On April 22, the world celebrated Earth Day, designed to inspire awareness and appreciation of the natural environment of the planet.

Although green is the colour of environmentalism, Earth Day this year makes me feel blue.

The Jamaican Government of the 1990s raised our hopes high that serious steps would be taken towards sustainable development in this land.

In 1992, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson went to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and, in the full glare of the world spotlight, signed all sorts of agreements and treaties committing us to a new environmental agenda for the 21st century.

New agenda

We would establish parks and protected areas to shield our wildlife and their habitats from degradation caused by unsustainable activity; we would reduce solid, liquid and gaseous pollution; we would reverse centuries of deforestation by protecting our watersheds and planting trees; we would protect our beaches, coral reefs, wetlands and seagrass through proper coastal zone management, and much more.

The decade began well. A new law was passed - the Natural Resources Conservation Authority Act - which created the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) to do all sorts of nice new things. Actions such as create national parks and marine parks, and to assess applications for proposed 'developments', as well as administer the Beach Control Act, the Watershed Protection Act and the Wildlife Protection Act.

For the first few years. the NRCA did all the right things: they prepared a Beach Policy, a Wetland Policy, a Watershed Policy, a Coral Reef Action Plan, and a plan to create 14 national parks, marine parks and other protected areas. They prepared draft effluent discharge standards and draft air quality standards; and much more.

The trouble is that little of this has moved from the stage of being 'draft' and 'policy' and 'plan' to become 'reality'.

I don't now if any government department in the history of Jamaica has been more of a disappointment than the NRCA. Not even the Ministry of Education!

None of the draft standards which have been prepared have become law; none of the policies and plans have led to any new legislation to give them effect; the plans to create a National System of Parks and Protected Areas is stillborn; and so on.

For example, on Earth Day 1999 - 10 years ago last Wednesday - Minister of the Environment Easton Douglas signed a ministerial order setting the boundaries of the Portland Bight Protected Area (PBPA) in South St Catherine and South Clarendon.

Slow bureaucracy

At 724 square miles, it is the largest conservation area ever created in Jamaica, with beautiful forests, wetlands and coral reefs, filled with watchable wildlife such as birds and crocodiles and turtles, and it held great promise as the locus of sustainable tourism development bring many hundreds of jobs in one of the poorest parts of Jamaica.

At the time the PBPA was created, a suite of regulations was drafted to bring about the conservation and the development; a decade later those regulations have not yet become law. Portland Bight is protected in name only!

Now, there is a scandal! And all the government staff involved continue to draw their pay every month!

Part of it is the slowness of government bureaucracy, but part of it is the 'bad mind' of the previous People's National Party government which really, deep down, had no interest in conserving the environment. And there is no evidence that they are even thinking of changing course!

Over one year ago, representations were made to the minister of health and the environment in the new government (who is one of the MPs representing the area), and to the new prime minister (who seems to be the de facto minister of the environment) but nothing perceptible has happened in the 18 months of this JLP government. No wonder Earth Day makes me blue.

Peter Espeut is an environmentalist and a Roman Catholic deacon. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.