THE EDITOR, Sir:
LET US hope that the rains of the past week make us rethink and urgently change how and where we build and how we are treating our environment and landscape, and how costly our current unsustainable practices really are. Indeed owning a piece of property does not make it simply OK to put up a house. Nor does the government ownership of land make it appropriate to put up housing "solutions" that usually turn into problems.
For instance, the fact that Portmore floods periodically should not surprise anyone; much of it is built on what was once a vast wetland a great natural filtration and flood control system. Gullies and steep hillsides are not places we should be building houses or farming (without careful terracing with living buffers, or shade farming), or anything else for that matter - only to cry and curse nature when the land slips and the seasonal rivers rise to the occasion.
Since we are leading the world in rates of deforestation, our water table falls (30 feet in a decade) and our arable soils wash to sea, wreaking havoc along the way, leaving infertile land and smothered reefs. Where is our common sense? Why don't we treat all trees (and reefs!) like the keepers of the land that they are, and (1)- educate as to their value (2)- outlaw chain saws (and spear guns) and (3)- prosecute for irresponsible, and often illegal cutting? When will we begin to listen to the land and its geological history?
Why don't we legalise ganja already so farmers stop destroying our precious forested lands, stop allowing slash and burn farming (ban all open fires) and stop the gouging of our hillsides for mines while we're at it? Will we finally get environmental enforcement when there's nothing left to protect and nothing left to sustain life?
Land of wood and water will be but a fairytale memory. How ironic that it rained almost 2 inches on Sunday yet the water was locked off most of the evening and night. In other island nations, most every building and house has a cistern Jamaica used to capture its share of glorious rainwater to meet our daily needs. Cisterns should be a requisite to every building permit issued.
It seems we have gotten very lazy and much too dependent on guvahment. (I should also just mention food and power generation security here as key dependency issues too).
Another glaring example, does anyone notice the Hope Road River? We are building roads (even occasionally a nice one that fronts the OPM) without adequate drainage and using decades-old designs and little integrated planning (certainly this holds true in land use overall). Now seriously, do we really want the Malaysians, whose road technology is at least 20 years old, to build our proposed highway (which is untenable in so many ways), that will likely crumble within a year or so like most of our other roads and leave us picking up the tab for repairs, even as we pay tolls? Why don't we first fix the roads we have now with proper design, asphalt cover, and drainage?
I could go on with a list of insanity we observe every day, like gridlock (more and more cars with incompetent, impatient drivers and statistically like elsewhere never enough roads to accommodate them). Yet we in Jamaica have one of the largest road-to-land ratios in the world.
I am, etc.,
E.H. GRENNAN
blacksandsja@yahoo.com
Kingston
