power to the idiots

yesterday we went to a talk arranged by btia (belize tourist industry association) about the offshore oil drilling going on in belize. this was an interesting insight into the current situation (i was previously oblivious), and a glimpse into how belizeans deal with these situations. there weren't many people there. our friend mick fleming was there from chaa creek. there were various different speakers, all a bit mumbly but worthy nonetheless, except for audrey matura-shepherd, the attorney, who was excellent and made me want to be a lawyer, the same way watching alley mcbeal used to do. she said law is not about the truth, it is about getting the best attorney and getting all the evidence, and using both those things to your advantage. she pointed out numerous loopholes in belizean law, that leave the country open to greedy companies ready to exploit their natural resources. the general population are consistently uninformed and exhausted by corrupt politics.

the deal with the oil drilling is that only the government can exploit the petrol, alongside the drilling companies, they share the profit. there is no such thing as common law in belize (i may have got my terminology wrong in my haste to take notes), which means you can't get together with other people of your ilk (eg a group of hoteliers) and bring a case against the oil companies for potential harm to your businesses. you can only bring a public nuisance case if the attorney general deems it fit, but guess who the attorney general works for - the government. he is very unlikely to bring a court case against himself. there is a minister of petroleum, but he doesn't need by law to be an expert on petroleum. he can also designate his responsibilities to a civil servant of his choice, who again doesn't need to be an expert, or in fact to know anything about petroleum. they are given superpowers, but have no knowledge or expertise with which to back up their superpowers - thus the title of today's blog. there is no mandatory independent governing body to oversee all this activity and to vet the contract bidding process. there is no mandatory environmental trust fund that the oil companies have to pay in to, for contingency funds in the inevitable case of an oil spill. there simply isn't the manpower or wherewithal in this country to deal with this properly, leaving it wide open to total exploitation and disaster. belize inherited its laws from england, and simply hasn't ever changed or adapted them to meet their own specific needs and to protect them properly.

when you look at the size of belize (small), and the rate and size of oil spills even in the case of huge, professional oil drilling companies like bp (big), and the fact that there is no contingency or monitoring in place, and the fact that belize relies almost entirely on the tourism created by the reef and marine life, you realise that all it will take is one oil spill and there goes the majority of belize's tourism based economy, and therefore there goes belize, more or less. as audrey pointed out, not many tourists want to come to see a black reef full of dead fish. 

that is my synopsis of the situation. as so often happens in developing countries there is total mismanagement of natural resources. one man commented that we don't want belize to become like nigeria where you have rebel gangs venting their frustration at not benefitting from their countries natural resource wealth, and taking the law into their own hands. hopefully it won't come to that, and this meeting will be the start of a proper process of bringing the government to task on how horrendously corrupt and inefficient it is.

in other news - jorge, who works here at the house, caught 2 of the crabs from outside our house.  they are really big and really blue, i'll put a picture up next time. robert tried to get one of them to nip me but i ran off screaming. tomorrow we're going to placencia and i will cycle some of the hummingbird highway on the way there. robert will drive behind me with the hazards on. bye.