Editorial | Lessons and opportunities for Minister Charles

This newspaper warned Pearnel Charles Jr last month that there would be no honeymoon in his new super ministry that has responsibility for housing, urban renewal, the environment and climate change. There is no pleasure in vindication, especially when, as has been the case in recent weeks, there is dislocation of people’s lives, as well as big hits to an already-reeling economy.

The upside, however, is that Mr Charles has compelling evidence with which, if he has the will, to vigorously prosecute the case for tough government action in protection of the environment, with positive consequences for the country. Moreover, it appears that if he proceeds along this line, he can count on the support of at least one potentially very influential voice.

Mr Charles and the administration probably intended that their minister’s primary focus would be delivering the 70,000 homes the administration promised in its new five-year term. Circumstances, though, should shift priorities.

Already, with more than two weeks to go to the end of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, the year has surpassed the record for the most named storms – 29 so far. Fortuitously, none has hit Jamaica. Which is not to say they have been without effect on the island. Some of the storms, including Tropical Storm Eta, which was in our vicinity earlier this week, have dumped tonnes of rainfall on Jamaica, causing severe flooding, landslides and damage to infrastructure.

A fortnight before Eta, there was Tropical Storm Zeta. Its rain left, by preliminary estimates, over J$2 billion in damage. But even more poignant than the economic cost of the catastrophe was the man and his daughter who died when their home was buried in a landslide in the rural St Andrew community of Shooters Hill.

There are also many near misses – images of hillside homes teetering at the edges of ravines, hillside roads collapsing into valleys, rivers having recaptured their floodplains, vehicles smashed by boulders and nearly covered in mud, and formerly tarmacked roads turned into dirt paths. These are tales of human and economic tragedy.

It is a story, too, of a failure in development and environmental planning, or, if the plans exist, of enforcement. Ultimately, it is a failure of government and governance.

For instance, it is no secret that it is potentially perilous to allow mass encroachment on watersheds, or settlements on fragile hillsides, whether in Shooters Hill, Kintyre, Mavis Bank, Gordon Town or Dallas, St Andrew, or on riverbanks in St Thomas and St Mary, or elsewhere on the island.

FEAR FORFEITING VOTES

People may sometimes be driven to these things by desperation of poverty but, often, too, it is because they can get away with it. Politicians do not insist on enforcing the law because they presume it to be difficult, but mostly, because they fear it may mean forfeiting votes.

Which brings us to Minister Charles’ possibility for forging a significant alliance.

In the aftermath of Zeta, Juliet Holness, the East Rural St Andrew member of parliament, having observed mountainside homes in danger of slipping past the brink, warned her constituents of her readiness to insist on the enforcement of environmental and planning laws, rather than ignore the peril to people’s lives.

“I have seen areas where people are building on the hillside, and they are obviously squatting,” said Mrs Holness, the wife of the prime minister. “I have no problems reporting them to the KSAMC (Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation), and I don’t care if they vote for me, yes or no.”

That is an important declaration which Mr Charles should demand from others of his political colleagues, with the requirement that they do so with sincerity. But the minister will have to support any such posture with programmes and policies that liberate people from the need to squat and/or live in informal settlements – as is the case with nearly a third of Jamaicans – or to invade environments that should be protected.

Indeed, the threats posed by climate change and global warming, and the likelihood of more and more violent storms, insist upon it.

Mr Charles’ policy priorities, in this regard, should, in tandem with environmental protection, start with urban renewal, rather than greenfield housing projects. Fundamentally, the ideal is building sustainable communities.

This task is not easy. But it is not beyond the creative capacities of Jamaicans. If Mr Charles is willing to engage them.