Tread carefully on development

This editorial appeared last week in the Jamaica Gleaner. Its relevance to TT should not lost  

The two hurricanes that passed nearby Jamaica in a little over a week may have spared the island the full brunt of their fury. Nonetheless, hurricanes Dennis and Emily further exposed Jamaica’s failure at environmental management, its failure to implement existing laws and the urgent need to codify in law new engineering and construction standards for public and other infrastructure. By now it should be clear to all that weather patterns have changed — and are likely to change further — as a result of global warming. One consequence for the countries of this region, it seems, is an increase in the frequency and ferocity of Atlantic storms.

Already, it appears, the active hurricane season is starting earlier and lasts longer. So, each year countries like Jamaica can expect to be pounded by so much more high winds and rain. The upshot will be an exacerbation of a problem that is already all too apparent during heavy rain. Over a long period we have ravished our watersheds. Hillside forests have been slashed to make way for homes — often palatial ones — and, sometimes, agriculture. We build homes on river banks, in flood plains and in other flood-prone areas without due care and attention to the consequences. Even when laws exist to regulate how and where we build, or mine or farm, they are ignored.

It is of little wonder, therefore, that we have, in recent years, been so badly exposed. Jamaica has been losing top soil at an alarming rate for many years, as denuded hillsides wash away into valleys below and abused rivers overflow their banks. During Hurricane Ivan last September, the real scale of the crisis began to be exposed. Of course, as is often the case, the crude homes on river banks collapsed as the land gave way to the raging waters. Hillside nogs, too, went in similar fashion. What many people had not counted on was the extent to which officially sanctioned developments and mansions perched on hills were undermined. There were several cases of homes on foothills, in middle-class neighbourhoods, being submerged in soil and silt brought down from the land above. Major housing estates, too, swam in flood waters. Roads and bridges gave way.

That was less than a year ago. It happened again this month with Dennis and Emily. It is likely to happen again, unless we act now. So where the laws exist for environmental management, they have to be enforced. If new ones are needed they have to be passed. It can’t be that people are allowed, on personal whim, to build homes on tracts of hillside land or for major housing developments to be set down in flood plains and flood-prone areas, without the special nature of the environment being taken into account during design. Saving a few dollars in building an inadequate road costs more in the longer-term. The same applies to other infrastructure. Clearly, the Government, the planners and the environmental groups have some thinking and co-ordinating to do. It is critical that we have development, but without destruction.