Some of the environmental damage caused by Hurricane Ivan in affluent and poor Kingston neighbourhoods. (Observer photos)

When flood waters and debris crashed into homes at Hope Pastures during Hurricane Ivan earlier this month, the immediate reaction was to blame squatters.

They, many felt, had invaded the hillsides and cut down trees, undermining a key watershed. But that is only partially true, according to environmentalists.
Fingers are also being pointed at society's more well-to-do citizens, with their multi-million dollar homes in hillsides that were "raped" to facilitate their construction.

"Where we build is the first thing (and) it is not confined to poor areas. It is every kind of development that we do... We are building in the flood planes of rivers. We are building in wetlands. We also take no account of the steepness of our slopes or the soil types," Diana McCaulay, chief executive officer of the Jamaica Environment Trust, told the Sunday Observer last week.

"We are not paying attention to the drainage of land when we construct roads. So, we build in places that flood or that are too close to the sea and then we are surprised when in a disaster we are affected," she added.

Such environmental practices have been made more stark by Ivan's devastation of the island - including the loss of 18 lives due to flood waters, landslides and fallen trees. And they are practices that extend beyond land clearing and deforestation for housing and other developments, to include the destruction of coral reefs and the improper disposal of garbage and other waste. Were it not for those practices, the experts maintain, the damage incurred by the island could have been minimised.
"Our coral reefs are the first line of defence against storms," said McCaulay. "They are offshore a little bit and they are the first thing that the waves break against. The second is wetlands. Wetlands ring the coast and control flooding. They are like a sponge that soaks up extra water as well as present an absolute barrier against waves. We are taking out the wetlands as well."

McCaulay said that Portland Cottage in Clarendon, which was seriously affected because it is low-lying, is one of the places that actually have some wetlands left. "But that whole settlement probably shouldn't be there. It is going to be affected by bad weather," she warned.
McCaulay also cautioned against the insistence of some hoteliers to build directly on the island's beaches, to Jamaica's detriment.
"Typically, when we are building a hotel we put a bulldozer on the site to take everything out. Instead of us saying, 'let us try to keep the features of the land'. We take out sea grasses which stabilise the coast, especially the sand," she said.

"As far as we know, our tourists mustn't step on sea grass, so we take it all out. And then when the beach starts to disappear because our reef offshore is dead, the sea grass are gone (and) the dune is gone, there are howls of crisis," she added.
Maurice Mason, an economist and project co-ordinator with the University of the West Indies' Centre for Environment and Development (UWICED), agreed with McCaulay's assessment that had citizens engaged in better environmental practices in the period before Ivan, the damage suffered would not have been as extensive.

Building codes and environmental regulations were, he argued, either not being enforced or wantonly disregarded.
"In some centres, like in our housing sectors, Ivan has shown clearly that the building codes and the environmental acts were not enforced," he said. "Prime example, you have houses that were washed away, houses that were built in the riverbed," he noted, adding that such houses included those along the Hope River.

"If building codes were being enforced irrespective of location and income levels, this would not have been a problem associated with Ivan," Mason maintained.
Like McCaulay, he stressed the importance of coastal zone management. And critical to achieving that, he said, was the control of inland activities like deforestation that results in soil erosion and which contributes to landslides.
He pointed out that under normal circumstances, Jamaica's soil type and its mountainous terrain served to get water to the sea within only a few hours after rainfall.

"When that is aided by human activity in terms of clearing the land and so on, the water will have its own free will to really move, and all of this silt must be deposited somewhere and it is normally deposited on our reef," he said. "So, to solve the problem of the reef, is to solve the inland problem, because at the end of the day it is the inland activity that is more detrimental to the sea."
It is against this background that UWICED has formulated the Vetiver Project that targets the planting of the vetiver grass, which grows about two metres in a month and have roots that can reach up to 15 metres, to stem soil erosion. The project has, however, hit a snag due to a lack of funding.

The proper disposal of sewage has also been identified as being critical if the degradation of the island's reefs is to be curtailed.
Well-known geologist, Rafi Ahmad, who heads the Unit for Disaster Studies in the Department of Geography and Geology at the UWI, also blamed poor environmental practices for the landslides experienced, and more particularly those that occurred within the Kingston Metropolitan Area.

One such slide inside Salus District in Stony Hill, St Andrew claimed the lives of a family of four that included three children. The family perished when their home was inundated with mud and other debris. There were other incidents of landslides that occurred in areas like Irish Town, Gordon Town and Mavis Bank - all due, at least in part, to poor environmental practices and more particularly, the removal of vegetation.

"Following Hurricane Ivan we had very extensive rainfall-induced landslides in the Kingston Metropolitan Area..." Ahmad told the Sunday Observer. "If vegetation is disturbed, this makes them especially prone to slides. But having said that, it must be understood that there are geological and structural causes for these (landslides) as well as bad land use practices, (which) is something like the last straw which broke the camel's back..."

To stem such incidents and prevent the loss of life in areas prone to landslides, Ahmad has suggested that the hazard maps prepared by him and a team of other professionals in the field, under the Caribbean Disaster Mitigation Programme (CDMP) in 1999, be utilised.
"This particular event highlighted the accuracy and usefulness of the landslides hazard maps which already exist for the KMA," he said. "These maps warn the people who live in this part of the area, the society at large, the planners (and) the disaster managers of the dangers which exist because of landslides in this part of the world."

According to Ahmad, it had been found that the types of rocks, slopes and the geological structure of the lands contributed to high incidents of landslides within the KMA.
"The thing is that we know. We knew all about these areas. And anybody who is interested should go and look at the maps and find what are the areas which were predicted to be the areas where we have high landslide incidents," he said.

The island's Forestry Department has also stressed the importance of proper land usage. Conservator of Forests, Marilyn Headley, has gone as far as to suggest that this should be put on the agenda of Danville Walker, who has been charged with the responsibility of co-ordinating the reconstruction of the island over the next six months at least.
"I would like Mr Walker to include it in his long-term plan," said Headley. "I know he is only there for six months but... we are hoping that in the reconstruction, land use planning would incorporate the whole thing about the non-use of land. There are some areas that you really should not be using."

Added Headley: "In the early 20th century, they declared a lot of land government land, and government also bought out some private land and called these forest reserves. You have about 110,000 hectares of forest reserves. But a lot of these lands were over time parcelled out or leased to people to do other things."
And with felled trees lining areas of the KMA in the wake of Hurricane Ivan, Headley has suggested that better care be taken in the maintenance of trees in urban centres. "You need to care your trees in the urban area a little differently from out in the rural areas where the trees just have big, wide open space," she said.

One woman, Sonia Hayden, died after Ivan's winds uprooted a guinep tree which fell on her house at Mountain View Avenue in Kingston, crushing her to death.
UWICED's Mason has, in the interim, stressed the importance of educating people, from the very poor to the affluent, in order to have them adopt proper environmental practices. Beyond that, he said people needed to see tangible benefits from their engagement in such practices.

McCaulay, too, emphasised that if people were not made to see the importance of engaging in proper environmental practices, whether voluntarily through education or involuntarily through the impartial enforcement of environmental laws and regulations, the entire society would feel the effects.
"... Unless we take decisions that will look after the natural environment, people are going to suffer. We are going to lose our houses, maybe our lives," she said, adding that the Environment Trust would continue in its own role as educators and advocators of such practices.

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