Guyana’s Environmental Assessment Board

Apr 08, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – There were a number of Guyanese who may have believed that we do have the staying hand, the balancing power, of untouched faces and clear hands to oversee concerns with serious matters on the environment, and those raised before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We have always heard about a body called the Environmental Assessment Board (EAB), which was thought of as a kind of a referee, a neutral scrutineer, a last-gasp check and balance on the fears of Guyanese about their environment, and the dangers to their way of life, if not their existence. Well, perish the thought, give it up quickly as one that could have been better employed in areas with the promise of some return, honest return.

Indeed, we do have an EAB, and it does have people involved in its sensitive work. They are senior public servants, officers of believed education, citizens with knowledge and a keen grasp of the range of activities occurring at warp speed in today’s Guyana. Let that much be said for them and without exception. But there is a problem, a serious one, that is not easily shakable, but one which should trouble any fair-minded watcher on things Guyana.

The problem is that all three of these Guyanese chosen to sit on the EAB, and to review what comes before it, are not just public servants, but two of the three actually work for, and earn their daily bread from, the Ministry of Natural Resources. As all Guyanese who pay attention to these matters, those who are definitely alarmed at what has been happening in this country, should know by now, it is this same ministry that has an intimate interest in what passes through and comes out of the local EPA.

If the Guyana EPA did ever stumble across some bone in its official back, and a couple of working brain cells in its institutional head, and did its job honestly, then it is likely that some at the Ministry of Natural Resources would experience an epileptic episode. In other words, what is desired of the EPA is that it does its work a certain way. Meaning that it looks the other way at egregious deficiencies in what is submitted to it by the oil companies, other companies involved in downstream oil support businesses, and still others ranging from those involved in bridges to those building plants and factories dealing with potential hazardous material.

Because the people at the local EPA have followed their orders so well, anxious and outraged citizens have been compelled to escalate issues of concern to the EAB. They felt that they would be in good hands with a proper Yellowtail analysis. The objectives were to get an independent hearing of substance, a review of deep probing value, and resolutions that spoke of prudent weighing of the facts and surrounding circumstances, with the final outcome(s) indicating just those elements. The most charitable way of evaluating and describing what came out of the EAB, this oversight arm, was that it is disappointing.

Among the worst, it was that it reeked of the mystifying (on what basis could such be arrived at?), the surprising (the Delta Force rapidity with which deliberations were conducted and concluded), and the incredible (how could this be)?
When it was thought that there was an EAB of strength and substance, that wasn’t the case. It was the equivalent of going from one rubberstamp, the EPA, to another, the EAB. We do not think that it was incompetence at work, but more of sheer willful ignorance on the part of the EAB. It is even more accurate to posit that an unhealthy degree of fear was present. There is fear in today’s public service because tenure is so fragile, so dependent on the whims and moods of leading politicians in Guyana. One misstep and there is the immediate risk of being out in the cold, and on one’s own. Nobody wants to lose their prestigious positions and powerful places, especially those with lots of juice attached. So, lines are toed, with many public servants becoming extremely good at anticipating what pleases political masters.
The latest is the Yellowtail work of the EAB.

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