Plus ça change! Barely a month has passed since a very self-contented Finance minister launched the "Maurice: île durable" (MID) Fund amid great fanfare. His colleagues rowdily pledged their support to his vision by slapping their desks with their hands. During his recent visit to France, the Prime minister vaingloriously declared to all and sundry that the MID project is "close to his heart. It?s an audacious project that aims to reduce, by 2028, our country?s dependence on petrol and other fossil fuels by around 65%".

Well, have I got news to them! Sustainable development encompasses far more than the promotion of renewable energies. We now learn that 27 hotel projects have received the go-ahead from the relevant authorities, thus putting further strain on our energy and water resources, as well as the country?s biodiversity, which ranks as one of the most threatened in the world. Sustainable, this approach is not.

In 1987, the report of the Brundtland Commission called Our Common Future declared: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Ministers should write it down or engrave it on a plaque lest they be tempted to indulge in another spot of greenwashing.

A cursory look at the list of hotel projects reveals just how dedicated to the MID project this crop of decision-makers really is. One of them, an Integrated Resort Scheme in the North, consists of several hundred rooms, a golf course and a marina. These will be built barely 400 metres from Ile d?Ambre where one third of the island?s mangrove forests are located. Mangroves are the breeding grounds of countless fish species. They also protect coastal communities against storm surges. Good luck to them.

Another hotel is due to go up on the breathtaking Benitiers Island. When will people learn that you can?t just plonk a hotel in the middle of a lagoon without devastating the web of ecosystems that comprise it? When it?s too late, probably. Incidentally, Tourism Concern, an NGO, has denounced a development project by the very same hotel group on an island in the Caribbean, which it says will cause untold damage to the environment. Yet another project will see 80 rooms come up on the fragile Falaises Anna in Flic-en-Flac.

It?s not just environmentalists who should baulk at this feverous onset of "hotelmania". A very disturbing documentary recently aired on French TV showed the nefarious effects of tourism in the Dominican Republic. Long cited as an economic success story (sound familiar?), the Caribbean island was Mauritius?s main competitor before falling prey to savage development. It has now gone drastically downmarket and is mired in the miasma of sexual tourism, including pedophilia.

Mauritius has been fortunate enough to retain its aura of exclusivity until now. Expect all these new hotels to considerably sully this hallowed image, as well as dealing a body blow to our marvelous biodiversity.