Sustainable Development: Economy

On July 25 I attended the first of five consultative meetings held by the Bermuda Government following the 20 July public release of 'Charting our Course: Sustaining Bermuda, a Draft Sustainable Development Strategy and Implementation Plan for Bermuda'. This Bermuda Government project attempts a 'unified vision' for the continual and collective process that is Sustainable Development (SD), attempting to move beyond a generic idea and implementation of that concept to deliver a contextualised, comprehensive and sophisticated definition of SD based on and set by Bermuda itself. This set of meetings are the most recent component of a double-sided intellectual and PR strategy of 'wide-ranging public consultation', following up one-on-one interviews, earlier public meetings, telephone surveys and discussions with special interest groups. Held at the Hamilton Leopard's Club, this packed-house and panel-led discussion addressed the first of five themes* on which the plan rests: Building and Mainaintaining a Strong and Inclusive Economy. Bermuda's heavy reliance on human resources (versus natural products), perpetuated exclusion of certain segments of society, lack of realistic Bermudian workforce training, and a globalised and overheated economy divorced from local community needs and ethics, were brought our by an expert panel as major points of debate. The audience highlighted that lingering legacies and injustices of Bermuda's past, such as issues of institutionalised racism, are very much alive, and also looked back upon the ways training and opportunity for Bermudians has been systematically dismantled over time along the road to today's paradoxical Bermuda of great economic opportunity and exclusion. Concerns about the realistic and immediate implementation of the SD plan's recommendations were at the forefront of the debate given the island's exceedingly rapid development and changing communities. Nostalgia for times of more healthy self-interest and tighter (and perhaps more homogenous and less diverse and integrated) communities sat alongside concern for the quality of life of Bermuda's future generations in the SD plan discussion discourse that night.

*As an aside, although the SD plan themes are not to be considered listed in order of priority, interestingly there was a shift from using the title 'Protecting our Common Inheritance' at the top of themes list earlier this year to the reworded 'Protecting and Enhancing our Natural Resources and Environment', now the third theme which will be addressed August 22.