Galeta Island: Feeling It Firsthand

As the environmental organization WWF denounced a week ago, a denunciation we echoed on this site the same day, the government of Panama is supporting Russia’s initiative to block the creation of three new Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSA) at the meeting that the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is holding in London at this very moment. The purpose of the proposal is to give special protection against oil spills to the Baltic Sea, the Galápagos Islands and the Canary Islands.

In my opinion, what the Panamanian government has still not understood is that environmental protection is in everyone’s interest, and that if we do not support this cause we ourselves will suffer the consequences. As we say in Panama: “Whoever spits into the wind gets it in the face.”

Ironically, the spit has landed in our face here in Panama at the very moment we are in London spitting into the wind. Precisely at this moment, while the IMO is meeting in London to discuss the proposal that Russia, Panama and Liberia want to block, there has been a spill of Bunker C on Panama’s Caribbean coast that has contaminated two kilometers of the coast of Galeta Island. Like the Canary Islands and the Galápagos Islands, whose protection Panama is opposing at this moment, Galeta Island is home to many species of birds and of underwater life that must be studied and protected.

The cleanup of Galeta Island will be slow and costly, although it is of a much smaller magnitude than the spills of the Prestige on the Spanish coast in 2002 and of the Jessica in the Galápagos Islands three years ago. I would like to think that, on seeing our own country in this lamentable situation, the government of Panama will correct its position and decide once and for all to protect nature with courage. History, however, inclines me to think otherwise.