Conference works to enforce environmental laws
If you think that it’s tough these days for prosecutors to put everyday criminals like robbers, rapists, drug dealers and murderers in jail, it’s even more difficult to punish people who violate the country’s environmental laws. Things may be changing, however, as News 5’s Ann-Marie Williams discovered this morning.
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting
Law enforcement officers including, tourism police, health inspectors and custom officers joined forces with prosecutors this morning at the opening of the Second National Seminar on Environmental Law.
The two-day meeting is aimed primarily at familiarising and updating participants on Belize’s environmental laws and how to enforce them.
Director of Public Prosecutions Rory Field, told the gathering that environmental cases are often not aggressively pursued because of their severe financial repercussions on the community.
Rory Field, Director of Public Prosecutions
“The company may employ a lot of people and you may be talking about something which may lead to the closing down of the concern, which actually employs people and give them a livelihood. So some innocent people may end up thinking well why was that prosecuted? Very few large environmental cases have actually been prosecuted in this country, so there isn’t grounds of experience to call upon. But at the same time, there is experience in general prosecution, and I think that idea of today and tomorrow, is to allow prosecutors and different agencies to be able to cross fertilise and get expertise from other prosecutors, to draw expertise in from outside. So when they go and do the case, they can do it properly.”
And one way of doing it properly is for everyone to realise the importance of environmental cases.
Rory Field
“One would like the magistrate to be aware that this is a serious matter, and not a petty matter. At the moment, I suppose that you may find that because it’s a wealthy person or a person with money that’s being prosecuted or a business, they will be able to actually pay for a good counsel. And again one doesn’t want the good counsel to be able to swamp the magistrate or the prosecutor with all his clever arguments. One wants the prosecutor and the magistrates to have their own viewpoints on environmental matters already. That’s starting off with the idea that environmental crime isn’t a good thing, that’ll make it rather harder for the defence counsel to prove to them that it is.”
Environmental officer, Martin Alegria sees Belize grappling with some severe environmental problems, if as a people, we do not become better custodians.
Martin Alegria, Environmental Officer
“Unplanned development, whereby development occurs let’s say in swampy areas, in flood prone areas, where any little hurricane that comes in could have severe impact on these communities that were developed unplanned. So the issue of planning in land use and settlements and so on, that is one thing that we foresee could become a problem if the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), procedure is not followed. Others could be effluent disposal, effluent disposal to this day has not been much of a problem, one, because the type industries in Belize are basically food processing plants, where the constituents of the effluence are not as highly toxic or hazardous as heavily industrialised countries would have. The issue of solid waste management has always been the first priority for the Department of the Environment.”
Among the topics participants will examine are: legal land use, environmental legislation in Belize and preparing for trial-investigation and collection of evidence. Ann-Marie Williams for News 5.
The two-day conference is being sponsored by the Commonwealth Secretariat.
