Southern Belize Needs Your Help!

[Ralph Capeling]

Mike, you must not have noticed the article had data in it to support it's position. Maybe you could consider providing data to support your view?
Regards
Ralph

 

[AWMIII]

Freshly back from a liveaboard trip that ended in Phillipsburg St Maarten, I have an even greater distaste for the cruise industry than I had before. That town might as well be Downtown Disney. If you want Disney go to Disney. Don't try to turn the Caribbean to Disney World. I would never consider vacationing in St Maarten. It has been ruined.

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[flots am]

Environment
According to our partner at Climate Care, a cruise liner such as Queen Mary 2 emits 0.43kg of CO2 per passenger mile, c

Do you know you're complaining about an 11 year old ship?

On average, passengers on a cruise ship each account for 3.5 kilograms of rubbish daily

On any modern ship, the metal, plastic, paper and cardboard is crushed, baled and stored for recycling back in Miami.

Used water is purified to almost drinking water standards and used to spray down decks and wash the ship.

compared with the 0.8 kilograms each generated by local people on shore. (Source: Our Planet)

Really? Do Belize residents have a 0 landfill policy and sewage treatment that creates almost drinkable water? I'm impressed.

Ships release an estimated 1.2 million to 1.6 million metric tons of tiny airborne particles each year.

That's impressive until you compare it with auto-emissions, fossil fuel burning power plants, at which point it becomes nearly insignificant.

In any case, this is just a smoke screen for your anti-economic development platform.

 

[Mike]

Mike, you must not have noticed the article had data in it to support it's position. Maybe you could consider providing data to support your view?
Regards
Ralph

Focusing on the real issue of the local issues of building the cruise ship docks, the impacts on the local environment, people and experience is smarter than focusing on false information trying to paint cruise ships as being technological / polluting villains.

The impacts aren't because of the ships polluting anything, the impacts are the disgorging of thousands of people onto your location, the infrastructure built to do so, and the locals shortsightedness prostituting themselves and your resources for short-term personal gain.

---------- Post added May 5th, 2014 at 08:59 PM ----------

Freshly back from a liveaboard trip that ended in Phillipsburg St Maarten, I have an even greater distaste for the cruise industry than I had before. That town might as well be Downtown Disney. If you want Disney go to Disney. Don't try to turn the Caribbean to Disney World. I would never consider vacationing in St Maarten. It has been ruined.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

Go just a mile into the interior of St Maarten and then report back your observations instead of writing off an entire country over the tiny area surrounding the cruise ship pier area. Your take is like writing off all of Florida because of Disney land in Orlando.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Flots and Mike like cruising.

 

[flots am]

Flots and Mike like cruising.

Actually, I do, and feel zero guilt about it.

It's also fascinating to see the difference between the ports that decided to improve the local economy using the thousands of customers dropped at the port every day or two, and those that don't.

 

[AWMIII]

For what it's worth, we drove all over the island visiting Marigot and dining in Grand Cast. I feel the sane way about the towns along the inside passage. They have been destroyed. Cruisers don't like reality.

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[Edward3c]

In the 1970's before the environment became a sales thing, the London Brick Company applied to Bedford Council for planning to build a nice new brick plant. Fully expecting the Council to reject the idea they spent a small fortune on 'priming' central Government figures to approve the plant.

What a surprise they got when the Council approved the plant, but imposed local employment and environmental caveats. As the Council had approved the plan central Government couldn't give the company the freedom to wreck the place.

If the Plecensia authorities had bought into the project and imposed their own caveats, the Belizian Government wouldn't be the ones doing the negotiations. As Belizian laws tend to follow the UK.

Its to late to complain now.

 

[Ralph Capeling]

BTIA Tells NCL: See You In court
posted (May 5, 2014)

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Today, the Belize Tourism Industry Association filed its claim for judicial review in the Supreme Court. They're seeking to challenge the decision of the Department of Environment and the National Environmental Appraisal Committee's decision to give the green light on Norwegian Cruise Line's Harvest Caye Cruise Port. That's the decision they took after receiving a response from the Government about their concerns on how the committee approved the project.At a press conference this morning, their attorney, Godfrey Smith, explained it to us:
Godfrey Smith, attorney for BTIA

"We have received instructions from Belize Tourism Industry Association to file an application for leave to bring judicial review proceedings challenging certain decisions of the NEAC (National Appraisal Committee) and the Department of the Environment."
"The challenge will be based on decisions reached by NEAC, as well as decisions reached by the Department of the Environment. In relation to NEAC, certainly, without going into all the details of it, the essence of what we are saying, the essence of what we are challenging is the decision of the NEAC to not recommend a public hearing in relation to this matter, in circumstances where we believe the law requires a public hearing and we will be challenging the fact that in breach of the regulations or environmental laws, the required publication and notice requirements were not met. I shall not list all of those, suffice it to say that at the end of the day when one examines what transpired in relation to the publication of notice of the addendum and the time given to respond to it, what we are left with is a clear picture that it was severely, drastically truncated."
Janelle Chanona, VP - OCEANA Belize

"We are monitoring the developments of this case as the president for BTIA mentioned it is regrettable that in order to feel like you are a part of the conversation at the table you have to seek redress through the courts, so we are certainly monitoring this matter very carefully."
Roberto Pott, Representative - Healthy Reef for Healthy People Initiative

"You've heard the representative Mr. Mike asking for a public hearing rather than just a public consolation. It seems that if they took your comments but it went nowhere and the public hearing would allow you to document the contributions that you would make. It make no sense for us to share our views if it won't be heard, if it's fallen on deaf ears."
Nicole Auil Gomez, Executive Director - Southern Environmental Association

"Southern Environmental Association is the organization in the south that manages protected areas in the south. One of the main concerns that we have is the fact that this large scale development, the environment impact assessment in its totality still does not correct a lot of the mistakes that were there in the original version, so that was a disappointment in the additional documentation that was sent forth. Our primary concerns are the stakeholder communities and really how the totality of benefits to these community members has not been explicitly and properly documented."
According to Smith, the BTIA will write to the executives of Norwegian Cruise Line, requesting that they reach and undertaking not to start any physical works on the Harvest Caye Project until after this matter is concluded in court. If that undertaking is not met, then, they will seek to block the cruise company by way of an injunction.

 

[flots am]

In the 1970's before the environment became a sales thing, the London Brick Company applied to Bedford Council for planning to build a nice new brick plant. Fully expecting the Council to reject the idea they spent a small fortune on 'priming' central Government figures to approve the plant.

What a surprise they got when the Council approved the plant, but imposed local employment and environmental caveats. As the Council had approved the plan central Government couldn't give the company the freedom to wreck the place.

If the Plecensia authorities had bought into the project and imposed their own caveats, the Belizian Government wouldn't be the ones doing the negotiations. As Belizian laws tend to follow the UK.

Its to late to complain now.

I mentioned this a while back (several times) and was slapped around for it.

This isn't the first Public Works project I've seen that pissed off a group of people, and it always ends the same.

If they had gotten involved to steer it, it could have been nearly anything they wanted. However they just stood there and said "no!".

People that stand in front of huge things and say "no!" typically get ignored and pushed out of the way.

Highway construction in the US in the 60s-80s worked the same way. With a little effort, it was possible to steer the highway around historically significant neighborhoods, and various accommodations were built to minimize impact on environmentally sensitive areas (tunnels under the highway for wildlife to cross, etc.). This worked just fine, except for the people who simply didn't like highways at all and stood there and said "no!" They were simply ignored.

The ability of humans to not learn from the past, still fascinates me.