Urgency, agency and the climate crisis

20 actions Jamaica should already be taking

Summer 2023 in Kingston, Jamaica was hotter than hot, and I think it’s still warmer than usual for this time of year. (Not that we’re getting that kind of information from the Met Office, whose forecast is invariably: mainly sunny, cloudy over hilly areas.)

As 2023 winds down, the 28^th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is currently underway in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), under the presidency of Sultan Al Jaber, who is the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). Yeah, you heard me. The head of an oil company is leading the major international effort on the climate crisis caused mostly by fossil fuel emissions. Today it's being reported that the COP28 president said that a phaseout of fossil fuels would take us back to living in caves – standard fare from the fossil fuel industry.  

Reporting on the COP28 President's words

I’ve long had not much hope for the COP process. Once I was at one of those big international climate meetings and witnessed the haggling over words and punctuation late into the night, until the agreed language was so watered down as to be meaningless. Yes, it is hopeful that the loss and damage fund announced at COP#27 now has some money in it, but there’s no guarantee that countries like Jamaica will use the funds in ways that will make us less vulnerable.

So here are twenty things we should be doing, or not doing, here in Jamaica, to make us less vulnerable to the climate crisis which is already upon us. NONE of them is easy or cheap, nor is the list exhaustive – and each one of these points could take up the entire post. And it’s in no particular order; I’m not proposing priorities.

1. Make an energy transition to renewable sources, especially those NOT connected to a grid. In a weather disaster, the grid takes longer to restore than individual systems. Although natural gas is a cleaner fuel than oil or coal, it is not clean – Jamaica should not bank its future on natural gas.

2. Protect every single remaining forested area as if our lives depend on them, because they do. Forests provide a host of services, including the all-important channeling of water into aquifers. Planting trees is NOT a substitute for keeping standing forests, because trees take too long to grow big enough to deliver those services. We simply don’t have the time.

3. Protect and restore our rivers and all aquifer replenishment zones. This means moving manmade structures of all kinds from the banks of rivers, establishing buffer zones, giving rivers room to flood, and stopping river training. Stop using rivers as repositories for waste of any kind.

4. Drastically reduce impermeable surfaces in cities – roofs, parking lots, roads – and channel run off into properly designed and sized drainage systems or aquifer replenishment areas. Increase green spaces in cities significantly to reduce the urban heat effect. Keep mature trees.

Dewsbury Avenue, Kingston 6

5. Implement financial incentives to conserve water – rates must go up A LOT once users consume over a certain amount.

6. Use properly treated sewage for irrigation to free up water for drinking.

7. Identify critical infrastructure which is very close to the sea and make a plan to move it, defend it with seawalls, or provide an alternative. This very likely means both international airports, at least in the medium term.

8. Stop allowing hotels to build right on the coast. In the short term, existing hotels should move all their non-critical infrastructure on the beach – such as bars, gazebos, low seawalls, etc., farther inland. Like rivers, beaches need room to move around. And stop all sand mining – a beach exists because it is part of a stable ecosystem.

9. Restore beach vegetation and dunes, and do not allow one more mangrove plant or seagrass bed to be removed – not one. They protect us from the worst impacts of storms.

Mature mangrove forest, Negril, Green Island. Under threat (if not already gone) from a large hotel.

11. Stop overfishing – be serious about it. If we keep our fisheries healthy, they will give us an important source of protein when other food sources fail.

13. Stop allowing oil exploration in our waters – oil is part of the past, not the future. Jamaica should explicitly be part of the “Keep it in the Ground” movement.

14. Phase out industries that use large amounts of energy and/or emit greenhouse gases – bauxite and cement, in our case. Plan for new industries – solar panels, better batteries, wind systems. Implement energy pricing that incentivizes conservation and renewables.

15. Research and train farmers in new crops that can handle more severe cycles of rain and drought. Our traditional crops are very likely not going to help us.

17. Be serious about vector (mosquitoes, rats, flies, ticks, e.g.) control – various tropical diseases are expected to explode in a warming world.

18. Begin planning and building places where vulnerable people can go to in a heat wave – places with air conditioning, water coolers, basic medical attention.

 19. Consider and use any technology that can reduce levels of evaporation from outdoor water storage, such as dams.

20. Individuals – eat a plant-based diet, don’t waste food, use as little energy and water as possible, reduce long haul flying. But understand that your individual sacrifice will not have much of an impact unless you – we, all of us – also start to advocate, talk to your friends and family, join a movement, use your connections, support anyone trying to get meaningful geopolitical action on climate. Call out developments that are manifestly unsustainable and reject the oh so common speechifying with no action behind it. Vote for climate. Really understand the seriousness of what we’re facing – in the words of David Wallace Wells in his book, The Uninhabitable Earth – “It is worse, much worse, than you think.” But the situation is not hopeless. To paraphrase longtime climate advocate, Michael Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, “There is urgency, but we also have agency.” We do. Put yours to work.  

Prof Mann's new book - I’ve not read yet