The Government has now presented to Parliament the long-awaited and debated boundaries of the Cockpit Country. The minute details are still to be worked out, and legislation promulgated, but we now have the basic framework of what the boundaries are.

Successive governments have spoken to the need to protect this most precious gift to Jamaica by the Almighty. How we have managed it is another question. We have not been short of talk, but credit is now due to the Andrew Holness Administration for finally setting in motion the protocols that will preserve and protect this delicate and important ecosystem of the Jamaican environment.

Kudos are also due to civil society for keeping the pressure on. One can be sure that we would not have arrived at this moment without their strident advocacy. For even though members of the Government are seized of the need to protect the environment, political considerations often trump common sense and good policies. Economic calculations often make redundant the evolution of sound policies that could protect the integrity of the environment.

As we reflect on the contribution of civil society and environmental groups, this column wishes to highlight the contribution of the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) and its key principal, Diana McCaulay, for keeping environmental issues at the forefront of the Jamaican people. She is retiring as the CEO of that organisation after more than two decades at the helm. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to her sterling contribution and advocacy over the years. She has steered the organisation in a direction that has made it one of the premier environmental organisations in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. She has done so with a great deal of integrity and fearlessness, often talking truth to power when others of greater size, clout and power would wilt in the background.

Having given up the day to day running of JET, one can be sure that she will continue her concern as, indeed, all of us should. Far too many of us treat the environment as something that is vastly peripheral to our concerns. It is not something that we need to contend with unless, of course, we can make a connection between clogged drains and gullies and the flooding of our homes. We treat with disdain those who tell us not to contaminate our environment, which is really our living space, with debris and filth. We look askance at the person who insists that we should not litter the street or throw our refuse in the gully.

It is only when we have the kind of flooding that occurred in Montego Bay recently that we become concerned. Before the flooding there was no civic pride to constrain those who threw their garbage wherever and whenever they pleased. And the downtown area of Montego Bay is the perfect poster child of a city in decay with long-running issues concerning clean streets and the management of waste water on the streets.

The flooding presents an opportunity for the authorities to take a comprehensive look at how the city’s downtown can be cleaned up if it is to live up to any reputation as a premier tourist destination. But it should be cleaned up not just for the tourists, but for Jamaicans who live and do business there, including the many higglers who ply their trade daily. The heart of downtown Montego Bay is gasping for breath. This unfortunately is the situation in any important town in Jamaica. Let us not even begin to talk about downtown Kingston and Spanish Town central.

It is amazing that in a country that boasts such Christian commitment so few of us have any concerns for the environment. It is certainly not spoken of with any prominence from our pulpits that environmental integrity is sound theology; that how we preserve the environment speaks volumes not only to our physical health, but our soul’s; that we have a divine mandate to preserve what the Lord has given to us. Many no longer seem to be too bothered by the wisdom of that old saying that cleanliness is next to godliness. It is part of our Christian discipleship to work assiduously towards the creation of a clean, liveable environment.

It is part of our Christian witness to work towards the preservation of the environment in which we live. Indeed, we have no other place to live. It is a grave moral sin for one generation to destroy the patrimony of the next; to make life for future generations a virtual hell on Earth. Christians should give no comfort to those who argue that opposition to the building of a coal-fired plant is to block economic progress and prosperity. Neither should they acquiesce to the view that cutting down forests to clear land for subsistence farming is to prevent the small man from “eat a food”.

What we are doing to the environment that affects climate change and imperils the lives of people is fundamental to the Christian motif of love for neighbour. That is why what Donald Trump is doing in the USA in rolling back the initiatives that have been built up over the years to protect the environment is so grotesque and backward. His Administration’s treatment of environmental imperatives is a clear index of how he is rolling back America’s respectability in the world. The decision to be the only country not to agree with the Paris Climate Accord is a case in point.

Jamaica can become the standard-bearer to the world for sound environmental integrity. For this to be the case, more will have to be done to educate the population on this matter. Curricula can be advanced to do this at every stage and stream of the educational process. Environmental concern should not be seen as the preoccupation of a few environmental fanatics bellyaching about the protection of a few lizards. It should be all our concern.

Let us not wait for the ravages of the next hurricane or flood to force us to become wise. We must work towards a more compulsory (rather than voluntary) commitment to protect and defend that beautiful piece of land that the Lord has given us. When next we say, “Jamaica, land we love” let us not do so glibly but firmly with the environment deeply embedded in our minds.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest and social commentator. Send comments to the Observer or stead6655@aol.com.