Following an appeal by Waterloo, after the Department of the Environment (DOE) had, for a second time, rejected the group’s proposal to expand existing facilities at the Port of Belize Ltd. (PBL) to the level where it could berth the world’s largest cruise ships, the Minister of Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management, as per the law, has set up a 3-member Appeal Tribunal to review the decision of the DOE. The decision of the DOE had come after the National Environmental Appraisal Committee (NEAC) had expressed its disapproval of the project, in an almost unanimous vote.
The authority of the minister derives from the Environmental Protection Act Revised Edition 2003. Statutory Instrument No. 24 of 2007, cited as the Environmental Impact Assessment (Amendment) Regulations 2007, which gives the Tribunal, at Section 27B(5), the power to confirm, vary, amend or alter decisions made by the DOE. Section 27B(6) says that if the Tribunal decides against a decision by the DOE, it must do so in writing, after which the matter would be referred back to the DOE for the department to prepare an environmental compliance plan and fulfil other requirements.
The fact that a 3-member Tribunal can reverse the DOE’s decision is perplexing to many, but it’s the law that in their hands the fate of Waterloo now rests. None of the three members of the Tribunal — Ms. Lucy Fleming, Madame Justice Patricia Farnese, and Professor Terence Hughes – were born in Belize. All three Tribunal members chosen by the responsible minister, Hon. Orlando Habet, are well-credentialed, but Channel Five, the television station of Lord Ashcroft, the mover behind Waterloo, has hinted at grief over the selection of a couple of them.
Ms. Lucy Fleming is an alternate selection. In fact, a statutory instrument had to be passed before she was appointed to represent the private sector on a Tribunal that by law calls for the private sector Senator to be a Tribunal member, along with a representative of the judiciary, who serves as chair, and an environmental scientist.
It appeared automatic that former CEO of the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), private sector Senator, Hon. Kevin Herrera, would be on the Tribunal. However, he was booted off because he was in a “conflict of interest” situation — his brother, Allan, being a lead consultant for Waterloo. Herrera’s position was further clouded by the fact that the BCCI had declared that had the organization’s representative attended the meeting when the Waterloo proposal was voted on by the NEAC, s/he would have voted in favor of the project.
The BCCI was properly chastised for its disrespect of the process. The DOE said that the suggestion that the BCCI “could have voted without taking into account any scientific and technical reports shared at the meeting, is inconsistent with good decision-making practices and the standard for responsible committee membership.”
Ms. Fleming is as Belizean as any naturalized Belizean can get. Her life story is fascinating. She is a former president of the BTIA (2004), and is part owner (along with her husband) of one of Belize’s most visited tourist destinations: The Lodge at Chaa Creek. In the story “Chaa Creek Eco Lodge Founder Reveals Adventurous Life in Belize”, which is told by Ms. Meg Pier in her magazine People Are Culture, in her youth Ms. Fleming backpacked through Europe and Africa with her husband, Mick Fleming. In 1977 the couple arrived and fell in love with Belize, and through hard work, through real sweat and tears, they carved out the eco-friendly resort at Chaa Creek.
In a 2013 letter to then Prime Minister, Dean Barrow, Ms. Lucy Fleming and five other past presidents of the BTIA expressed concern over a GoB decision to authorize a cruise port on Harvest Caye. The BTIA presidents said that Belize’s appeal was based “on its world class natural attractions … on the uniqueness and authenticity of our people and way of life” and that the GoB decision countered “this long established understanding and diminishes Belize’s unique status as a true eco-tourism destination.” The BTIA presidents said: “Belize is a one-of-a-kind jewel that is becoming increasingly rare and valuable, just as surely as mass cruise tourism is becoming more common and mundane.”
A release from the Government of Belize Press Office says a second member of the Tribunal, Professor Terence Hughes, “will serve as the science expert having academic knowledge and training in environment, natural resources management and other related disciplines.” Professor Hughes, a marine biologist, lectures at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.
Australia has about 10 major ports, dozens of minor ports, and many coastal developments — projects that involved major dredging of the seabed. The country was “dredge happy”, but isn’t so anymore, partly because of the belief that such dredging had contributed to massive coral mortality that has been observed in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia in the past three decades.
The paper, “The Impact of Dredging in Cleveland Bay,” which can be found at the website minca.org, discusses a port expansion that involved “the removal of 11.4 million cubic meters of seabed”, with the spoils being “transferred from the seabed to a barge and then taken to the Port to create 152 hectares of new Port land.” The paper drew on the comments of Professor Hughes, about the impacts of dredging on “a popular reef walking trail in Geoffrey Bay” in Queensland.
Hughes said that in 1987, prior to the dredging of a channel, visitors could walk along the reef flat and view “a diverse mix of species including branching and brain corals”, but in 2014 the trail had “been long abandoned”, the intertidal reef “covered in a layer of mud.” Hughes said: “Whatever the complex reasons for these declines, near-shore fringing reefs and sea grass beds along the Queensland coast are fast disappearing and they can ill-afford further cumulative impacts from unprecedented dredging programs.”
Madame Justice Patricia Farnese, the chair of the Tribunal, has been a Supreme Court judge in Belize since 2022. KREM News noted that “her areas of expertise include environmental law, property law, animal health, and wildlife law.” The University of Saskatchewan, College of Law, on its website which can be found at law.usask.ca, lists a number of research papers Justice Farnese has written (or collaborated on). Notable among those she has written are: “An Ethic of Enough: Ownership as an Ethical Choice”; Canadian Soil Law”; “The Challenge of Discretion in Environmental Regulation: A Wetlands Case Study”; “The Challenge of Regulating Prions: How the Regulation of Persistent Organic Pollutants Can Provide a Framework for Preventing the Spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (2018)”; and “Will Nonhuman Rights Decrease Human Vulnerability to Zoonotic Diseases?”
The Tribunal has its work to do. When the DOE reported publicly on its decision to reject the Waterloo proposal, the project’s environmental impact was the overriding concern. The Tribunal will have to weigh the pros and cons on a number of other issues, such as what benefits would come to Belize; how expert corporations are at evading taxes; and the almost certain oversaturation of our tourism product.
The Tribunal’s deliberations will be more thorough if it considers Lord Ashcroft’s disrespect for governments, regulatory bodies, and the workers at PBL; investigated how PBL, an asset the Belizean people built up over generations, slipped into the group’s control; and the hard-to-believe threat by Waterloo to sue Belize if it doesn’t get its way.