The rain which fell during the passage of Tropical Storm Gustav was not extraordinary for Jamaica as far as rain goes; but the damage certainly was. And this is not the first time damage to infrastructure seems disproportionate. After every one of these episodes, the question keeps coming back: are we looking at a purely natural disaster, or is the hand of humanity heavy in there?

Certainly, it begins as a natural event - a tropical storm - and putting aside the role of human-induced global warming in bringing storms on in the first place, we always have to look at the impact of human-induced deforestation over the years on worsening the effects of tropical cyclones.

Usain Bolt is not the only world-beater in Jamaica: only a few years ago Jamaica had the highest rate of deforestation in the world! This means that we have a history under both the PNP and the JLP of cutting down our natural forest cover without replanting anything, or planting quite unsuitable stuff.

A common reason for deforestation is housing, planned or unplanned. Every house built in the Hope River watershed, replacing the trees which were there, has contributed to the destruction of the two bridges over that river during Gustav. Jamaica has a Watershed Protection Act; it was passed in 1963, but can only come into effect when regulations are in place.

Decades

No regulations have ever been promulgated for this act, despite decades of JLP and PNP government, and despite falling under the administration of the government environment agency, both as Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) and as National Environmental Planning Agency (NEPA). Clearly watershed protection was not on the agenda of any Jamaican government.

We love the Gully Creeper dance - that must be why both PNP and JLP governments have allowed generations of Jamaican voters, their party supporters, to build on gully banks and riversides. I think the costs of relocation and rehabilitation of these victims of politics should come out of party coffers and not the public purse. And in any case, I don't know if we are sending the right signal to potential squatters when we relocate present squatters to new homes.

Residents in the upper Buff Bay River Valley are marooned because of landslides and breakaways. Remember FIDCo, that wonderful idea in the 1980s to cut down all the natural forest cover of Jamaica to plant Caribbean Pine? Well, after Hurricane Gilbert snapped millions of Caribbean Pine trees like toothpicks, FIDCo was abandoned, but not before wrecking the upper watershed of the Buff Bay River.

This JLP government is now going to have to pick up the pieces after the environmentally disastrous JLP government of the 1980s.

Mined-out lands

One of the reasons we do deforestation in Jamaica is to promote mining. The mining companies come in and strip off the natural cover, take away the ore they want, and then they are supposed to 'restore' the mined-out lands. Now the word 'restore' is misleading, for it means to 'make like it was before'. You cannot restore a natural forest by planting grass or fruit trees; that does not produce a natural forest, performing certain useful ecosystem services necessary for human survival.

But in any case, the Government has allowed mining companies to get away with breaking the law, with breaking the terms of their licences, for they have been allowed to mine an area and move on without doing even the deficient 'restoration' they are required to do. What I do not understand is why the Government's environment agency continues to delegate its environmental oversight responsibility for mining to the Jamaica Bauxite Institute, despite that agency's history of poor oversight performance.

Why does the government love to create these profound conflicts of interest involving itself? We have come to learn the hard way that the wages of deforestation is death and destruction. Can we have some watershed protection regulations, please? And some reafforestation, please?