Editorial | Preserving the wetlands

T he Gleaner welcomes the apparent urgency with which the Government is approaching the post-Hurricane Melissa rehabilitation of mangroves and wetlands degraded by the Category 5 storm that hit three months ago.

It is now for that seriousness to be sustained. For, as Matthew Samuda, the minister with responsibility for the environment, observed recently, if the coastal damage and destruction caused by Hurricane Melissa, especially in the island’s southwest, was bad, it would have been far worse without the buffer of mangroves.

“If one contemplates what the storm surge would have done to coastal communities without the protection of these mangroves, it would have been frightening,” Mr Samuda told the government’s Jamaica Information Service.

An estimated 2,000 hectares, or a quarter of Jamaica’s mangrove forests were impacted by the powerful hurricane, which uprooted trees, dumped tonnes of debris, eroded beaches, and, in some cases, substantially altered the character of the coastlines.

Parottee, in the southwestern parish, St Elizabeth, near to where the hurricane came ashore, is a prime example of the disaster. In some areas, mounds of debris, from construction material to household items and plastics, are choking its mangroves. In some segments, its beaches are further inland and dissected by rivulets.

NOT NEW

Hurricane Melissa’s destructive force may have caused a wider concentration of minds, but the deterioration of the island’s mangroves and wetlands, and plans to fix them, are not new.

Indeed, even before Hurricane Melissa’s onslaught, the Government, through its National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), had launched a 10-year project (2023-2033) to conserve more than 11,000 hectares of Jamaica’s mangrove forests and wetlands, and for the restoration of another 1,000 hectares of degraded mangroves and swamps.

Said NEPA’s project document: “In Jamaica, mangroves and swamp forests … are experiencing continued natural and human-derived threats. In 1989, the swamp forest cover in Jamaica was 2,358 hectares, and by 1998, 111 hectares were lost … .

“Regarding mangrove forest, cover in 2013 was 9,800 hectares … mainly along the south coast … Data suggest that over 770 hectares of mangrove forest cover in Jamaica has been lost over the 1996-2016 period.

“Forested wetland ecosystems are threatened by coastal development (planned and unplanned), changes in land use leading to clearing and land degradation, and extraction (timber, small-scale farming uses), compounded by climate change.”

Given the broad economic and hydrological importance of the mangroves and wetlands, as defences against storm surges and rising sea levels caused by global warming, and as spawning feeding grounds for fish, the damage left by Hurricane Melissa adds to the importance of this project.

DONE RIGHT

And it must be done right, which is why NEPA’s approach to rehabilitation must be transparent and accommodating to peer review.

In the 2010s, when the Government raised the Palisadoes road, the tombolo that links Kingston to the Norman Manley International Airport, to protect the harbour from storm surges, it promised to replant dislocated mangroves. The outcomes were, at best, patchy.

A 2018 analysis by a University of the West Indies marine scientist, Camilo Trench, found that the survival rate of the replanted Palisadoes mangroves was up to 70 per cent in their first year. By 18 months that had tumbled to 40 per cent.

Better outcomes are expected this time, which is why significant attention is being paid to the process outlined for the post-Hurricane Melissa rehabilitation by Monique Curtis, the head of NEPA’s Ecosystems Management Branch.

According to Ms Curtis, so far, eight areas, mostly on the island’s northwest, western and southwestern coastal regions, have been earmarked for priority attention, including replanting of mangroves.

“Before planting takes place, there may be a need for sand removal, solid waste clearance and the restoration of natural water flow through channels,” Ms Curtis said, similar to what volunteers were doing at Parottee last week, during World Wetlands Day.

The preservation of mangroves and wetlands must be integral to Jamaica’s broader developmental policy and planning. And not merely by way of lip service, but a multi-tiered strategy backed by data, robust policies, legislation and enforcement, and active community participation.

Policymakers should also keep at the back of their minds that the next Hurricane Melissa could be only months away. Natural resilience works – and, as Mr Samuda noted, it is likely to be cheaper.