MANUFACTURERS and other stakeholders in the goods producing industry are being urged to gear up to meet drastic changes that are expected to the global regime governing the consumption of plastics within another eight years.

Minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Senator Matthew Samuda, in observance of Earth Day 2022, issued the call during Friday‘s sitting of the Upper House.

“That’s going to require significant investment, it’s also going to require significant resolve. The globe has decided that plastic pollution has gone too far,” he told the Senate, pointing to the resolution adopted by delegates on March 2 at the closing of the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) in Nairobi, Kenya, to make way for the establishment of a legally binding global treaty by 2024 to end plastic pollution.

“We will have to work across the aisle with our private sector partners to get Jamaica ready. The pattern of consumption will not be the same in 2030, based on how I see this resolution developing. So, we have to ready our manufacturers so that we don’t have the fallout in income that comes to them that then creates a fallout in employment. There is a lot of work to do,” he cautioned.

At the same time, Senator Samuda warned that time is running out in the fight against climate change, pointing to recent incidents of sudden adverse weather which have claimed lives, such as flooding in St James this week during which a child died.

“Fifty years ago persons couldn’t contemplate that sort of volume of rain over that period of time. Unfortunately, we will see more of it so we are in a race against time — and the cost of not winning that race is going to be human lives,” he said.

“The climate has changed; it’s not a future concept that we are discussing. What we are concerned with is the rate of change. Weather patterns are significantly different so our investments have to take into consideration the type of infrastructure and resilience required, and the capacity of said infrastructure,” he stated.

Meanwhile, Samuda stressed that efforts to advance the greening of the economy by changing the country’s energy mix will require political maturity, and has major political implications.

“We’ve already articulated that our ambition for Jamaica is to have 50 per cent of our energy source coming from renewables, so that energy need and the development and investment that are required to really build renewable sources are going to take a lot of work,” he said.

He pointed to other initiatives being taken to protect and sustain the environment such as the completion of the legal frameworks for the Black River morass area, as well as for more than 78,000 hectares of the Cockpit Country.

Also stressing the urgency of protecting the environment, Opposition Senator Sophia Frazer-Binns said the country will have to abandon some of the practices which bring economic growth, but damage the environment.

“We are going to have to have that discussion because it is going to include retooling our workforce, finding new and innovative economic activities to ensure that our unemployment rate continues to trend down. The Opposition stands ready to sit at the table to make its contribution,” she told the Senate.

Themed ‘Invest in Our Planet’, Earth Day 2022 focused on fast-tracking solutions to combat climate change by engaging governments, institutions, businesses, and people to acknowledge collective responsibility.