Nagra Plunkett, Staff Reporter
Eleanor Jones, managing director of Environmental Solutions Limited, in dialogue with president of the Jamaica Institution of Engineers (JIE), Hopeton Heron. The occasion was the JIE Western Chapter's Banquet at Wexford Court Hotel in Montego Bay where Mrs. Jones was the keynote speaker. - CONTRIBUTED
WESTERN BUREAU:
JAMAICAN ENGINEERS are being challenged to be more environmentally aware in the execution of their duties in order to achieve sustainable prosperity.
The call came from Managing Director of Environmental Solutions Limited, Eleanor Jones, in her keynote address at the Jamaica Institution of Engineers (JIE) Western Chapter's banquet on Saturday night.
"I'd like to suggest that one of the most pressing environmental and sustainable development concerns for us in Jamaica today relates to our resilience to natural hazards," Mrs. Jones said.
"This resilience relates to how citizens, communities, business enterprises, professionals, technocrats, and government agencies manage the natural protection afforded by environmental assets."
She was speaking to the local JIE membership on 'Protecting The Environment' during the function, which was hosted at the Wexford Court Hotel in Montego Bay.
The environmental consultant stated that the experiences from the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons should be used to influence a change in the environment development model among professionals, within the policy-making machinery and communities.
LOSSES
"Multibillion-dollar economic losses have been recorded especially over the past two years, and we have seen that with effective environmental and engineering applications, much could have been avoided," Mrs. Jones added.
In urging the body to take 'a flagship approach' to integrating environmental risk management and development, she stressed the importance of merging environmental processes into designs and maintenance of critical infrastructure, lobbying for ownership of risk caused by bad construction practices and energy efficiency in engineering design.
"We need to build the capacity for change!" she continued. "For this we need policy, strategy, geographical planning, institutional capacity, external relations, and we need project cycle management."
