Implement an effective wildlife law to prevent environmental loss
EVERY year we see more letters lamenting losses of agricultural land and wild areas, and the prospect of a much over-urbanised Guernsey. We have faint hope that our letters will finally ‘wake up’ the politicians, who will at last turn to save our natural environment. Unfortunately, no such ‘turn’ is ever likely to happen.
We so-called environmentalists need to stop relying solely on education to try to ‘wake people up’. We need rather to come to terms with a truth: that the island’s government is already aware of the environmental losses, but is actually quite contented to allow them to continue as an acceptable by-effect of its economic strategy.
Only then will it be understood that the only way forward in preventing such destructions is to demand the adoption of an effective, legally binding dedicated wildlife law to, in effect, compel the government to act.
It seems obvious that no modern jurisdiction – at least not one like Guernsey – could ever protect wildlife (meadows, native hedgebanks, bird and bat roosts) without a wildlife law. Yet here Guernsey is – the only jurisdiction in the British Isles and (virtually) all of Europe without a dedicated wildlife law.
The last place in the British Isles to implement a dedicated wildlife law was Jersey, 23 years ago. The Isle of Man did so 33 years ago, and the UK at least 42 years ago. We need to stop believing that a new Guernsey wildlife law is forever just over the horizon.
The States would have us believe that their hands are tied on environmental protections: that their political strategy is a properly considered balance of conflicting community needs, that they are poor and no money can be spared for special environmental protections.
I might have some sympathy if theirs was a truly balanced strategy of consolidation. But it is not. It is a highly imbalanced strategy with a focus on wealth creation and economic expansion: of significant long-term increases in immigration, population and housing; of the development of the entire east coast, and of a clamouring to lengthen the runway. Their taxation policy favours wealthy people and corporations, sending the cost of living sky-high while putting the burden of tax on lower-income people. If this is what is required to maintain the economy at its current level (apparently that is the goal), then perhaps it would be better to allow GDP and cost of living to naturally decline, and prefer to be guided less by the markets and more by quality-of-life.
We now find ourselves in the situation described by a recent letter – of an island locked into endless house-building by market forces. The States is a particularly market-led beast. It allows the market to lead it around by the nose, to the exclusion of non-market agendas like wildlife protections.
Less radically market-led jurisdictions implemented wildlife protections decades ago. Guernsey should do the same, by implementing an effective dedicated wildlife law.
ANDREW LEE