Peter Espeut

On Easter Monday I was the guest speaker at the 45th renewal of the Flower Show staged by the St. Elizabeth Horticultural Society at Independence Park, Black River, and my wife handed out trophies. Let me share with you some of what I said, and other thoughts that have occurred to me since.

I am not known as a horticulturist, but as an advocate of environmental conservation and sustainable development. To be invited to be the guest speaker at this major event in the St. Elizabeth calendar spoke volumes of the commitment of this revered group of south coast citizens to the cause of reversing the decline in the health of our natural environment. The politicians on the platform with me (of different stripes) lost no time in presenting their environmental credentials. I am encouraged that despite the many setbacks we environmentalists experience in the struggle to protect the integrity of God's earth, slowly we are gaining the hearts and minds of the people that really matter.

I was introduced as a clergyman and a scientist, and I told them that the most important things in this life are the result of a partnership between God and humanity, and that this union is fertile and exciting: the Bible, the most important (if misunderstood) book ever written, is inspired by God but written by the hand of man; marriage is a partnership joined by God, and the emergence of new human life (procreation) is a partnership in which God is integrally involved (in every pregnancy caused by human action, God provides a human soul); and among the many other examples one could give is the natural environment itself, the work of God's creating hand, but the day-to-day stewardship of which is squarely put in the hands of humanity.

I pointed out that left to itself, over time any piece of land would turn into dense bush, a chaos of weeds and withes; the caring hand of humans like the members of the St. Elizabeth Horticultural Society could turn it into a beautiful garden. The seas are hometo wild animals - fish which humans have over-hunted to depletion; properly managed by humans (the experts tell us) Jamaican waters could provide us with three times the current levels of fish. It is the partnership between humanity and divinity that will fulfil the earth, bring it to birth, and make the Kingdom come.

Of course, the hand of humanity all by itself can and has done quite the opposite: with the greed of Cain we despoil the forests and the mountains, we pollute the rivers and the seas, and kill off the animals and plants; and in the process create poverty and gross inequality. Politics, which is supposed to regulate and moderate these selfish and negative tendencies, seems to have joined forces with the despoilers. Unless we positive forces put our foot down, the beautiful Cockpit Country of St. Elizabeth will be despoiled in the name of bauxite mining; for a few years the few will get rich on the limited mineral resources of St. Elizabeth, and then will disappear leaving St. Bess with gaping holes in the ground, and in their heritage.

Achieve sustainable development

We Jamaicans should not continue to sell off our birthright for a mess of pottage. Let people of goodwill join together in a partnership to achieve sustainable development, not fleeting and counterfeit development. Black River, once a thriving seaport exporting sugar, rum and logwood - the first place in Jamaica to have electric light, the first place in Jamaica to have a motor car - is now a shadow of its former self; the grand development it once experienced was unsustainable. The same is likely to happen in a few decades to presently prosperous parts of Jamaica which depend upon bauxite.

And so I am grateful to the St. Elizabeth Horticultural Society for their invitation and their hospitality Monday gone. Let us look forward to the building of a broad civil society coalition across Jamaica in support of sustainable development.