Martin Henry
I guess I should be writing about crime and the goings and comings of the police commissioner. But a couple of other things are happening in a big world out there.
Among those 'other things' is the 2008 North Atlantic hurricane season which began with a bang. Even before the traditional starting date of June 1, two named storms emerged, giving Central America a rain-lashing and dumping a lot of water from outer bands on Jamaica.
Forecasters are predicting a busier than normal hurricane season this year. Last year was so busy that the namers ran out of pre-planned names and had to start all over again. Category 4 Hurricane Dean lashed us in August and may have been instrumental in blowing away Portia Simpson Miller's government. The outlook this year from the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is for up to 16 named storms and nine hurricanes, with as many as five of them becoming major hurricanes.
Good tracking system
God bless America. Their hurricane monitoring and tracking system serves us and the region well. Last Tuesday, as the advertorially concealed front page of The Gleaner hollered, 'Admiral jumps ship', page A6 was reporting, 'Hurricane radar out of service'. The Doppler Radar on which the local Met Service relies to locate precisely, track and determine the strength of weather systems has been out of service for months. Part of the contingency plan, in the absence piece of this vital piece of equipment costing a mere $40 million, is to rely on Cuba for data from their Doppler Radar.
Early warning and disaster preparedness have made a world of difference in reducing loss of life and the destruction of property. In 1933, on the night of August 14/15, The Gleaner Geography & History of Jamaica records, a Kingston and St Andrew flood, triggered by sustained heavy rains, not a full hurricane, killed 53 people in this small area and destroyed over £300,000 of public and private property. The Sandy Gully courses overflowed their banks, ripping away houses and drowning people in them. The gullies have subsequently been tamed by a 'Gully Government'.
And, in more recent times, an Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) has been created in the wake of Hurricane Gilbert, 1988. Kingston is never likely to be washed out again on the scale of the 1933 flood. With very limited resources from administrations with much less cost-benefit sense than Bustamante's criticised Gully Government, the ODPEM has done a commendable job in disaster mitigation and the management of emergencies.
More and bigger howlers are heading our way on account of climate change a massive problem which deserves a little attention, crime permitting. While presenting the first major overhaul of internal security since the end of the Cold War in March, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, listed extreme weather, potential flu pandemics and failed states, alongside terrorist attacks as the most serious threats to Britain.
Addressing the House of Commons, PM Brown said, "The nature of the threats and the risks we face have in recent decades changed beyond recognition and confound all the old assumptions about national defence and international security." This is not the kind of debate and decision making you are likely to see in the Parliament of Jamaica or hear from the prime minister as we get totally wrapped up in crime and the economy. The United States Centre for Naval Analyses a federally funded research and development agency put out a study last year, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change. The study concluded that "Global climate change presents a serious national security threat."
Climate change
The May edition of Reader's Digest ran a major story, 'Dry Times', on chronic drought in the United States caused, at least in part, by climate change, and the looming threat of severe water shortages as usage goes up and available supplies go down. Water 'wars' - and treaties are emerging between states of the Union!
World Environment Day, which passed on Thursday, June 5, would have offered some opportunity for reflection on the state of the Jamaican and global environment, the deterioration of which is a far more substantial threat to a secure future than crime, which can be reversed fairly quickly with bold and determined action, or the economy, which can be grown as well, fairly quickly, if we capitalise on our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses. And one of our strengths is our biodiversity with one of the highest levels of endemicity in the world - the plants and animals found here and nowhere else.
Well-timed for World Environment Day was the inaugural professorial lecture of UWI Professor Helen Jacobs, 'Natural Products from Caribbean Biodiversity - The Promise and the Challenges'. We already know of Canasol and Asmasol from ganja, which is a veritable pharmacological gold mine. Smoking the stuff is really wasting it. And wasting the smoker! The UWI has been a world-class centre for natural products chemistry with work beginning with the inception of the university.
New applied science
But extraction of stuff is not the only way to benefit from biodiversity. A whole new applied science of Biomimicry is rapidly advancing. Biomimicry is "the science of designing things for humans, using nature's way of doing things as a blueprint," says the May 29 issue of Rachel's Democracy and Health News which reran an excellent article on the subject.
The UN Environment Programme and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature [IUCN] are both backing a Biomimicry Guild which is geared towards developing these products. Like a pacemaker modelled from the heart of the humpback whale, vaccines not needing refrigeration based on the 'resurrection' plant found in Africa, and low-friction surfaces developed from study of the slippery skin of the sandfish lizard found in the desert of the Arabian peninsula. A Nature's 100 Best List will be unveiled at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in October.
Martin Henry is a communication consultant. Please send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.
