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Environment
and development in coastal regions and in small islands |
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Environment
and development in coastal regions and in small islands |
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Dominica workshop papers
Coastal Stewardship and User Conflicts
Gillian Cambers
Background
The major goal of the project ‘Managing
beach resources and planning for coastline change, Caribbean islands’ (COSALC)[1]
is to develop in-country capability so that island states can measure, assess
and manage their beach resources within a framework of integrated coastal management.
Within the scope of this project, and with additional support from the
Caribbean
Development Bank [2],
a series of workshops on ‘Wise coastal practices for beach management’ were
held in nine islands over a six-month period, September 2000 to February 2001.
Workshops were held in Anguilla,
Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Nevis,
St. Kitts, Bequia in the St. Vincent Grenadines, and the Turks and Caicos
Islands. The main goals of the
workshops were (i) to initiate a dialogue among beach users about beach
management practices, and (ii) to highlight the existence, nature and
availability of the beach monitoring databases.
Persons from government and non-governmental
organisations, the private sector, beach user groups, secondary schools and the
general public attended the workshops, however, the composition and size of the
audience varied. The time of day
(daytime or evening) was another variable.
The outcomes of each workshop as well as an overview of the results have
been fully documented (Cambers, 2001).
Beach User Conflicts
The workshop presentations and discussions highlighted conflicts between different user groups, specifically between:
Furthermore, these conflicts between different user groups are compounded by two main factors:
Physical planning is becoming marginalised in many
of the small islands, with decisions about large and small developments being
taken by the political directorate with or without the advice of professional
planning staff.
Environmental legislation is often outdated and
unclear, and rarely is it properly implemented.
Conflict Resolution
Various tools were proposed to reduce these conflicts over beach resources, these included:
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education and awareness; | |
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community responsibility for beaches; | |
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improved agency coordination; | |
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clear definition of agency responsibilities regarding beach management; | |
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proactive approaches to planning; | |
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implementation of adequate coastal development setbacks; | |
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improvement of beach facilities. |
A Way Forward
Capitalising on the human
capacity to care
A little understood, but limitless resource, is
acquired at birth by every human being, and this is the human capacity to care.
Every community and society has reserves of ‘caring’ that few exploit and
most do not recognise. This
capacity for caring has been at the core of a civil society organisation called
‘Mustard Seed Communities’ which has been working for more than 20 years on
the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica, to enrich and empower communities to break
out of the cycles of frustration and hopelessness associated with poverty[3].
The philosophy invoked by this organisation can
well be applied to environment and development issues in general and to beach
resources in particular. Observations
show that people do care about environmental issues, particularly at the local
level, however, it is a case of finding out which issues they care about.
(This is one of the goals of the proposal for ‘Small Islands Voice’).
For instance, a general topic such as sea level rise, may not be of
particular concern in some of the more mountainous Caribbean islands, although
in the low-lying atolls of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, it may be a
different story. At a local level,
blocking the last remaining public access to a popular beach may be something
that people care about and it may provide a point of mobilisation for local
action. A recent case in San Juan,
Puerto Rico, provides a case in point, where a group of people protested the
blocking of a public access to the Punta Las Marias beach, as well as the
encroachment of this development onto the active beach area (known as the
maritime zone in Puerto Rico). Their
action has resulted in a court order stopping the development.
Installing a sense of civic pride
This involves having a personal commitment to a
community and/or country and in many cases it might involve sacrificing
individual gains or benefits for the greater good of the community or island.
Invoking the
principles of coastal stewardship
This is the topic of this workshop, and while coastal stewardship means
different things to different people, the general concept implies collective
responsibility for coastal (beach) resources.
This means every individual should play a role in the implementation of
wise coastal practices, and these practices should not necessarily be dominated
by financial goals. Thus the
primary focus of stewardship is directed towards managing beaches for the
benefit of islanders, although obviously these actions will also benefit
tourists.
Developing social contracts among beach
users
Bearing in mind that many of the existing
environmental laws, do not work and have never worked, partly because of
ambiguity and partly because of a lack of implementation, it is necessary to
look to other mechanisms, while also pursuing and improving the legal and
regulatory framework.
An alternative mechanism is to try and incorporate
a moral dimension – following a certain course of behaviour because it is the
right course. One way to include moral values is to view a broad picture and
develop ethical codes of practice, as has been done for specific groups such as
art dealers and the professional association of landscape architects.
These ethical codes are somewhat similar in scale to the broad statements
and goals contained in government policy documents (see paper by Alwin
Bully).
Another approach may be to work at the micro-level,
e.g. a particular beach, and to try and develop social contracts between beach
users (see paper by Lilith Richards). This is obviously going to be difficult,
because in most of the islands, the beach is common property - it is owned by
the government for the people. Thus
a social contract will have to involve all beach users, these may come from
the immediate area, or any part of the island, and may also include persons
outside the country e.g. absentee landowners, foreign developers. A social contract
would involve a set of general principles and a method of procedure, which would
be designed and agreed by the signatories to the contract. For instance, one
principle might be to conserve Beach X, while also recognising that landowners
at this beach have the right to protect their property.
The method of procedure would provide mechanisms for the resolution of
conflicts.
Obviously the approach has similarities to a
community approach, but it has a much wider scope because it looks to users from
beyond the immediate environs of the beach.
Such users could for example include residents from another part of the
island who visit the beach for recreation, but who feel that they have a
significant stake in the particular beach.
Concluding Remarks
If, as citizens of individual countries and as members of the
global community, we agree with the principle of sustainability, then we have a
moral duty to become the stewards of our environment – to use and manage it
wisely for the generations still to come.
Cambers, G. 2001. Monitoring beach changes as an integral component of beach management. Final report of the project on ‘Institutional strengthening of beach management capabilities in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and the Turks and Caicos Islands’.
