Dr. Parris Lyew-Ayee wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the Cockpit Country. - file

Faced with criticism from environmentalists for granting prospecting licences in the island's ecologically sensitive Cockpit Country, Jamaican bauxite industry officials say they are willing to enforce a ban on any survey in the area. But first there would have to be agreement on what geographically is the Cockpit region.

"If it is going to cause a world war, I wouldn't support any exploration being done," said Dr. Carlton Davis, the Cabinet secretary and chairman of the Jamaica Bauxite Institute (JBI), the agency that set policy for the bauxite/alumina industry.

"But let's talk about what is the Cockpit Country," he added. "I think what is needed is that once we come to some sensible agreement of what is the Cockpit Country we put in some decent management systems."

The Cockpit Country is largely considered to be a rugged, hilly, limestone terrain of karstic depressions and underground streams - mostly in Jamaica's northern parish of Trelawny and sections of St Ann - and containing a wide range of endemic species of flora and fauna.

But a furore has erupted in recent weeks about its real geography in the face of a campaign, led by the Jamaica Environmental Trust (JET) over a decision by the Government to award a bauxite prospecting licence to Jamalco, the alumina refinery owned by Alcoa Minerals and the Jamaican Government.

JET and a coalition of local and international environmentalists, fear that prospecting will lead to mining and damage to what they insist is one of the world's most delicate ecosystems.

But not only have the Jamaican authorities insisted that there would be no automatic mining in the region, they have accused the environmentalist of widely exaggerating the area that should be properly considered to be Cockpit Country. A representational map issued by JET would encompass 1,142 square kilometres and taking such towns in the parish of Trelawny as Maggoty, Siloah as well as the Appleton sugar estate.

"The Cockpit Country boundary map provided by the Jamaican Environmental Trust/Cockpit Country Stakeholders' Group follows no rational or logical pattern for delimitation according to any of the known delimitation parameters used in any previous study," wrote Dr. Parris Lyew-Ayee Jr, the 24-year-old chief technical director at Mona GeoInfomatics at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI).

Lyew-Ayee's Ph.D. in geology, completed two years ago at Oxford University, was on the Cockpit Country.

"I have extreme difficulty in determining the basis of this delimitation, as it follows none of the previous parameters used for delimiting the area, nor does it follow any obvious basis for delimitation, scientific or others," Lyew-Ayee said in a document prepared for the JBI, where his father is the executive director.

Other delimitations by various experts have, based on Lyew-Ayee's report, range from between 288 square kilometres, to 618 square kilometres.

Bauxite deposits in the eastern half of Trelawny, and western St. Ann region of the Cockpit Country are estimated to reach tens of millions of tonnes, contained mainly in karstic depressions. A mining licence was in fact granted to the Alumina Company of Canada (Alcan) in the 1960s, but this was withdrawn in 1974 when the Government sought to take greater control of the country's natural resources. Prospecting in the area was revisited in the early 1990s when Aloca considered a new alumina refinery in Jamaica.