Saving Great Guana Cay

	The northeastern tip of Great Guana Cay would be completely developed, with a golf course and homes. PHOTOS: Save Guana Cay Reef Association

Developers from around the world are transforming Caribbean coastlines into high-end tourist destinations, displacing local communities, destroying critical ecosystems, and forever changing a way of life. Projects are often pushed through without local consent, with benefits going to foreign investors and tourists, but not local people.
ELAW is working with grassroots advocates in the Caribbean to help communities have a say in decisions about coastal development. ELAW is also helping communities across the region share lessons and strategies.

Bahamas Threatened
A tiny barrier reef island in the Bahamas is currently under threat from a mega-tourist development. The Discovery Land Company, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, is in the process of building a 450-unit gated community, which will include a golf course, a large marina, tennis courts, a hotel, and a destination spa. If the development continues to move ahead, critical and unique ecosystems will be destroyed, the reef could be devastated, and 150 islanders, whose ancestors settled here 200 years ago, would be swamped by hundreds of tourists.

ELAW is working with Bahamian attorney Frederick Smith and the Save Guana Cay Reef Association to challenge the project, which was approved by the government without proper permits or local consent. Environmental groups in the Bahamas have retained Frederick to help protect islands from inappropriate coastal development which promotes tourism and provides second homes for Floridians and foreign investors at the expense of the local environment.

“ELAW is working alongside leading coral reef scientists and marine ecologists, as well as Bahamian and international environmental organizations, to stop the destruction of Great Guana Cay,” says Mark McLaughlin, a law student and ELAW volunteer who worked with Frederick in the Bahamas this summer. Mark helped review case files and identified inadequacies in the public participation process for local communities.

“Our environment and local rights will not be sacrificed at the altar of the almighty dollar.”
- Frederick Smith

	Cuban emerald (Chlorostibon ricordi) PHOTO: Erik Gauger

Great Guana Cay: What’s at risk?

Whiteland Coppice: These rugged and durable trees and
shrubs are home to Bahamian land crabs, an important ecological species
and a local delicacy.

Virgin forests: Home to endemic and neotropical migrating birds.
Sea turtle nesting sites: Loggerhead, green and hawksbill sea turtles are endangered or threatened.
Coral reefs: Great Guana Cay has some of the healthiest surviving elkhorn and staghorn coral in the world.

“Over a hundred acres of pristine mangrove
forest have already been devastated, burnt or completely dredged away.
If the project is allowed to continue, entire habitats could be lost.”
- Mark McLaughlin

In 2006, ELAW Staff Attorney Jennifer Gleason and Frederick joined Diana McCaulay, Director of the Jamaica Environment Trust, to co-host an environmental law workshop in the Dominican Republic. Valuable lessons and strategies were shared to help protect coastal resources throughout the Caribbean. Diana’s organization has inspired grassroots advocates around the world through its effective use of the law and community education to protect Jamaica’s natural heritage.

Jamaica For Sale

The Jamaica Environment Trust is working with filmmakers, ELAW, and communities to protect this island nation from high-rise, Cancun-style development. Jamaica’s coastlines are under assault. JET is using the courts and the media to challenge shortsighted development and educate Jamaicans about what’s at stake.

JET Director Diana McCaulay co-produced the film “Jamaica For Sale,” to get the word out. She joined ELAW Executive Director Bern Johnson for a panel discussion about using law and film to protect Jamaica for future generations at the 2008 Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival in Seattle.

Diana says:
“Jamaica has seen an expansion of large scale, high impact, all inclusive hotel development of an unprecedented scale and speed over the past five years. This development has taken place despite the existence of a Tourism Master Plan for Sustainable Development which promoted a very different approach. It has also occurred without adequate infrastructure for tourism workers, with insufficient attention paid to the preservation of important natural resources and has displaced local people and denied them access to Jamaica’s beaches. Especially in the north, our coastline is being transformed into a concrete coast. We share concerns with many other Caribbean islands and would like to work more closely with others in the region to advocate for a more Caribbean-style, low impact, inclusive and sustainable tourism.”