Clear­ly more needs to be done to sen­si­tise de­vel­op­ers to their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the en­vi­ron­ment, their neigh­bours and to their clients in man­ag­ing land de­vel­op­ment trans­par­ent­ly and sus­tain­ably.

Last week, a mas­sive land clear­ing ex­er­cise at Las Cuevas quick­ly drew the at­ten­tion of vis­i­tors to Mara­cas as well as en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Gary Aboud, not­ed for his en­er­getic ob­jec­tions to ac­tions that im­per­il lo­cal shores as part of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS).

It's al­so no­table that the own­er of the lands, George Aboud, is Gary Aboud's first cousin and he did not choose to play favourites with his fam­i­ly when it came to the en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion is­sue he has made his sig­na­ture con­cern.

At stake are 468 acres of land owned by George Aboud, which the FFOS rep­re­sen­ta­tive wor­ried would rep­re­sent a dan­ger­ous shift in the fresh­wa­ter and salt­wa­ter bal­ance af­ter rains run off the now de­nud­ed for­est area.

FFOS chal­lenged the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) to re­spond to their con­cerns with­in 60 days.

To their cred­it they did so in less than six, and af­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tions, a no­tice of vi­o­la­tion was served on George Aboud re­gard­ing the clear­ing of 19 hectares of land at Las Cuevas.

The Las Cuevas de­vel­op­ment will now pro­ceed un­der guide­lines to be agreed on be­tween the EMA and the de­vel­op­ers. The next step of the process is for the EMA to re­view in­for­ma­tion and da­ta pro­vid­ed by the land own­er's side of the dis­cus­sion.

George Aboud claims that it was all a mis­un­der­stand­ing, that there were ap­provals from the EMA and that the work had been con­tin­u­ing in small pieces over the last three years.

What vis­i­tors to Mara­cas Val­ley saw last week was a more ro­bust ef­fort at de­vel­op­ing the land as part of a project that George Aboud ex­plained would cost as much as a bil­lion dol­lars and would be fo­cused on tourism and lux­u­ry va­ca­tions.

As en­vi­ron­men­tal vi­o­la­tions go, this was both a com­mend­able as well as a text­book case of re­port­ing, ac­tion and com­pli­ance.

This is not of­ten the case in such con­tentious mat­ters and Mr Aboud is to be com­mend­ed for ac­cept­ing his er­ror and pub­licly ex­press­ing his will­ing­ness to abide by the rul­ings of the EMA.

But there are ques­tions that linger even af­ter what seems to be the rare dove­tail­ing of the pub­lic in­ter­est, en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns and pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment.

Mr Aboud not­ed that the ma­te­r­i­al that was cleared was burned on site. Was this fire done with prop­er per­mits and with ap­pro­pri­ate su­per­vi­sion?

There seemed to be a cav­a­lier­ness about the land clear­ing, which was sur­pris­ing giv­en the ex­tent of it, its vis­i­bil­i­ty and the pre­dictable re­sponse of the pub­lic to what ap­peared to be whole­sale de­struc­tion of the nat­ur­al habi­tat bor­der­ing one of the coun­try's more pop­u­lar beach­es.

"No. It have noth­ing to do with the fish at the bay," George Aboud told the T&T Guardian's re­porter.

But that too is a prob­lem.

The bal­ance of na­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly at an in­ter­sec­tion of the el­e­ments of earth and wa­ter as the coun­try learned af­ter the mas­sive 2013 Petrotrin oil spill, isn't some­thing that's read­i­ly pre­dictable and er­rors should lie firm­ly on the side of cau­tion.

Set­tling the de­bate on the long term im­pact of a fun­da­men­tal change to the ge­og­ra­phy of Las Cuevas shouldn't wait for years to come.

Enough is known about the del­i­cate ma­rine re­la­tion­ship be­tween rivers and the sea, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a fish­ing vil­lage, for the EMA to of­fer clear guid­ance to de­vel­op­ers work­ing in such a del­i­cate eco­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment.

Clear­ly more needs to be done to sen­si­tise de­vel­op­ers to their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the en­vi­ron­ment, their neigh­bours and to their clients in man­ag­ing land de­vel­op­ment trans­par­ent­ly and sus­tain­ably.