SINCE ITS inception in 1993 the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ) has quietly disbursed $492 million in support of 558 projects. Despite its name, the foundation also has a mandate for supporting child welfare projects. Last Thursday the handing over of another $200 million for 54 projects took place in Kingston with the lion's share of projects and dollars in the area of child welfare.
The EFJ is a 10-year-old experiment in converting debt into development financing between the United States Government as creditor and the Jamaican Government as debtor. The essence of the deal was that certain debts owed to the U.S. would be paid into a fund managed by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica, which was to be jointly managed by the Jamaican and U.S. governments. The original agreement for environmental protection grant funding to non-governmental organisations was soon broadened to include support for child welfare.
At the end of a decade of operations, a review of the operations and impact of the EFJ is in order. In excess of half a billion dollars has been disbursed essentially as part of the debt repayment obligations of the country from revenue and indirectly from further loans. Over the period, the national debt burden has grown enormously and taxes have gone up significantly as well.
And what of the state of the environment and of the welfare of children? EFJ financing alone could not produce the radical transformation which environmental protection and the welfare of children require, but what have been the successes and the failures? And we are here not so much concerned about the 'success' of individual projects, which would have been reported in annual reports with due diligence, but with the overall impact in the two designated areas of grant financing.
One project at the intersection of the environment and children is the Schools' Environmental Programme (SEP) which has been operated by the Jamaica Environmental Trust over the last seven years and which covers 353 primary and high schools. As we reported on Saturday, the SEP is facing the risk of closure when its funding arrangements expire at the end of this year. This project must be saved.
The importance of early environmental education is now widely recognised as one of the best investments in environmental protection. We should be moving towards saturation coverage of all primary and high schools in the country, not reductions. The joint engagement of Government, through its Ministry of Education, and the Non-Governmental Organisation sector for environmental education is an alliance that needs to be deepened. At the same time other debt conversion for development deals should be vigorously pursued with our creditors. The endurability of the EFJ, if nothing else, should provide encouragement.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
