Bermuda is rapidly approaching the point where she will ?bust? her natural capacity to provide the population with such things as fresh water or the ability to handle the amount of waste created by her people.

However, despite this warning social and environmental activist Stuart Hayward is heartened that people are becoming actively involved in drawing up solutions to steer the Island away from a potentially crippling over-populated, over-developed future.

When 170 people filled the main hall of the Leopard?s Club in Hamilton last week for the first of five public meetings to discuss Bermuda?s sustainable future, he felt it indicated a change in awareness and commitment from the population to find solutions to the Island?s problems.

And the Government?s decision to seek views and answers from the people, and to have a ?lay body? of individuals overseeing the process in the form of the Sustainable Development Round Table, has been described as a ?quantum leap? by Mr. Hayward.

Before the phrase ?sustainable development? was ever coined Mr. Hayward was already an activist striving to safeguard areas of open space in Bermuda and trying to raise awareness about the impact that an ever increasing population was having on the Island.

Now he is involved with the Round Table which has helped compile the draft Sustainable Development Strategy and Implementation Plan and is gathering further public views during a three-month public consultation.

?In Parliamentary democracies the watch word is that ?Parliament is supreme? ? no aspect of the society has power over Parliament. Here we have a Parliament, a Cabinet and a Premier that has put into place a lay body that will have input into governmental decisions,? said Mr. Hayward.

?It?s extraordinary. I do not think we grasp how quantum a leap this is. This doesn?t mean that what the Round Table says Parliament has to do. But for Parliament to invite a lay body to oversee its adherence to a publicly developed plan is unheralded and it is extraordinary.

?We are seeing changes at all levels, most important at the level of policy making. The Cabinet has committed itself to the principles of sustainable development. And the process of involving the entire public in generating the ideas that will form the plan, and in now re-consulting saying ?This is what we think you told us, is it correct?? It is an exquisitely positive collective exercise.?

And on the high turnout for the first public meeting, he said: ?It indicates there is a fertile ground for these concepts ? a receptivity for the principles of sustainable development and what needs to happen now is to convert this from abstract thought on paper to individual commitment to the principles.?

In an in-depth interview in today?s Royal Gazette, Mr. Hayward has given his thoughts on the sustainability issues Bermuda now faces, and recalls how he first became an advocate for environmental issues on the Island back in the early 1970s.

See interview on Page 2