By Oneka LaBennett
Oneka LaBennett is an associate professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California. She is currently working on a book entitled Global Guyana: Women, Race, and Resources in the Caribbean and Beyond. She was born in Guyana and lives in the U.S.
The East Bank Public Road (EBPR) has long been a site of congestion and vehicular danger, but how the administration of President Irfaan Ali addresses the current problems around the country’s central artery will set the stage for the nation’s attitude towards impending growth and all that entails, including the welfare of its citizens and the preservation of its natural resources.
Guyana now finds itself at a critical junction in which the EBPR embodies the intersection of oil, sand and gas development, with citizens besieging its leaders to equitably share its newfound wealth, against the backdrop of a global outcry over climate catastrophe. Efforts to rehabilitate the road and to construct enough additional modern highways to support Guyana’s development will increase demands for sand, the primary material used in constructing roads and the new buildings the government promises to erect along these routes.
As previous articles in Stabroek News have noted, the U.N. recently warned that sand is the most exploited natural resource in the world, after water, and the planet is in the midst of a sand crisis. The 2022 Sand and Sustainability report from the U.N. Environment Programme concluded that sand is essential to constructing our modern world, as the foundation for everything from homes and schools, to hospitals, bridges and roads. According to the report, as cities rapidly expand and urban infrastructure is modernized, sand is being consumed faster than it can be replenished. The report cautions that ungoverned sand extraction will severely damage ecosystems, jeopardize biodiversity, and provoke socio-economic conflicts.
As I planned a recent visit home to Guyana, friends and family all shared a local alert—one that was not unrelated to the U.N. report: the road from the airport is overrun by traffic. Commuters are beholden to massive trucks hauling sand, equipment and commercial goods which routinely bring traffic to a standstill, stymieing hopes of navigating the route along the East Bank to and from the capital.
Because my family hails from the East Bank, this street has long held a particular role in our lives. It has shaped the realities of generations of women in my family in consequential and deeply damaging ways: My great-grandmother was struck dead along the EBPR when a motorcyclist suddenly veered off path and collided with her. When she was a toddler, my mother was hit by a truck on the road—an accident that resulted in a fractured skull and months in the hospital. Unfortunately, these personal examples are not unique—residents in the villages that hug the public road continue to struggle to maintain their own and their children’s safety as vehicles inundate the narrow, poorly maintained and historically lawless thoroughfare. Present-day stories of deadly accidents along the avenue abound and residents are still demanding safety measures.
But contemporary concerns about the road have also shifted significantly—now centering on the route’s role as the primary link between the interior’s mining and forestry industries and Georgetown. And the nation’s burgeoning oil industry has placed new demands on the distressed and inadequate throughway, transforming it into a literal pathway to development and a symbol of all that ails Guyana. New York Times reporter Clifford Krauss began his infamous 2018 article, “The $20 Billion Question for Guyana,” with the line, “Guyana is a vast, watery wilderness with only three paved highways.” The oil boom has put Guyana on the world map and the EBPR now symbolizes what outsiders see as the country’s severe underdevelopment. Today, the foreign investors who have flocked to Guyana must traverse the snarling traffic of the “bruck down” EBPR.
President Ali’s administration has responded with steps aimed at “modernizing” the EBPR and increasing the nation’s highways. Recent efforts include the Ogle to Eccles-Diamond four-lane bypass road and the massive construction of the Eccles to Mandela Avenue alternative road, the latter unfolding in phases and aimed at diverting traffic from the EBPR.
While there are many legitimate concerns around the multi-billion-dollar roadworks and infrastructure projects that the government has undertaken, the daily sand trail that spills from heavy-duty trucks along our main throughway provides subtle clues about what the nation’s aims of modernizing its roadways will entail.
As an anthropologist conducting research on the intersection of Guyana’s extractive industries, the nation’s global profile and the lived realities of its citizens, I fear that the current traffic nightmare along the main road foreshadows what the scholar Julie Livingston has termed “self-devouring growth”—the ways in which humans consume themselves. Livingston depicts Botswana as a planetary parable for self-devouring growth, revealing how that country’s successes in diamond mining resulted in the building of schools, roads, hospitals and telecommunications. These infrastructural projects solidified Botswana’s identity as a “paradigmatically successful” upper-middle-income nation, while also positioning it as a stark example of the convergence of multiple forms of climate and environmental catastrophes, from record-breaking temperatures to sinking water levels and disappearing wildlife. Roads play a prominent role in Livingston’s work. She tells us that at independence Botswana had only twelve roads, but by 2019 it had over seven thousand. These roads have become a sign of that nation’s development, connecting its expanding capital with the rest of the country and with international trading partners, and transporting patients to newly built medical clinics. They have also become indicative of the country’s self-devouring growth, with massive casualties resulting from five-ton trucks colliding with buses transporting citizens; over-populated cities and new highways go hand in hand with skyrocketing road fatality rates. Still, for those who may conclude that vehicular accidents are an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of the greater good additional thoroughfares will usher in, we should also keep in mind that if Guyana follows Botswana in its never-satiated appetite for more expressways, our country’s limited sand deposits will surely dwindle.
Already, people whose homes flank the EBPR complain that the constant cacophonous boom from the parade of large trucks rattles them in their beds as they try to sleep at night. This is not just a nuisance; it is noise pollution. These very residents find themselves almost entirely disenfranchised because the commute to the capital and the businesses and services along the road is most times severely impeded. The obvious solution seems to be building additional roads and widening the EBPR. But let us be clear eyed about what such infrastructure plans forebode: tons and tons of sand will be needed to complete all of the new roads the government promises, and families and wildlife will be displaced in the process. In a statement published on the government’s website on 23 January, 2021, President Ali promised that the new East Bank road will ease traffic and bring about “fastest commute time, less wear and tear on vehicle” and “greater efficiency.” He also said the new road will offer additional enhancements to the quality of life for residents, including an even more ambitious infrastructure goal of creating a government hub close to the roadway which would house police, army, and fire services, medical emergency facilities and a new school.
The industry insiders with whom I spoke indicated that Guyana’s sand industry has shifted dramatically in the last five or so years, from exporting the country’s bounty of silica quartz sand, to primarily extracting this material for local construction. President Ali’s vision for the future includes constructing a new metropolis near the Soesdyke-Linden Highway, which he has dubbed “Silica City.” The name alone foretells that Guyana’s future will be dependent on further exploiting our sand deposits.
Yes, Guyana’s growth path should seek to improve its roadways in order to support everyone who relies on them to access school, work, services and healthcare, and the country is in desperate need of modernized homes, medical facilities and schools. However, the air and noise pollution, and the traffic congestion of self-devouring growth are already choking the nation. More expressways, wider routes and new cities will require more precious sand—whether these projects are worth the environmental toll depends on how they serve the majority of Guyana’s citizens. IMC/CEMCO, a global consulting firm, provided the Inter-American Development Bank with a design for the rehabilitation of the EBPR, which IMC outlined on their website in 2017. They concluded that “the increased traffic, particularly of heavy vehicles, has damaged the road and presents a safety hazard for the more vulnerable road users, particularly in the many villages along the route.” IMC highlighted concerns including “deterioration of the road pavement…lack of safe pedestrian facilities…unsafe alignments…lack of legal authority and physical infrastructure to implement vehicle overload controls, flooding instances along and alongside the road.” Many of these problems persist to the present day. The people with whom I spoke on my visit talked in plain terms about how they believe the government is handling the oil boom: “Dem thiefin’ the money!” As I looked around Guyana, I saw many signs of growth (roads primary among them), but I also worried about whether the healthcare and educational services promised to accompany these roads would ever materialize or if the expanded boulevards would simply continue to facilitate the transportation of limited resources (sand chief among them) targeted at less altruistic projects. The critical decisions President Ali’s administration must weigh in addressing the crisis along the EBPR are steeped in balancing advancement with self-devouring growth. The road represents a chance to set the nation on a more thoughtful path to development, one that is ultimately mindful of its obligations to Guyana’s environment and its people.