do this voluntarily on their properties because it is the right thing to do, but no other place where this is a matter of official policy for all developers. Mangroves are pretty much untouched in TCI (I think they are strictly protected, but not entirely sure), and this is needed because these habitats are critical for juvenile lobsters and to some degree conch. TCI is the only country that has voluntarily adopted (informally) water quality standards that protect coral reefs, but they lack any capacity to monitor nutrients. TCI has a truly remarkable proportion of their waters protected from fishing, and this has wide popular support from the fishermen, unlike most places. Despite severely limited funds and personnel they do the best job of coastal zone management of any country in the world that I have ever seen or heard of. Because they are also the closest in conditions to the Bahamas, they are the ideal model the Bahamas should adopt, and I would really advise those interested in marine protection and management to visit your nearest neighbors before you go anyplace else.

2. Cuba

Almost the entire coastline, mangroves, wetlands, and coral reefs, of Cuba are strictly protected and in as pristine condition as it is possible to imagine. As a result Cuba has the best diving in the Caribbean. Only a few percent of the shore is zoned for ports and tourism. Certainly it is true that these are as bad as anyplace, raw sewage runs from the cities into the sea and harbors are covered with oil slicks. These include Havana, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Santiago de Cuba, Varadero, and a handful of other ports, but these occupy only a few percent of the coastline, development is strictly planned, and there is no uncontrolled rush to destroy the coastline by people acting on their own, or bribing officials to let them do what they want. Cuba has about a hundred times more professional marine scientists and fisheries professionals than all the other Caribbean islands put together. They are severely limited by lack of funding because every proposal they make to international agencies are blocked by the US, so they are unable to monitor water quality to plan rational strategies of waste management. There is no doubt that rivers in agricultural areas are open sewers, like everyplace else, but I was astonished to see that all the river valleys in the plateau were entirely forested from the bottom of the valley to the top of the plateau, and over it to form a thick buffer zone. These are old growth forests with enormous trees getting larger to the bottom: they have never been cut and have been preserved since before sugar cultivation began, in order to preserve the soil where it is needed and prevent erosion. I had never seen anything like it, in Jamaica we cleared the valleys from the bottom up, let all the soil wash away, and there is no pristine low land forest left anywhere, causing tremendous erosion.

I'm especially proud of this because I believe it was set in place by an ancestor of mine, Francisco de Arango y Parreno, who intensively studied land use, agricultural methods, and soil erosion in Jamaica and Haiti in the late 1700s and early 1800s in order to develop rational and scientifically sound policies of development, that almost no other country seems to have 200 years later. Another of my family, Rafael Arango Molina, published the first list of most of the Caribbean corals, in 1877. There is no doubt that Cuba has serious economic problems, but their environmental problems seem to stem purely a lack of financial resources, not of lack of commitment, knowledge, or trained people, as almost everywhere else. So while there is some truth in the web site you sent me, it does not agree with my observations, and you should note that it comes from a Florida web site that represents the political interests of Cuban exiles and is hardly objective.

3. United States

I'm involved with local diver groups in trying to save the only good reef in the continental US, inn Broward County, Florida, and the only one you can swim to from the beach. This reef has about 4-5 miles of reef with 30-40% live coral cover, the largest stand of staghorn coral I know of anywhere in the Caribbean, and many corals that are 500-1000 years old. This is far better than the "protected" Florida Keys, whose coral cover is now down to around 2%. Amazingly it has no protection whatsoever, and our efforts to get it protected have been completely stonewalled for years. Every single county, state, and federal agency has approved a plan to kill it by dredging. For some $60 million or so in quick profit by dredging companies and their crooked for hire Florida consultants (shades of Guana Cay and Bimini), they plan to destroy reefs that generate 1.2 Billion dollars every year in revenue for Broward County alone. The state of Florida denies this reef exists. The US Environmental Protection Agency denies that sewage and nutrients cause algae blooms, and is continuing to permit sewage discharges into the ocean.

The US Army Corps of Engineers denies that sediments kill corals, and permits dredging right next to the largest remaining stand of the most sediment intolerant corals. The National Ocean and Atmosphere Administration does not admit that global warming is the cause of coral bleaching. And they spend millions more money than any country in the world on publicity cover-ups of these issues.

My suggestion is that Bahamians take a very close look at what all of your neighbors actually do with their money to protect the marine environment, and work with those who are doing the most effective job, regardless of their resources. It is your environment that the Florida consultants like Kathleen will be only to happy to take developer's money to destroy.