Hilary Robertson-Hickling, Contributor
THE ORIGINAL inhabitants of this country gave it the name Xamayca which has been translated to Jamaica, the land of wood and water. Our stewardship has not been good as we have deforested the land and done many things to destroy the environment which we need to sustain us in the future. The recent extreme weather which has been raging in the form of record-breaking numbers of hurricanes has unmasked the situation which had been foretold by the late Richard Thelwell and others who cried out in the wilderness in the 1970s. These early ecologists, as they called themselves, were treated with contempt by the business and political interests and with apathy by the Jamaican population.
They were part of the early stirring of persons across the world who were sounding the alarm. Their efforts contributed to the advances in our understanding and management of the environment internationally and locally.
ENVIRONMENTAL LOBBY
Our environmental lobby in Jamaica has not yet had the kind of impact that is necessary to save the day and there is much to be done. A current challenge is the need for coalition building where we revel in taking extreme positions instead of building consensus. Garvey is quoted as saying that "black people don't know themselves until their backs are against the wall". Well it would seem that Jamaicans need to realise that our collective back is against the wall.
Who is to build this consensus? How is it to be done? There are many serious, skilled planners, environmentalists of various stripes as well as others who need to be brought together before our country is destroyed. In this country, we do not take the law seriously; we ignore the planners routinely and persons who do not know what they are doing make decisions which have dire long-term consequences. In my youth I decided that a career in planning would be futile as I realised that in spite of having well trained people in the field, we were not taking planning seriously. Instead our planners are working overseas in international agencies or out of the field or work locally or in frustration in a system which disrespects them.
After all, this is a country in which a tree was planted on the birth of a child. Hugh Miller and CG Morrison were among the pioneers who were engaged in the establishment of The Yallahs Valley Land Authority along the lines of the famous Tennessee Valley Land Authority in the U.S.A. We seem to have forgotten the work of Lisa Salmon and many other Jamaicans who have been engaged in the conservation of this small island. When developers and others in collusion with them break the law by building in flood-prone areas, when politicians encourage squatting in these areas, when communities routinely dump garbage in gullies so that drains are filled, what do we expect? Flooding, loss of life, political point-scoring, frustration and anger are among the predictable responses.
Why don't we learn from the mistakes that we are constantly making, why is there so much contention and rivalry over the little piece of land named Jamaica? Sometimes I believe that we think that we can defy gravity and get away with it. There are too many people with the facts and the know-how in this country for us to continue on the path to our own destruction.
WHAT IS REQUIRED
Is it clear to the next generation of leaders what is required to save the country? I am pleased to see those young people who help to clean the beaches on special days. But how do we get the message across for the litter bugs and those who dump their garbage at the wrong places. When will we start to take recycling seriously? When will we deal with solid waste management wisely? These are not partisan political issues but national issues. We seem to have great difficulty in understanding what the nation consists of and what we require consensus for. It is time that we recognise that there are too many things threatening to destroy the country - crime, violence, unemployment, destruction of the environment, but most of all the inability to envision a national consensus about Jamaica. If we did not achieve this in the past, our future will depend on it.
Hilary Robertson-Hickling is lecturer at the University of the West Indies.
