Ruminations of our Minister of Environment

THE RUMINATIONS OF OUR MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT

One has to give it to our Minister for the Environment, Mr Ronny Jumeau. He is known to speak the obvious openly to the state media, who reports his ruminations faithfully.

Last weekend Ronny was in La Digue, to accompany President Michel who was on his nth official visit there since he became President two years ago. Subsequently, Seychelles Nation – the state owned and controlled daily newspaper – chose to give prominence to Ronny’s rumination. This time Ronny ruminated about the sea current that circles the island.

Ronny observed that since the Government dumped tons of rocks in the entrance to the small harbour, the current was taking sand from the sea shore of the island and dumping it near the harbour entrance. Ronny observed too that, while the monsoon changed year in year out, the sand stayed put, unlike what mother nature would have done.

At La Digue the problem was evident to anyone who bothered to observe, even before the harbour wall was created out of granite rocks, that the seashore had started to be eroded soon after an artificial island was created to the south of the harbour during the one-party state era. That island has no known practical, aesthetic or economic value. At least the pyramids have captured the imagination of the world and are immortalised as one of the great wonders of the world.

One of Ronny’s ruminations, so the Nation tells us, was the following “there was no way of telling how the environment was going to react to the construction of the port.” This begs the question, how did his Government know how the environment was going to react to the reclamations at Anse Aux Pins , the East Coast between the airport and Anse Etoile, at Bel-Ombre and at Silhouette where sand has been dredged and then deposited within rock armouries in the sea at the cost of millions of US dollars. Money which we did not have and still are unable to repay.

Neither did we know in advance just how mother nature would react to millions of tons of sand having been mechanically sucked from the sea floor to create artificial islands. But Ronny would not stop there. And he ruminated further.

According to the Nation, Ronny reflected allowed “ In advanced countries, models would probably have been made first and a computer simulation of the most probable reaction determined”. Was Ronny thinking what I’m thinking? That Seychelles is a backward country and, therefore, cannot be bothered about computer simulations? Ronny had forgotten that as a none-advanced country we are producing pilots that can fly Boeing jets. And they learnt most of their skills in simulators. And we don’t even own any simulator.

Perhaps Ronny need to know one little fact that we have been made aware of. According to the developers of Eden Island, left by itself the island would disappear back into the sea due to the workings of the tide. And that is not taking into account global warming and the rise of sea level.

But unlike Eden Island, Ile Perseverance is not being given the kind of protection needed to protect it against the tide. Think of what will happen to all the houses and flats now being built on it and global warming.

Perhaps Ronny should have a word with his Cabinet colleague Joel Morgan. He too seems to have caught the disease of ruminating in public. The last time he was on television for almost an hour he ruminated that he is thinking of some more reclamation projects. Except he has no idea yet where to create the new islands – never mind where he will get the money from, whether rupees or dollars.