Friendship could do without marina

Tue, Aug 24, 2010

Editor: I write as Chester Connell, proud citizen of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as Paul wrote of Rome. I write as a Wallace of Bequia, as a man protecting his home. Caveat emptor: I am not a “spoiled foreigner”. Me barn ya. I write about the proposed Bequia Blue Development in Friendship.{{more}}

Allow me to first feel a fond memory of Friendship. I remember well those idyllic days… I remember when we were free to walk and swim anywhere, anytime…

Wake up! This is not romanticising a childhood past; this is a reality check in the present! A marina will turn that azure, aquamarine sea of Friendship – in 10 years – into a bilge-filled bog, a bio-diversity-deadening oil-slicked pond. This marina completely detracts from, nay, disturbs, destroys and dishonours the natural, historical, spiritual and social stature and landscape of Friendship – and Bequia. The whole vernacular – architectural, spiritual, linguistic, social, and marine – of this precious space will be reduced to an abyss, a bottomless pit of cultural “clap” and environmental insurgents. We must stop this Viking-like relentless rape and political pillaging. We will hear a lot of architectural, marketing and political sophistry about environmental management plans and best management practices and how the project will create 45 million jobs for 5,000 people….it amounts to a sea of semantic syphilis.

Let me say that I fully support any plan conceived with integrity and responsibility for the development of Bequia such as the installation of electricity, roads, and effective, comfortable ferry services. Thank you, visionary leaders in government and private sector who accomplished this over the past 40 years!

The dictionary indicates that the word integrity means:

1)”adherence to ethical principles
2) “The state of being whole”
3) “Undiminished”
4) “A sound, unimpaired or perfect condition.

A marina in Bequia lacks integrity and does not contribute – but in fact destroys the notion and ocean of sustainable tourism. Sustainable tourism should:

• make optimal use of environmental resources

• maintain essential ecological resources,

• conserve natural heritage and biodiversity.

• respect the socio-cultural authenticity of the community,

• conserve the living cultural heritage and traditional values

A marina in Friendship is preposterous, it’s an oxymoron, it’s a contradiction of common sense. Take a gorgeous, pristine, natural, marine environment that’s alive and open, flowing and free, a source of joy to all. Then, through greed for profit, kill it; make a money-machine for a select few – under the guise of creating “jobs” for the people of Bequia. What is people-wrong could never be economically right. What about the necessary laws needed for this type of operation? How are these laws going to be policed? What about hazardous waste management? Spill Prevention Control and counter-measure planning? Bequia cannot now handle the numerous challenges with the current flow of yachts and their pollutants coming into our waters. Consider the mounting challenges of increased yacht traffic and its illegitimate spawn. General crime, drugs and piracy are three of many more that will attend this maritime monster.

We can predict the future – by creating it. Now! We must have a common (and uncommon) sense response to the questions:

1. What type of investment is right for US not for the US or UK investor?
2. When is enough investment enough?
3. What is the end product?
4. What are we seeking to achieve with this marina?

If the best response the politicians/planners/owners can come up with is, “jobs for the people of Bequia” and “more foreign exchange/more visitors to Bequia” then I say that is the complete antithesis of what is needed. Less is more. Stop this infernal five-hundred year practice of OUR ALLOWING an external group ABUSING us to create a machine that we the hard-working get winched into like a sheet in a sail in a Bequia regatta double-ender. At what point do we stop filling up the open land and sea with an edifice to profit and leave a space simply because that space has priceless value to all?

I share the “Cadet Prayer” of the U.S. Military Academy:

“Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole truth can be won. Endow us with the courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.”

Please, politicians, planners, people – keep this and all other such “devil-opments” away from Bequia. Make no plans for building BIG in Bequia, or we become but burglars of the bliss that is Bequia and thieves of our children’s God-given, ancestor-driven inheritance – a free, open, clean, green land. Liberty.

Chester Connell
Chesterconnell.com