... Sea-focused policies needed to gain value from Jamaican waters

ADDRESSING A public lecture last week, a World Bank official declared that if government rules, regulations, and policy are not sea-focused, there is hardly any chance that Jamaica will be able to unlock the real value of the waters around the country.

“When you look seawards, there is regulation that doesn’t match. There are overlapping laws that are often contradictory,” said Valerie Hickey, World Bank practice manager for environment and natural resource global practice, Latin America and the Caribbean region.

“There are all types and no types of coastal building regulations, which means that there is investment in coastal infrastructure that won’t last or that is creating all sorts of pollution plumes that are undermining the economic forces that are happening in the same space,” Hickey contended.

SERIOUS INVESTMENT NECESSARY

She has called for a different approach to how the sea economy is viewed, stressing that there needs to be a serious investment with the expectation of a return.

“Traditionally, we have often looked at ocean assets as those things that you cannot get a financial return from, so we use aid, we have pilots, we support marine-protected areas ... . It doesn’t work very well. It is based on a misunderstanding that the ocean isn’t an asset – [that it is] without financial returns that we can create jobs and GDP from it.”

In responding to the issues raised by the World Bank official, Chief Executive Officer of the Economic Growth Council Aubyn Hill said that he would be seeking to have legislation and regulations for land assets separated from those that are aimed at relegating sea assets.

He disclosed that as chairman of the tax reform group for the Ministry of Finance, he ran into regulations from colonial times prohibiting the importation of live animals without certain requirements.

Hill said that in 2018, those regulations are killing the lobster trade, though he vowed to have it corrected.