Martin Henry

When Columbus stumbled upon the island he called Santa Gloria, on May 5, 1494, virgin forests sprinkled with ancient mahogany trees and ceiba cotton trees [later to become the homes of the duppies of African slaves] were growing down to the water's edge. It was, the explorer said, the fairest isle he had beheld. Manatees, crocodiles, conies, yellow snakes, turtles, fish, iguana, and water fowls were around in abundance, providing food for the low-density Taino population.

There was a rich variety of endemic plants to be found nowhere else in the world the Tainos didn't know that. And we don't know which ones they used for medicinal purposes. The land was called by the natives, Xymaca: Land of wood and water.

Much has changed. One of the last patches of virgin forest, the forest of the Cockpit is being considered to be opened up for bauxite exploration. There has been a hue and cry against it.

Damaged by human action

But the fact of the matter is that pretty much the whole of the rest of Xymaca-Santa Gloria has been radicall - and in too many cases flatly damaged - by human action. The sugar estate imposed some of the greatest changes on the Jamaican environment. But because that is long past we hardly consider it. Mark Brooks, himself a big farmer, now bothers everyone about the sick soil syndrome affecting Jamaican soil. But his data is far too impressive forhim to be lightly dismissed as an ignorant crackpot.

Recent reports are indicating significant pressures on fresh water supplies. We have polluted and abused a lot, but this is the first time that adequacy of supply for population needs is an issue in the land of wood and water. An environmental engineer based in the United States had his letter carried by The Gleaner on Tuesday on disaster zone development in response to a call by the ODPEM to punish developers who do development in disaster zones. Question is, where is not a potential disaster zone? While we are thinking of a Nightingale Grove type disaster zone, it would be useful to note that the Stony Hill Mannings Hill area, for example, sits on one of the major fault lines on a geologically fractured island and it is only a matter of time before a major earthquake creates a major disaster. Jack's Hill is said to be geologically unstable. Much of the coast is a potential disaster zone from sea surges as at Portland Cottage in Hurricane Ivan.

Human action has aggravated disaster potential in many areas, but has also reduced it in others such as in gully control in Kingston and Montego Bay. On the night of August 14/15, 1933, 53 people died in Kingston from gullies gobbling up houses. Islandwide, today, we don't have those kinds of death figures even in major hurricanes. Global warming, partly from human action globally, is threatening to deliver more and bigger 'Big Winds', which is what the Taino word 'hurracane' means and to which their simple houses, like our Rhino water tanks, were highly resistant for the same aerodynamic reasons. The same reduction of disaster impact is true earthquake survival after the disaster of 100 years ago in 1907.

The Tainos would not, of course, recognise their physical landscape. Nor would they find many of their favourite foods, now rare, endangered species. But they could have cups of Blue Mountain coffee sweetened with sugar after a meal of rice and peas and dumplings with ackee and saltfish.

Jamaica has added a million people to its population from Independence to now, most of them with first world tastes and lifestyles. The pressures on the environment can only go up and the clashes of 'development' and environment intensify, like the ones with the hotels and with housing now running. Everywhere on the globe, high density, high-taste populations have radicall and are threatening the natural environment. In Britain and Japan, for example, islands like ours except for First World status, there is little that is 'natural' contemporary familiarity obscures that fact. The wolf went extinct in Britain from the 14th century and there is precious little natural forest left.

In Environment Week and beyond, there is hardly any more important consideration than how we keep an island in the Caribbean and an island in space habitable and supportive of human life.