Peter Espeut
I MISSED IT, tucked away at the bottom of page F3 of the Sunday Gleaner of November 20, 2005 - an advertisement for persons to attend a Workshop for the Development of the Impossible to be held next week, December 5-10: "Sustainable Quarrying within the Environment". Thanks to Diana McCaulay, executive director of the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) for drawing it to my attention. It was just like old times!
About ten years ago we were both invited to a seminar at JAMPRO to hear their plans for future developments in the non-metallic mineral sector. When the JAMPRO senior staffer announced during her presentation that they were promoting "sustainable development in the mining sector" we both cracked up; we exploded into uncontrollable laughter, unavoidably disturbing the seminar. During the question period we explained ourselves. We spelled out clearly that "sustainable mining" is an oxymoron, a fundamental, irreconcilable contradiction in terms. Because mining is by definition the extraction of an ever-decreasing non-renewable resource, it simply is illiterate nonsense to put those two words next to one another in a sentence.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
In my column the following week I related our experience, and sadly commented that clearly this government agency did not have a clue what "sustainable development" was all about. Despite official policy committing the government to 'sustainable development', clearly many so-called "development" agencies were plodding on, using words that they didn't know the meaning of. No wonder our natural environment is being degraded by the day!
In that column I recommended to JAMPRO that they hire someone to review all their development proposals to weed out those projects which were unsustainable (and therefore against stated government policy). The following week there was a polite reply in The Gleaner: We don't need to hire any such person; we have the NRCA to advise us! "You mean they don't know either", I said to myself?
SPREADING FALSE INFORMATION
Now the same JAMPRO under the same director is proving that they haven't learnt anything in a decade. And this time they have drawn in other agencies to help spread false information to the public. How can darkness be light? How can quarrying be sustainable? The poor English language should not be massacred in this way. If you want to promote mining and quarrying that is one thing; but to say that you are planning "The Workshop for Development of Sustainable Quarrying within the Environment" is pure propaganda and misinformation of the worst kind.
Let me tell you the sort of thing that is happening. A foreign entity has applied to the Commissioner of Mines for a prospecting licence to see if there is quality limestone in Canoe Valley, Manchester, suitable for mining. Canoe Valley is a beautiful natural area between Milk River and Alligator Pond where a beautiful wetland is situated at the foot of a limestone escarpment. Three manatees were released into this wetland several years ago, and they are quite a nature tourism attraction in themselves; the drive along the road between the escarpment and the wetland is breathtakingly beautiful, as are Gut's River and several beaches on the way. Mining limestone anywhere along this road will destroy one of Jamaica's jewels.
A few weeks ago I saw the commissioner and asked him about it. He said I wasn't to worry: it was only a prospecting licence, and they were going to use non-intrusive methods of prospecting. I replied: "Come now: suppose they find ore worth mining? Will they find some non-intrusive method of digging out the limestone?"
Someone else told me that when they asked the commissioner about the plans in Canoe Valley, he told them not to worry: the mining would be done sustainably!
And so George Orwell's premonition has come true: bad is good and wrong is right. God help us!
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
