Congrats to that Jamaican in the TCI- Syl Thomas

This is kinda off script for me, but I felt the need to give a shout out to this man for his hard work and dedication to service.

A few weeks ago, the Turks and Caicos Islands’ Her Majesty Prison Service named its first Officer of the Year as Mr. Sylvester Thomas, a Jamaican who had been with the service for some time.

Head of the Prison Service Superintendent Ian Sargent commended Thomas who also served in the Jamaican Prison Service. Thomas is regarded by his colleagues as professional, reliable, motivated and dedicated, Superintendent Sargent said.

What is commendable is that the award is one that is initiated by nomination from one’s peers. Officer Thomas received the most nominations from his peers and was presented with a plaque and cash award by Governor Ric Todd on Tuesday February 12, 2013.

As the first winner of the latest initiative by HM Prison Service to reward service and dedication among its members, I am proud of one of the many Jamaicans whose hard work consistently gets overshadowed by the bad-behaving few.

Congrats Sylvester Thomas, keep up the good work.

Sylvester Thomas receives his award from TCI Governor Ric Todd.

Human Activity and Climate Change Threaten Tourism in Jamaica

Story published by IPS on June 6, 2012
Experts here fear that that the impact of climate change on Jamaica’s fragile ecosystems will worsen the ravages of human activity and destroy the country’s tourism industry.

Dunns River, perhaps the best know river on the island because of the famous Dunns River Falls- the most photographed place on the island.

Tourism is one of the few local sectors that experienced growth even as the global economy declined. In Jamaica, tourism grew some 4.2 percent between 2002 and 2007. It provides close to 2 billion U.S. dollars annually, roughly 50 percent of the island’s foreign exchange earnings and about a quarter of all jobs.

The sector is aware of the challenges it faces, Tina Williams, a director in the ministry of tourism, told IPS. She noted that sea level rise is expected to inundate much of the island’s coastal areas, its infrastructure, hotels and attractions.

More intense rainfall and hurricanes and drier and hotter days are also expected to intensify the pressure on local ecosystems and the tourism industry.

But Williams noted that while the sector is not focused specifically on climate change, stakeholders are implementing disaster risk reduction strategies and programmes that they hope will make their product more resilient.

“Climate change will exacerbate all the vulnerabilities the sector faces – landslides, flooding – and with many small owners who are dependent on local agriculture, the industry will no doubt feel the impact,” Williams, who is responsible for overseeing climate change policy in the ministry, told IPS.

The sector’s dependence on natural ecosystems places it on the frontline of the climate change fight. Yet the industry itself has exacted a heavy toll on the local environment, causing irreversible damage in some areas.

Dying reefs
Reports indicate that as much of 30 percent of the island’s original coastal vegetation has been lost. Most of the 1,240 square kilometres of coral reefs, with an estimated 111 species of coral, is mostly dead from a combination of human activities and disease. Of the remaining coral, about 60 percent are at risk, the World Resources Institute noted in a 2010 report.

High levels of nutrients from agricultural run-off and the disposal of sewage in coastal waters have also damaged the reefs. According to government data, the resort towns of Negril, Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and areas along the south coast in the Portland Bight protected area have felt the greatest impact.

Marine biologist Andrew Ross noted that ongoing coral bleaching, overfishing, land clearance and pollution – particularly that of sewage – have all contributed to the decline of reefs.

“Places with regular tourism visitation will see a lot of accidental and/or anchor damage and even some harvesting or collecting for the knickknack shelf,” he said.

But nowhere is the situation more telling than along the Negril coastline. Here, the sand dunes have long given way to concrete houses, hotels and sewage plants. Here, scientists say, the widespread destruction of coastal vegetation, forests and wetlands is providing a glimpse of the ravages climate change is expected to bring.

Panorama of Negril Beach, Jamaica

The true cost of development
Negril’s tourism infrastructure was built at the expense of its coastal wetlands. Coastal mangrove forests and sea grass beds were removed to provide access to the gleaming white sands that tourists love.

Now, the famous white sand that earns roughly half of Jamaica’s tourism earnings is being washed away at rates between a half and one metre per year. According to reports, some areas have lost as much as 55 metres of beach in the last 40 years.

The erosion, scientists from the University of the West Indies (UWI) have found, is the direct result of development. When they removed the wetlands, developers destroyed the carbon-secreting organisms that inhabited the sea grass beds and produced at least half of the sand.

“The significant lack of coral in the beach sand indicate that algal fragments are probably not derived from the reef but rather from algae in the shallow shelf environment of the inner bay,” the 2002 study said.

“Human activities also play a major role” in reef degradation, noted a report from the Risk and Vulnerability Methodology Development Project (RiVAMP) of the United Nation’s Environment Programme (UNEP), even as the report acknowledged that external phenomena were nonetheless important factors.

The report noted that the traditional use of sea grass as compost for farming and its use in traditional drinks have taken away from existing beds. Locals also cut down mangroves to provide fuel wood and as material for housing.

The future of tourism in Jamaica
Even as visitor arrivals are projected to increase to 3.1 million by 2050, climate change could see the numbers fall to 2.7 million by that time, experts have said.

Jamaican tourism is rooted in its white sand beaches and sun and is location-specific to resort towns such as Negril. Much of the island’s infrastructural development has gone into these resort areas, which also happen to lie within predicted flood zones.

Increasingly, the industry is expanding its offerings to include bird watching, community tourism, nature trails and health tourism.

To lessen the impact and repair some of the damage, the island is undertaking a broad-based climate change adaptation and risk reduction programme, replanting hardwood and mangrove forests as well as sea grass beds. One local NGO, with assistance from corporate Jamaica, is building an artificial reef in the Portland Bight area, as well as in Negril.

Williams noted that the tourism ministry is also working with other agencies to sensitise stakeholders.

Central to the adaptation plan is a Natural Resources Valuation process aimed at developing tools to aid stakeholders in assigning monetary value to natural resources, environmental economist Maurice Mason told IPS.

“We are building formulae that will help us to determine the value of our natural resources whether we want to develop, keep it for future use or just keep it for the satisfaction of having it,” he said.

Mason, who works with the UWI Risk Reduction Centre, noted that the methodologies will provide authorities with the tools to help with decision making that promotes the sustainable use and development of the natural environment.

“It will also aid in the development of alternative employment for the many poor Jamaicans for whom alternative livelihoods must be found if the natural ecosystems are to be preserved and/or sustainably exploited,” Mason said.

The river at Castleton Gardens, Jamaica. Rivers are one of the main sources of water on the island.

Ross, whose company Seascapes Caribbean specialises in the replanting of coral reefs, pointed out that it will take “absolute commitment” to halt the decline of the local environment on which the industry depends.

“We could be talking about a return of the 1970s heyday of us providing the best scuba diving in the world,” he said. “Return of coral also means return of the fisheries and coastal protection, including protection of roads and infrastructure.”

Jamaica’s Rich Biodiversity Faces Multiple Threats

This article was first printed by IPS on May 11, 2012
Jamaican authorities are going all out to achieve environmental sustainability as one way of minimising the expected impacts of climate change on the local biodiversity.

There is no up-to-date inventory of the island’s flora and fauna, and a shortage of adequate data collection devices, which researchers say are needed to begin climate impact studies and adaptation planning in ecosystems management.

But, by working toward the seventh Millennium Development Goal (MDG) – a series of development and anti-poverty targets agreed by U.N. member states in 2000 – authorities hope to establish the principles of sustainable development across all sectors to reduce environmental degradation, reverse the loss of environmental resources, and significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss.

The endangered Giant Swallowtail Butterfly.

Ecosystems Manager at the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) Andrea Donaldson told IPS that while the agency’s work on biodiversity is not focused on climate change, they are aware of the likely impacts and continue to implement measures to safeguard the local biological diversity.

The National MDG Report has pointed to the country’s failures in efforts at pollution controls and the protection of critical ecosystems, and it is these factors that worry scientists the most.

In addition, human activities that result in deforestation, destruction of wetlands and coastal ecosystems, urban sprawl as well as disregard for the natural environment have been identified as some of the most serious threats to biodiversity.

In fact, experts are concerned that disregard for the natural environment could exacerbate the impacts of severe weather. Both the 2010 State of the Environment Report (SOE) and the National Report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) pointed to human activities as significant threats.

“Climate change is likely to further increase the negative impacts” of habitat loss, over-exploitation, poor land use and ignorance about the value of natural resources, the SOE reported.

The Jamaican Tody one of 31 species of endemic birds.

Some experts are already describing changes in coral reefs, forests and coastal wetlands, areas that have been identified as most vulnerable to climate change. It is widely believed that with more than 12 extreme weather events in the last five years, Jamaica is already feeling the effects.

This is the most bio-endemic island in the region. Ranking fifth amongst islands of the world for the number of unique species, Jamaica’s biodiversity losses could be immense. There are more than 8,000 recorded species of plants and animals and more than 3,500 marine species here.

Among the island’s endemic treasures are 10 species of cacti, seven species of palms and 60 of the 240 species of orchids. There are 31 endemic species of birds, nine species of crabs, 505 species of the 514 varieties of land snails, and 33 of the 43 species of reptiles.

At least four of the 24 species of bats here are endemic; 17 of the 19 species of frogs and about 15 of the 115 species of butterflies.

Among the better-known unique species are the Tody, the Jamaican boa, the Jamaican Hutia also called the coney and the Giant Swallowtail Butterfly.

The island ranks among the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list of places with the highest number of at-risk mammals, due primarily to the threat to its endemic bats and the coney.

Another of the island’s endemic species, the Jamaican iguana, is on the IUCN’s Red List of endangered and threatened species. Roughly 200 of the animals survive in the shrinking limestone forests of Hillshire, several miles outside the capital Kingston.

The Jamaican Rock Iguana is threatened with extinction.

And as the impacts of fewer but more intense rainy days, increased intensity of hurricanes, and periodic drought take their toll, socioeconomic problems are expected to increase the pressure on natural resources.

As the agency charged with safeguarding the island’s biological treasures, NEPA said it has spearheaded a number of policies, programmes and legislation to manage and prevent unauthorised exploitation.

Its managers admit, however, that enforcement has been difficult so like the Forestry Department, NEPA is making the impacted communities its allies. Adaptation funding has enabled both agencies to replant the forests and coastal wetlands. At the same time, they are working with fishers, farmers and others whose livelihoods depend on the natural ecosystems to find other income-generating opportunities.

The multi-sector, multi-donor climate change adaptation and disaster mitigation project is funded by the European Union. It also compliments NEPA’s efforts to assign economic value to the ecosystem and improve data collection to inform climate change planning.

“We are trying to install data loggers to collect information on sea water surface temperature among other things,” Donaldson noted. “While we do regular reef checks, I can’t say as a fact that any changes we see are from climate change.”

Illustration of an endemic Jamaican Orchid. There are 60 endemic orchids in Jamaica.

NEPA’s data loggers should provide the Jamaica Clearing House Mechanism (CHM) with information that would be useful in studying the impact of climate change on its vast though outdated databases of plants and animals, biologist Keron Campbell said.

“We are updating the baseline data, the inventories of plant and animal species and this is needed to track any changes,” Campbell told IPS, noting that data-loggers along with ongoing field studies and temperature information from the meteorological service will provide valuable data for adaptation planning.

Jamaica’s Natural History Museum, which houses the CHM, holds 110,000 zoological specimens and a herbarium of 130,000 plant specimens dating back to the 1870s. The CHM is part of an international network and is the result of Jamaica’s commitment under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity.

Donaldson also pointed to charcoal burning, farming, solid waste disposal in fresh water sources and coastal areas, and improper fishing methods including the use of chemicals as some of the most prevalent and worrying factors that impact biodiversity.

The SOE reported that scientists are also seeing changes in the Portland Bight, the island’s largest nature reserve. It is also the only known habitat of the Jamaican iguana.

Dr. Byron Wilson, head of the University of the West Indies Iguana programme, noted that the continued survival of the iguana is due primarily to the remoteness of its habitat. Efforts to build a colony on Goat Island just off the coast failed, he said, making the Hellishire Hills one of the world’s most important natural habitats.

But development is now making the area more accessible. It was a pig hunter who rediscovered the iguana that had been thought extinct for more than 30 years.

NEPA’s wildlife specialist Ricardo Miller noted that the most significant changes during the annual game birds survey is the rate of development.

“I have had to change my sampling routes due to developmental changes. Some of the best birding trails are being replaced by houses,” he said.

Housing developments are impacting habitats.

Jamaica’s climate change preparations began in 1997 with Caribbean Planning for Adaptation to Global Climate Change (CPACC) under CARICOM (the regional Caribbean Community bloc). The programme initiated among other things the design strategies and databases for climate change adaptation in a number of areas.

If the science is correct, Donaldson said, climate change will result in the inundation of costal areas, loss of habitat and the dying off of some species. Others, she added, may very well adapt.
END

High Oil Costs Drive Jamaica’s Clean Energy Agenda

This article was published by IPS on April 30.
A growing appetite for oil and some of the Caribbean region’s highest electricity rates and petroleum prices are driving Jamaica’s thrust toward clean energy alternatives.

This country of 2.7 million people now spends more than it earns on imported oil.

Between January and June 2011, Jamaica spent 1.48 billion dollars on oil imports, while export earnings for January to September 2011 were 1.3 billion.

In the words of environmentalists, the situation is increasing the nation’s vulnerability to external shocks and putting pressure on the local environment.

Most of the island’s electrical installations lie inside the 10-metre vulnerability zone that experts say will be impacted by sea level rise due to climate change. The increasing demand for electricity is also increasing Jamaica’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Thinking outside the grid

Experts have described Jamaica’s economy as “highly energy inefficient” because 95 percent of the island’s energy needs comes from imported petroleum. Electricity generation uses 23 percent of oil imports, in part because of ageing equipment, theft and inefficiencies in the distribution system.

According to the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, the inefficiencies are the result of the high cost of energy conversion and high transmission and distribution losses. Other contributing factors include the demands of the bauxite and alumina industry.

“We are not producing enough and at the present rate we will be borrowing more just to pay for oil,” said Northern Caribbean University lecturer Dr. Vincent Wright.

The World Bank validated the complaints of the local business community when it identified high energy costs as one of the main hindrances to economic growth. Electricity rates have increased by 135 percent in 10 years, outpacing the annual economic growth rate of about one percent per annum over the same period.

Even though more than nine in 10 Jamaican households have access to electricity, soaring rates have made the commodity too expensive for many. So in addition to high levels of theft, reports are that electricity usage has fallen because people are cutting back.

Taxi driver John Thompson has opted to cut back on luxuries like the use of his washing machine.

“We can’t afford to pay light bill so we turn off the fridge at nights, turn off the lights and now the wife wash mainly by hand,” he said.

In a bid to increase the use of alternative energy and cut spending on oil, government changed the rules. In November 2011, the Office of Utilities Regulations (OUR) announced that individuals could generate their own electricity from alterative energy sources and sell the excess energy to the local electricity supplier.

So far, 10 applications have been made to sell excess power, the head of communications at OUR Michael Bryce told IPS.

“The Electric Lighting Act empowers the minister to issue licenses to persons wishing to supply electricity for any public or private purpose. Persons wishing to sell electricity must therefore first obtain a licence from the minister before their facility can be connected to the national grid,” he explained.

Ambitious plan or “pipe dream”?

Pressured by the need to cut spending and cushion the effects of spiraling oil prices, Minister of Energy, Science and Technology Phillip Paulwell in January promised to reduce electricity rates by up to 50 percent over the next four years.

Technocrats have described the minister’s plan as a “pipe dream”, but Paulwell is undaunted. He is pushing ahead with plans that he hopes will slash oil imports by 60 percent.

He also hopes to boost the contribution of alternative fuels to electricity generation from the 20 percent committed to in the country’s 2009 energy policy to 30 percent by 2030.

Wright is among those who see the minister’s vision as “extremely difficult” to realise.

“It is going to take a lot of public education, investment in research and the political will (just) to achieve the 20 percent. There must also be investments in technology to automate businesses, the public and private sectors must also become energy efficient,” said Wright, who heads the Natural and Applied Sciences College at the university.

There is significant losses in the energy generated because of inefficient distribution systems. Gleaner photo

Other strategies have included a National Energy Policy, several sub- policies and programmes to guide the government’s goal of “a modern and efficient energy sector that does not harm the natural environment”.

Since 2008, E10 gasoline, a blend of 10 percent sugarcane ethanol and 90 percent petroleum, has been sold at service stations island-wide.

Harnessing wind and water

And the state-owned Wigton Wind Farm has added more than 40 megawatts of generating capacity to the grid. This represents 2.6 percent of the island’s electricity generation and is enough to serve 50,000 homes per month.

“Wigton is helping the country to reduce its ecological footprint by reducing emissions,” said Nicole O’Reggio, head of pollution control in the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.

The wind farm’s 32 turbines are expected to reduce emissions by an estimated 85,000 tonnes a year, offsetting some 60,000 barrels of oil per year. In the five months between April and August 2011, Wigton shaved 2.7 million dollars from the oil bill.

Jamaica uses 77,000 barrels of oil a day.

The region’s first designated Clean Development project, Wigton also benefits from a carbon credit trading arrangement with the Netherlands, O’Reggio told IPS.

There are already independent suppliers producing electricity at lower rates than the sole distributor the Jamaica Public Service (JPS).

And faced with legal challenges to its supply monopoly from an increasingly disgruntled customer base, the company has begun diversifying its generation. Nine hydroelectricity generators and a wind farm have been added to its 840 megawatts of capacity in recent years.

The company is also installing another two hydropower stations and was recently given permission to build a 360-megawatt combined-cycle to be powered by liquid natural gas. The new plant is scheduled for completion by 2014 and according to the JPS, will cut electricity costs by between 31 and 45 percent.

Wigton Wind Farm, Jamaica. Jamaica Gleaner Photo.

There is consensus that Jamaica’s alternative energy potential is immense, but how to exploit it may prove challenging to a cash- strapped government. And meeting the targets could be problematic.

According to Wright, Jamaica can meet its targets if there is government commitment and “incentives for the installation of alternative energy systems, improved use of technology, more efficient use of energy by all Jamaicans as well as good conservation policies.”

Even as many agree that reducing the cost of energy should go a long way to boost Jamaica’s productivity, some say that Paulwell’s plan won’t work.

“Until we can do something about fuel, I don’t see any action that can be taken to produce that kind of energy reduction in the cost to consumers that the minister speaks about,” Winston Hay, a former head of the Office of Utilities Regulation, told journalists at a recent Gleaner Forum

To make it work, many experts agree that there must be a drastic reduction in the price of fuel. The government must also sell its plans to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since the removal of duties from alternative energy devices will cost Jamaica much-needed tax revenue and the conversion of street lamps will increase government spending.

But despite the challenges, Worldwatch noted, “Jamaica is in an enviable position because it has the potential to move quickly from being an oil-dependent country to a renewable energy-independent country.”

*This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Managing Fresh Water Resources

There is concern that changes to Jamaica’s rainfall patterns could have significant impacts on the island’s underground and surface water sources.

Scientists have warned that rainfall could be impacted by Climate Change, but so far, there have been no noticeable changes in the island’s rainfall pattern.

Head of the Water Resources Authority (WRA) Basil Fernandez was reassuring even in light of reports of reduced rainfall: “Jamaica is not short of water, but we do have problems with infrastructure, it is old and pipes are leaking,” he said.

Pointing to recent reports that 70 percent of the water abstracted for domestic purposes was “unaccounted for”, the man who controls the use and allocation of the nation’s water resources noted: “Unaccounted for water do not necessarily mean all leaks.”

The river at Castleton Gardens, Jamaica. Rivers are one of th main sources of water on the island.

“We could be dealing with illegal connections, under metering, no metering at all but we have to get a better handling on that,” he added.

Jamaica reportedly uses 25 percent of the available groundwater and 11 percent of the available surface water.

Dunns River, perhaps the best know river on the island because of the famous Dunns River Falls- the most photographed place on the island.

Trash Disposal Complicates Climate Change Fight in Jamaica

This article was first published by IPS on April 25, 2011
For more than a week this past February, the city choked on the acrid smoke that forced schools and business to close. It racked up millions of dollars in lost production and an estimated 60 million dollars in firefighting costs as the city tried to combat yet another fire at Kingston’s Riverton city dump.

No one knows what toxins were released in the early days of the fire, even though the fumes triggered health scares in communities within a two-mile radius and, according to some, as far as the old capital, Spanish Town.

Highlighting continued inadequacies in emissions control and air quality monitoring, the fire led to renewed calls for stricter air quality regulations, even as authorities have no plans to mitigate increasing greenhouse gas emissions and little knowledge about the substances Jamaicans breathe in each day.

People didn’t learn the levels of emissions until three days later, when the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) deployed monitoring devices to measure air quality and emissions.

The report noted, “The data collected gives a reasonable indication of the impact and provides a good baseline to make decisive actions and inform the public on the risk if an event of this magnitude should reoccur.”

NEPA’s coordinator of air quality management, Gary Campbell, confirmed that “analysis indicated the presence of particulate matter at many times the levels to which humans should be exposed”.

According to Jamaica’s second national report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), respiratory diseases were among the leading causes of hospitalisation and death in 2005.

Health statistics also show that in 2008, respiratory illnesses were the second most treated complaint in hospitals across the island.

Pollution tied to climate change

Jamaica’s need to reduce emissions and control air pollution is crucial to its efforts to adapt to climate change and its strategies to reduce greenhouse gases. Climate change is expected to increase levels of respiratory diseases and exacerbate conditions that contribute to them.

The report also listed fires at waste disposal sites, leachate and emissions of methane as leading sources of pollution.

Head of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management Ronald Jackson has recommended permanent closure of the site, noting that Riverton has passed the five-year limit for landfill operations.

“It is advice we have already given. We have also suggested options that include waste-to-energy options; air quality monitoring to know what is happening with the people who live near by and the capping of the dump,” he said.

Aside from Riverton, six other dump sites do not meet international standards as landfills, and trash pickers often cause fires by burning tyres and other material to salvage metals. It is reported as well that extortionists sometimes set fires in a bid to create jobs out of the need to extinguish the blaze.

Jamaica’s inadequate trash collection system means that only 70 to 75 percent of household garbage reaches the dumps. There are no separate industrial dump sites.

With most of rural Jamaica lacking regular garbage collection, estimates of garbage that is burnt, buried or improperly disposed of fall between 191,000 and 228,787 tonnes each year.

Also contributing to emissions are farmers who use fire to clear the land, the production of charcoal and the burning of cane to facilitate reaping.

In Negril, fumes from cane fires and burning peat are the bane of the resort town’s idyllic setting because cane fires coincide with the height of the tourist season, while peat fires smother the town during the summer, the hottest time of the year.

Industrial emissions are also reportedly on the rise. The UNFCC report noted increases in emissions from electricity generation and that emissions should increase with the expected restart of the bauxite and alumina industry.

Carbon dioxide emissions data show a steady increase between 2000 and 2005, from 9,531 gig grams to 13,946 gig grams, when there were between 381,776 and 501,985 motor vehicles on the island. Data also show increases in particulates, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide and methane levels.

Today motor vehicles number more than a million.

Conflicting interests

“Unfortunately, there are no efforts to manage air quality,” Simone Williams, technical director at the Negril Environmental Protection Trust (NEPT), told IPS.

Williams said that despite obvious increases in the level of pollutants, Jamaica had no initiatives to mitigate greenhouse gases, a view shared by the experts.

Peat fires, in addition to being “an inconvenience”, also affect “the hotel infrastructure (and) people’s health”, Williams added. But recent work to restore the wetlands will “significantly reduce the fires and emissions”, she said, “if not eliminate it”.

But eliminating fires in the Morass, despite its protected status, could prove challenging, as many farmers make their living there, Damian Salmon, chairman of the Negril Chamber Of Commerce said.

“Restoring the wetlands would solve a lot of Negril’s problems including the loss of the beach, because the ecosystems are interconnected, but we can’t drown out the farmers. Many will tell you that they have nowhere else to go,” he noted.

All agree that air quality monitoring is essential. But NEPA’s CEO Peter Knight pointed to critical shortcomings in the collection of solid waste and the urgent need for effective public awareness programmes to drive home the negative effects of open burning.

The agency has already begun to plug the holes in air quality regulations, which has no emissions standards for motor vehicle and open burning.

Jamaica has more than a million motor vehicles contributing to increased emissions and traffic jams like this one at the Highway 2000 off ramp at Marcus Garvey Drive.- Gleaner photo

At its drafting, the Natural Resources Conservation Authority Ambient Air Quality Standards Regulations (2006) aimed to use permits and licenses to control emissions from industrial installations.

“We are revisiting the act and are working with the relevant agencies. There are already draft motor vehicle emissions standards,” Campbell said. He added that the NEPA had not negated its responsibility, but rather had sought to prevent overlapping legislation by including only industrial emissions.

“NEPA is not responsible for the monitoring of motor vehicle emissions,” Knight elaborated. “That is the responsibility of the Ministry of Transport. There are the Country Fires Act under the Fire Brigade that covers open burning and the Public Health Act under the Ministry of Health.”

But environmentalists want to see stiffer penalties for open burning. The fine of 2,000 Jamaican dollars and/or three months in prison under the Fires Act are considered too lenient to deter offenders.

Nevertheless, the findings after the Riverton fire have prompted NEPA to recommend additional equipment and monitoring for at least a year. The agency is also seeking funds to increase its monitoring sites across the island.

(END)

Working to Cope with Climate Change, Jamaica Calculates Costs

This article was published by IPS on April 8, 2012
Jamaican authorities are aiming to transform an island that experts say faces one of the worst climate risks in the world into a nation “equipped to prepare for and respond to the negative impacts of climate change”.

Vision 2030, the National Development Plan, offers strategies to simplify climate change adaptation, merging its principles with both development and local policy frameworks. Charting a course from 2010 to 2030, the plan aims for “a strong and stable economic foundation”.

Extreme events have had a significant impact on Jamaica’s economy, environment and people. Five major storm events between 2004 and 2008 reportedly caused 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in losses and damage.

Industries that suffer the brunt of each impact include agriculture, which reportedly employs 180,000 people; tourism, employing about 106,000; and fisheries, employing 100,000.

Economists agree that in addition to exposing the country’s lack of resources, adaptation planning has uncovered vulnerabilities in the financial sector. They also point to the need for sustainable financing for adaptation and risk reduction strategies – Jamaica’s adaptation is being funded by grants, loans and donations from international bodies.

“Adequate re-insurance options for local insurers and a reassessment of the triggers and parameters used” by the Caribbean Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), which provides risk insurance for Caribbean governments to cover damages from natural events, are needed, said environmental economist Maurice Mason.

Vision 2030 is built into Jamaica’s second national communication to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (UNCCC). Central to Vision 2030 are a national energy plan, plans for other sectors and a still incomplete climate change adaptation plan.

“Achieving a healthy natural environment” is one of the plan’s four goals, as the vulnerable island is heavily reliant on natural resources. The plan’s 15 outcomes incorporate the related themes of climate change and disaster risk reduction, tourism, manufacturing, environmental protection and sustainable planning.

In drafting Vision 2030, the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) sought input from Jamaicans from all walks of life. “If our ecosystem development does not allow people to live, they will work to destroy it,” said PIOJ head Gladstone Hutchinson.

Pointing to the necessity of a “strong focus” on improved environmental management, he noted, “dysfunction in any of these spheres will impact Vision 2030″.

No place left untouched

At risk are Kingston’s commercial district and its service infrastructure, the historical town of Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport. Portmore, a settlement of more than 250,000 people, Jamaica’s fastest growing town of Old Harbour Bay and the famous Negril are also threatened.

Kingston Wharves at Gordon Key lies inside the Kingston Harbour.

Scientists at the Geo-Informatics Institute of the University of the West Indies predict sea level rise of a minimum two to three millimetres per year during the first half of this century. Such levels could affect an estimated 102 square kilometres in some of the most densely populated coastal areas.

A one to two metre rise, the UWI study speculated, would devastate low-lying coastal areas and key installations, including major power generation facilities, the oil refinery, airports and seaports. It would also have a serious impact on the natural protection of the Kingston harbour.

High engineering costs means there must be focus on improving access roads and shoring up the capability of response agencies, Mason, who works at the Disaster Risk Reduction Centre at the University of the West Indies, told IPS.

“Where climate change is concerned, everything up to 10 meters is vulnerable. That will put all our critical facilities at risk, our transhipment port in Kingston, both major airports and the north coast – that is effectively 70 percent of our GDP,” he said in a telephone interview.

Protecting Jamaica from sea level rise will cost approximately 532 million U.S. dollars, using a 1992 estimated cost of 197 U.S. dollars per person, and even without estimating the impact on natural resources, costs have begun to add up.

Raising about four kilometres of Palisadoes Road by just over three metres above sea level is estimated to cost 65.7 million dollars. The road links the airport and the town of Port Royal to the rest of the island. Recently, it has been blocked due to storm surges, marooning the historic town and airport.

Palisadoes Road under construction.

But experts also point to the need for reengineering works on roadways such as the main route from Kingston to the south coast. The main escape route for Portmore and other vulnerable communities, it becomes impassable during bad weather, and alternative routes are also prone to flooding and landslides.

The U.N. Adaption Fund has approved funding for the construction of protective structures to halt the erosion of the world famous Negril Beach, a project with a 25 million dollar price tag.

Experts estimate one to two metres of the beach is eroded each year. In 2010, the popular destination reportedly brought in a quarter of the island’s 2 billion dollars in tourism earnings.

Deploying natural resources

PIOJ’s Mary Gooden outlined adaptation strategies that include identifying alternative employment for communities where human activities are hurting forests and wetlands.

“We have to teach them to protect the environment while living in it,” she said noting that individuals are being helped to develop plans and proposals as well as access start-up funding.

The Forestry Department has replanted more than 300,000 hectares of forests in degraded upper watershed areas to reduce run-off, erosion and silting of waterways.

The National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) is restoring natural coastal defences by replanting mangrove trees in some of the island’s most vulnerable communities.

Mangroves absorb wave energy, thereby reducing impact on the land. They are also a source of fuel wood, animal feed and sticks to build fish pots.

Vision 2030 places high priority on alternative sources of energy to mitigate climate change. Most of the island’s energy generation facilities and supporting services lie within a 10-metre vulnerability zone.

The energy plan hinges on the state-owned Wigton Wind Farm in central Jamaica. The facility has helped reduce Jamaica’s oil purchasing, which topped 1.48 billion U.S. dollars between January and June 2011.

The plan aims to reduce the amount of electricity generated from imported petroleum from 95 percent to 30 percent by 2030, with 15 percent from renewable energy by 2020.

Wigton Wind Farm, Jamaica. Jamaica Gleaner Photo.

In order to lessen the impact of floods and droughts, artificial water recharge mechanisms that return excess water to natural underground storage systems are also being installed, as are rainwater catchment systems.

Additional weather stations are also being set up to provide valuable data on rainfall and temperature.

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