Martin Henry WHAT DOES Woodson Brezeau have to do with environmental degradation? He is only three weeks old! This very fortunate young Jamaican is the child of Haitian refugees. As bad as things are, he will have better opportunities here. That's why his parents fled Haiti. Certainly he will have a better environment here.
'Our Planet', the flagship publication of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), carries in its most recent issue, released for World Environment Day, an insightful article by Timothy Wirth. Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund, describes the environmental devastation that has seriously contributed to political turmoil in Haiti while suggesting how it could again become 'the pearl of the Caribbean'. But that would be only if Jamaica, where former President Aristide and hundreds of his compatriots have found a haven, suffers further environmental degradation.
The UNEP magazine, on the web, came to my attention via my old environmentalist friend, Franklin McDonald, who has been in and around environmental matters for most of his professional life and never fails to send his contact list notices and reminders and pieces of useful environmental information. Thank you, Franklin.
HUMAN-MADE DISASTERS
McDonald, you may recall, came to head up Jamaica's leading environmental agency, the NRCA, which later became NEPA, from being director of the then Office of Disaster Preparedness. There is a close downstream relationship between environmental failures and disasters. Many of these disasters labelled 'natural' are really more human-made than natural. A natural event turns into a disaster because of prior destructive human action. Almost certainly the level of devastation of the floods in Haiti and the Dominican Republic has a basis in environmental degradation.
This issue of 'Our Planet' runs the theme 'Seas and Oceans! Wanted Dead or Alive!' As one of the dozens of SIDS on the planet Small Island Developing States this theme is of particular significance to us. We are painfully aware of declining fish stocks, the virtual wipe out of the coral reefs, and the impact of human pollution in our bays and harbours, most notably Kingston Harbour. The Prime Minister of Tuvalu poignantly cries out, 'Stop my Nation Vanishing!' in one of articles carried. Tuvalu a micro-SIDS in the Pacific is increasingly threatened by rising sea levels attributed to global warming.
United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP, Klaus Toepfer, in the editorial says the theme reflects the words of philosopher Hans Jonas, 'Today, mankind is a bigger threat to the sea than the sea has ever been to mankind'. "From over-fishing and the discharge of untreated, raw, sewage to the clearing and destruction of precious habitats like coral reefs and mangrove swamps, the world's marine environment is under assault as never before."
WATER IS ESSSENTIAL
Contributors are a stellar list of under-secretaries, prime ministers and Ministers, and directors of environmental agencies. Our own Al Binger, the director of the UWI Centre for Environment and Development (UWICED) is discussing how the resilience of small island developing states in a difficult world depends on the proper management of their natural resources. But as the UNEP chief points out in his editorial big things like climate change are bigger than small island developing states.
In the mix is an Eastern Orthodox Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople, who in his article, 'Creation's Forgotten Days', says that water is the binding force between heaven and earth and that pollution of the sea represents paradise lost. The Archbishop says, "When we consider the creation story in Genesis, we tend to recall the first moment or perhaps the sixth day of creation. We often overlook what occurred on the third and fifth days, when the world's waters came into being. Yet these days are an essential part of the whole story. They are a critical part of our own story. Marine pollution is nothing less than the violation of a hallowed promise.
THE WONDER OF LIFE
"We are called, Bartholomew preaches, to avow water as the wonder of life if we are ever to avert the world crisis in water pollution and distribution. In order to correct the wrongful politics of water by those who regard it as their rightful property, we must first celebrate water as the irreplaceable patrimony of all humankind; we must accept the indiscriminate and inalienable right to water for all people in the world. Water can never be reduced to a marketable commodity for profit especially for the affluent, especially for the few. It must always be protected as part of the fundamental quality of life especially for the more vulnerable, especially for our children. The Greek word for 'good', pronounced by God about His creation the Patriarch explains, "implies beauty and harmony. The very least that we owe God, this world and our children, is to preserve the beauty of our planet's water, to leave behind a world that remains good."
I deeply like that. Franklin McDonald's NEPA was involved in a Ridge to Reef project. What's happening with that? In his contribution to 'Our Planet', U.S. Under-Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, retired Vice Admiral Conrad Lauten-bacher describes a White Water to Blue Water(WW2BW) partnership with the Caribbean that I hadn't heard about before. The WW2BW project 'explicitly acknowledges the inter-connected nature of ecosystems from the tips of the highest mountains to the depths of the oceans'.
Saturday is World Environment Day. In closing, we commune further with Bartholomew of Constantinople on creation's forgotten days. When the heavens and the earth were finished, water and all, the Creator pronounced them very good then rested on the final day of creation week. "And God blessed the seventh day, set it apart as his own, and hallowed it." Creation needs water - and rest.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist..
