GOVERNMENT Senator Abka Fitz-Henley is urging commercial stakeholders, including some mining companies, to show greater recognition for the fact that true economic prosperity cannot be achieved without taking greater care to ensure that there is protection of the environment.

Fitz-Henley made the call when he contributed to debate on two bills in the Upper House last Friday.

The bills, which propose to amend the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) Act and the Wild Life Protection Act and will result in a major increase in fines for environmental breaches, were approved in the Senate.

“I welcome the proposed increase in fines, some moving from $50,000 to $5 million for environmental breaches and I wish to urge all stakeholders, including our partners in the mining and bauxite industry, to recognise that there can be no prosperity steeped in pollution and no sustainable economic development achieved by way of environmental degradation,” Fitz-Henley commented.

Fitz-Henley also insisted that the Holness-led Administration has taken a number of credible steps to protect the environment in Jamaica and slammed the former People’s National Party (PNP) Administration for what he argued was paying mere lip service to the issue of environmental protection.

The Government senator mentioned the abandonment by the current Administration of plans by the former PNP Government to pursue commercial development on Goat Island and the shelving of plans for a coal plant in St Elizabeth as among the actions taken by the Holness-led Government which show that it is serious about protecting the environment.

“There was a time in this country, in the 1990s, early 2000s and certainly between 2012 and 2016 where I am of the view that preservation of the environment was treated as a back-burner issue or one that presents itself as a potential annoyance to the process of national development and an impediment to the goal of getting our economy to expand by more sizeable margins. A series of actions taken by this Administration, including the move to amend the NRCA Act and the Wild Life Protection Act, reiterate that we do not merely give lip service to protecting the environment, we take credible tangible actions in support of this noble cause,” Fitz-Henley told Parliament.

The senator also commended Environment Minister Matthew Samuda and mentioned a series of forestry protection orders, protection of approximately 80,000 hectares of the Cockpit Country, and the plastic ban as among measures implemented by the Government which contribute to it having a strong track record concerning protection of the environment.

“I could go on and on concerning legislative steps and protection orders signed into law which support the fact that when it comes on to the issue of environment protection, no administration in the history of independent Jamaica can test or has a more credible track record than the Government of Prime Minister Andrew Holness. This Administration understands that their can be no prosperity steeped in pollution,” Senator Fitz-Henley argued.