The environment may well be the forgotten issue in this Election. That's too bad, because the general public needs to decide what kind of environment it wants to live in before the question is decided for it.

Independent candidate and long-time "green" activist Stuart Hayward is only overstating the case slightly when he says that the Island "is living on the edge of environmental suicide".

Bermuda could choose to end up like Hong Kong or Manhattan or Singapore - a heavily developed city perched on a rock. But it is hard to imagine that any but the most venal real estate developers would opt for that if it meant giving up the extraordinary natural beauty that the community now enjoys. And the costs of turning our collective backs on the environment are many.

In financial terms, it would mean giving up entirely on the tourism industry because it is the Island's natural beauty that first brings visitors here. There is also some justice in the argument that the lack of open land and breathing spaces away from the materialistic, nine-to-five, rush-from-one-thing-to-the-next world that most Bermudians now find themselves in gives rise to frustration and violence.

Then too, there are there are the costs that come about as a result of an overburdened infrastructure. Bermuda already experiences traffic congestion every day without the room to build a bypass or a two-lane highway.

How many more car parks can be built around Hamilton? How many more power generators will have to be built to meet our demand for electricity for air conditioning and the other creature comforts we now demand? What happens to Bermuda's identity as more open space goes and fewer people can identify bluebirds or Chick of the Villages, more trash is dumped on the roadsides and cedar forests and mangrove swamps become mere myths?

None of these things are going to happen tomorrow. But they will happen eventually. Bermuda's environment will not die from one blow, but from a thousand cuts as compromises are made and half measures are taken and then dropped when the next crisis arises.

Indeed, both the major political parties are far more focused on the housing shortage than they are on the environment in this election. That is not wrong; there is no question that the "man in the street" is facing a housing crisis. But solving the problem must takes into account transport demands, water supply, access to services and above all, the environment.

And the term "sustainable development" should be thrown out of the political lexicon. It is a perfect political word because it can mean whatever the speaker or listener wants it to, and it is the perfect excuse for extreme actions on the one hand and complete inaction on the other.

So far in this campaign, it would appear that the UBP is more focused on the problems of the environment, and especially the environmental degradation left behind by the US on the bases, than the PLP is. It is also true that it would build homes in the Tudor Hill area, which has already been developed to some extent.

The PLP has supported the Biodiversity report, but has not yet adopted all of its recommendations. But neither party seems to have given much long term thought to how the Island will balance development and preservation in the future. And that problem has been given added urgency after the Court of Appeal upheld former Environment Minister Arthur Hodgson's decision to rewrite an agreement made between the Government and the late Lady Oona Chaplin to preserve open space in Warwick.

The decision may have been right in law, but its practical result is to make all such agreements not worth the paper they are written on. Both parties need to make a commitment in the future to uphold the agreements, and to maintain what is left of the Island's open spaces through them. Both also need to make a commitment not to "development", sustainable or otherwise, but to redevelopment of land that has already been built on so that future generations can benefit from the same natural beauty, clean air and unspoiled waters that make Bermuda so special now.