Why the dunes at the lighthouse are not up for a quick decision

There is talk about opening the green area behind the California Lighthouse to motorized tourism. So it is worth being clear about what the law actually allows.

Right now, it allows none of it. That land is zoned as nature in our binding land-use plan, the ROPV. The plan binds the government exactly as it binds everyone else. There is no permit. There is no signature. No compromise, no meeting halfway. On this land, for this use, the law's answer is simply no.

That matters for how this is understood. A Minister who does not have the power to allow something cannot be pressured into allowing it. Pressure does not create a power that the law withholds. A government bound by its own plan cannot negotiate its way out of that plan around a table. Even if you appoint a manager (beheerder) for the area today and let that manager open a trail. There is no shortcut there either. A manager can only mark out paths that stay within what the zone is meant to protect. A manager cannot be told to allow what the plan forbids. Naming someone to care for the land does not change what the land is zoned for.

Changing the answer would mean changing the plan itself. And the ROPV has just been extended and locked in until July 17, 2029. This was the government's choice. So for the rest of 2026, through 2027 and 2028, and until July 2029, this area stays closed to that activity. And even then, any opening could only come through the next ROPV, after July 2029, through a long public procedure, not a quick fix. It would still have to answer to two protections above it: our own nature-conservation law, and the Ramsar Convention, which commits Aruba and the whole Kingdom to keeping this wetland intact.

I don't have a dog in this fight. But as the law stands, this isn't a matter that can be settled with a quick fix.