Peter Espeut LAST WEEK I wrote about the policy disjuncture of building highways at the expense of having a functioning commercial and passenger railway. I pointed out that rail was the cheapest way to move passengers and freight (next to using ships), including being more fuel-efficient. I pointed out the implication of signing a contract for a toll road that made the operators entitled to compensation if the railway was expanded. First it means that commercial rail service in Jamaica will never return. For a Jamaican railway to be economically viable, the coverage must be expanded; having to pay compensation to the toll highway operators is the difference between viability and failure. Killing Jam-aica's railway is bad public policy; I do not believe that the toll highway is worth it.
Another implication I mentioned last week was the policy choice of the private motor car as the preferred mode of public transportation, which is the most expensive option possible. It requires an ever expanding road network and more and more expenditure on road maintenance; causing a constantly increasing fuel import bill. Because of the price volatility of oil, especially now with the US adventures in Iraq (and maybe elsewhere soon), oil imports have the real and present ability to break the budget of our country. Opting so exclusively for the dominance of private motor cars is simply bad public policy, and all of us will suffer for it in the near future.
After writing last week I was pleased to receive support for my argument from an unlikely source, someone who is not known as a critic of the government, being part of the country's policy formation apparatus. Writing in another newspaper last Sunday, after trying to bring good news, Dennis Morrison says: "Continued im-provements in the bauxite and tourist industries will contribute greatly to narrowing the deficit in the current account of our balance of payments. But not even these can correct the unsustainable movement in our fuel bill and action must be taken if the value of our currency is to be protected. Since the first oil shock of 1973 our economy has not adjusted its energy consumption patterns. Indeed we have become more profligate in recent years with the massive influx of motor cars".
This is loud criticism of the government's recent policy actions in the transportation and energy sectors, criticism with which I happen to agree. It is not the individual Jamaican who has been profligate but the government, which has created a policy environment encouraging unsustainable development. And this is not a problem just of People's National Party governments: neither party in government or opposition has been adequate at the policy level. They ran down the public transportation system, making it resemble the way hogs and goats are transported to the slaughterhouse. Then they encouraged the flooding of the roads of the country with second-hand cars. To reduce the consumption of kerosene they removed the subsidy, a blatant attack on poor people and environment; our forests have paid the price of that policy decision. By cancelling the GCT exemption on energy-saving fluorescent bulbs, a big incentive to conserve energy was removed. In his article, Dennis Morrison compliments the bauxite companies on reducing their oil consumption per ton of alumina; of course these bauxite companies have retained the railway as the preferred mode of transporting their product. We closed our national railway.
Can it be that the government did not know that the inevitable result of these policy decisions would be (what Dennis Morrison calls) the "unsustainable" increase in our fuel import bill? Whatever their words, the actions of the government do not speak of sustainable development. At the present time, in so many ways, Jamaica is charging headlong down an unsustainable road to our peril and the peril of our grandchildren! What-ever additional national income we earn from tourism and bauxite will be eaten up in oil imports. We are victims of poor national policy.
What policy thrust must we adopt to deal with this? I urge the powers that be to re-examine their approach to public transportation, to seek to put in place rapid transit in at least Kingston and Montego Bay. That investment will pay for itself over time in reduced oil imports, and will go some way to rescue us from the unsustainable development path they have so far thrust upon us.
A HOLY CHRISTMAS
Let me take this opportunity to wish you all a holy celebration and memorial of the first Christmas. True God becoming true man is the greatest testimonial to the fundamental goodness of humanity, and gives the lie to the argument that humanity is fundamentally evil and wicked. The shadow of Calvary hangs over Bethlehem. The liberation won for all of us at Bethlehem and Calvary will lead to a New Earth, another way of speaking about sustainable development. As we celebrate the birth of a king of the line of David, may we all work to make his Kingdom come here in Jamaica!
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
