Peter Espeut
ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS must be more than just public relations. The purpose of making people more aware of the fragility of our natural environment is to change behaviour towards sustainability. But we human beings learn more from watching what goes on than by listening to public relations campaigns. I don't think even the most diehard destroyer of the environment will disagree with me when I say that the environmental authorities have been sending mixed and conflicting messages.
This year, the focus of environmental awareness is the conservation of Jamaica's drylands - an important emphasis this year, to balance the emphasis in previous years on the marine environment and wetlands. Most of Jamaica used to be covered with dry limestone forest, but the vast majority of it is degraded, and almost unrecognisable. Where I live here in Palmer's Cross, Clarendon, is fully degraded dry limestone forest.
The emphasis on drylands is relevant because we need to conserve the little we have left that is in fairly good condition. The fact is, our little relatively intact dry limestone forest remaining is under threat of being encroached upon and destroyed by construction. (My regular readers will understand why I will not use the word 'development' here, since that word suggests advancement and improvement, and destroying the little good dry forest we have left cannot be considered an advancement.)
What is even more interesting is that most of this destruction is being perpetrated by the Government itself - the same body that has dedicated this week to promoting the conservation of drylands!
The approval by the NRCA for mining to take place on Braziletto Mountain has finished off that valuable dry forest which was in good condition before. The plan by the UDC to build thousands more houses on top of the Hellshire Hills will destroy our largest remaining stand of dry limestone forest. The plan by the NHT to create a new town at Inverness on top of Harris Savanna will destroy a large expanse of dry forest. And I don't have to remind you about the dry forest at Pear Tree Bottom!
This is why I say that Environment Awareness Week has to be more than public relations. If the Government wants to convince the public that it is concerned about our drylands, it has to keep them intact by not planning construction there, and denying permits to destroy them. I believe that what we need as much (or more) as environmental awareness for the public, is environmental awareness for government regulators and planners. Government behavioural change would go a long way to conserving our natural environment.
And even more than environmental awareness, what we need is environmental ethics. There is right and wrong in environmental matters and we need to have the right values and attitudes in this area. Most Honourable Prime Minister: over to you!
These dry forests shelter biodiversity - animals and plants - found nowhere else in the world. Just to name a few: living in the Hellshire Hills is the Jamaican iguana (cyclura collei) - the most endangered lizard in the world (less than 50 left in the wild); the harmless thunder snake (Trophidophis spp.); the Jamaican skink (mabuya mabuya) - a snakelike creature with short stubby legs; the fish-eating bat (noctilio leporinus), which dives into the sea at night to catch its dinner; Living in Portland Ridge is the blue-tailed galliwas (celestes duquesneyi), a beautiful creature with a long tail of alternating black and deep blue bands; and the cave frog (eleutherodactylus cavernicola). All these in addition to more commonly known animals like the coney, the yellow snake, and many birds, including parrots.
Jamaica has signed the U.N. treaty on the conservation of biodiversity, and we made certain promises. I wonder if our word is worth anything?
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
