by Raj JUGERNAUTH

Has that culture of thinking out of the box which has always made great mayors, ministers and statesmen gone for ever in Mauritius ? We are tempted to say yes when we take a closer look at the policy statements of most of our ministers. And the absence of vision that these statements make evident. Environment (climate change) and renewable energy are presently hot issues. Ministers, NGOs and proponents of environmental protection (Nicolas Hulot) are quasi national heroes through their proposals and innovative policies. All these lines written just to say how disappointed the public was after the parliamentary answer given by the minister of Public Utilities, responsible for Energy. We retain from his answer to honourable Lesjongard, the following:

Firstly that when he took office, there was no coherent energy policy, that his ministry has been elaborating several plans converging towards a comprehensive energy policy. But says Kasenally, these plans have been caught up in the spiral of circumstances following the revision of the sugar regime, coupled with the high volatility of oil prices and the new economic agenda of the government has provoked a drastic review of our energy strategy.

Minister Kasenally is a long way from the Mauritian think tank on renewable energy. If he is preparing, as he says, a coherent energy document to be submitted to the European Union for financing, we had better remind him that the EU has a clear objective. The directive is to use 20 % of renewable energy by 2020. Tony Blair of Great Britain is preparing a bill which will allow ordinary citizens to sue the government if renewable energy policy and aims are not respected. Yesterday, the Bush administration lost a historic case filed before the American Supreme Court by many American states. That court ruled that America?s Environmental Protection Agency does have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and reasons given for not doing so are not sufficient. So car and industry emissions now have to be controlled.

At the same time in Europe, the Inter governmental Panel on Climate Change is discussing environmental issues and renewable energy right now.

America and Australia have been targeted by the panel for their non environmental friendly policies. At the same time, Spain is announcing that in less than five years, this country will produce one third of its electricity from solar energy. The energy will be produced by steam in a solar tower at Sanlucar La Mayor near Seville. This represents the beginning of energy independence for Spain.

Wind farms are being created around the world while we, Mauritians, stand and watch.

We will perhaps react when the United States and Europe start to link ?quotas? to products manufactured with renewable and non green house effect emitting fuel..

The writing may already be on the wall. In the nineties, a minister predicted what the EU has now done to our sugar price and quota. He started to study alternatives. Not only was he not taken seriously by the sugar barons, but some even thought that he was mad. We would like to remind the proponents of bagasse charbon that president Jacques Chirac failed miserably when he tried to get the EU to accept nuclear energy as renewable and clean energy because the fuel used does not emit Co2.

Let us hope that Kasenally and the minister of the Environment will soon start to talk to us about the urgency of a wind and solar power energy policy.