Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Government's latest an-nouncement that Spanish investment has boosted the economy has been met with some criticism from environmentalists.

Junior Minister of Foreign Affair, Senator Delano Franklyn said last week that Spanish investment in tourism has improved the country's development. Speaking at the meeting of the CARICOM/Spain Joint Commission at the Hilton Kingston hotel on Thursday, the minister said the investments had resulted in a rise in employment and increased the rate of construction on the north coast.

In addition, Minister of Tourism and Culture, Aloun Assamba, told The Sunday Gleaner that Spanish investment has encouraged more tourists to come to the island. She said a significant portion of the 17.2 per cent recorded growth in arrivals for the January to August period this year was due to Spanish investors and the number of room stocks they have added.

To build hotels

The investments being made by the Spanish is part of Govern-ment's plan to provide some 11,000 rooms by 2010. The Spanish investors are to build 13 hotels in specific areas on the island.

But environmentalists say while there might be growth now, it will not last because the projects are not sustainable.

"The Government talks about sustainable development, but does not practise it," chief executive officer of the Jamaica Environ-ment Trust, Diana McCaulay, told The Sunday Gleaner.

"Because one of the things with sustainable development is that you have to ensure that all the factors are brought into play: environmental, social and economic. You just don't do economic alone," she said.

Environmentalist and veteran journalist John Maxwell agreed. He charged that employment in these large hotels was mostly going to foreign workers, and that they were not employing as many Jamaicans as local hotels.

She suggested that if the country continued along the lines of the proposed development then it would stand the chance of destroying its coastal environment in the same way the coastline in Spain was destroyed by similar hotel developments.

"So I think it is a very good example of unsustainable development whatever the government may think," she argued.

Mr. Maxwell said many of the hotels have not been properly approved either and that they were being built on beaches in contravention of good developmental practices. He said the development of the hotels contradict the government's policy in the NRCA Act.

"This is not sustainable development. They are taking away beaches from Jamaicans, they are destroying wetlands and we have no idea what they are going to do with the sewage," he said.

Last month The Sunday Gleaner reported that the government had failed to follow studies and guidelines it had commissioned and developed itself, showing that there were certain environmental risks in proceeding with massive development in certain areas and the proposed rate of the development.

Eco-sensitive tourism sites

-Pear Tree Bottom in St. Ann
-Oyster Bay, Trelawny,
-Point in Hanover
-Pagee in St. Mary

Source: PIOJ Study