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Premier Brown said this week that members of the Sustainable Development Round Table were dropped because we disagreed, via the media, with the government's outrageous decision back in August 2006 to bury almost one third of Bermuda's Botanical Gardens under the concrete and glass of a new hospital. That's only part of the truth.

The government made three mistakes. First it made that decision against the advice of the consultants and against public opinion obtained in formal surveys. It would have been against the opinion of the Round Table too, had we been asked. We weren't asked.

Second, the government made its announcement in the media. Contrary to its own Sustainable Development principles of stakeholder involvement there was no prior consultation - none.

Third, the government declared its decision irrevocable. In other words, there would be no consultation after the fact - no review, no second look, no negotiation.

Dr. Brown knows, and he knew then, that the Round Table could not have retained any credibility whatsoever had we remained publicly silent. It was not the Round Table's fault that government initiatives were looked upon with suspicion. It was not the Round Table's fault that it was excluded from a truly consultative role, or even an advisory role, in the plan to eviscerate the Botanical Gardens. It was not the Round Table's shortcoming that it was put in the position of doing naught but react to a Cabinet level decision of extraordinary environmental and cultural import.

Retaliation

Dropping myself and several others from the Round Table was done in retaliation, pure and simple.

Dr. Brown's administration has a penchant for trying to keep a lid on criticism. It has fired employees, deported work permit holders, and let loose its political hucksters to intimidate and make personal attacks. It spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in a failed attempt to muzzle the media.

So after a year of inertia, the Round Table is being revived. This is good news.

However, the proof of this pudding will be in the eating. Dr. Brown's highlighting of his new appointees' credentials will be meaningless unless the Round Table really gets down to business. For starters, here are just a few of the issues that desperately need attention through a sustainability lens:

n Will businesses in Hamilton be sustainable if the city is dropped from the cruise ship circuit?

n Will Bermuda's roads be physically sustainable if they are beaten up faster than repairs and resurfacing can keep up, by too many vehicles that are too heavy and moving too fast?

n Will Bermuda's roads be functionally sustainable if they continue to be clogged like cholesterol-filled arteries?

n Will the local economy be sustainable if jobs filled by Bermudians continue to decrease while jobs for foreigners continue to expand?

n Will Bermuda's system of democracy be sustainable if governmental assaults on the fundamentals of transparency and accountability continue to escalate, while governmental support for fiscal and policy oversight continues to erode?

n Is Bermuda's culture sustainable if the ratio of foreign workers to locals continues to increase?

n Is the future participation of Bermudians in the economy sustainable if our public school system continues to waste our human potential?

n Will Tourism be sustainable if Bermuda's image as a safe destination continues to decline?



Members of the new Round Table have a difficult task. They have to overcome a year or two of inertia and a membership overloaded with political partisans. If they can wade through all that, they may then have the onerous task of telling our government things the Premier has historically not wanted to hear.

Nevertheless, I wish the new Round Table success in their work. I'm on their team, in spirit if not in body.

Editor's note: See Wednesday's Bermuda Sun for Stuart Hayward's full critique of government's new sutainable development policy.[[In-content Ad]]

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