We must do whole-cost accounting
THE IMPERATIVE of environmental awareness requires much more than a week, for all of us – individuals and big business – negatively impact the quality of the natural environment every day of the week. Householders usually flush the toilet and don’t give a second thought to what ultimately happens to the waste from their bodies, or a businessman might put thirst-quenching juices on the market believing that the disposal of the bottle is someone else’s problem.
One of the useful spin-offs of having an Environmental Awareness Week (marked over these last few days) is that it encourages us to look at the big picture.
Every technology has hidden costs, and someone has to pay them. The private sector and the Government team up to pass those hidden costs on to the consumer, and, ultimately, on to the natural environment. Sewage disposal and solid-waste disposal are a charge on the public purse (i.e., the taxpayers). Ultimately, the effluent degrades the ecosystems in our aquifers, rivers and seas, which lowers the quality of life on the planet.
Single-use plastic bags may be cheaper to produce than paper, and selling sodas in plastic bottles instead of glass bottles may be more profitable for private enterprise, but that is only because private enterprise is allowed to pass off a substantial part of its real costs to others.
Whole-cost accounting would include the cost of disposal of the packaging as a charge on the business. If you do that, using reusable glass bottles for beer and soft drinks all of a sudden becomes the cheaper option. That is environmental thinking.
RESISTANCE
Naturally, the private sector has resisted whole-cost accounting, and they have – so far – been able to persuade successive governments not to enact and enforce the necessary legislation. The Natural Resources Conservation Authority Act notwithstanding, distillers of rum and other alcoholic beverages are allowed to dump their untreated waste (locally called dunder) into nearby rivers, even though that toxic effluent regularly causes water pollution and fish kills.
Government policy calls for voluntary compliance rather than prosecution, and industrial polluters feel safe that the worst that will happen is a toothless warning. Only if another industrial entity is negatively affected, and takes the polluter to court, will there be any action.
The Government prefers to take the GDP from the polluting entity rather than to protect the environment from damaging pollution. Successive Jamaican governments have been very Trumpian in this regard.
I am pleased that – finally – Jamaica seems to be prepared to follow others in the direction of bans on plastic and styrofoam. We could have done this decades ago, and been environmental leaders and innovators, for this idea has been around for a long time, but our politics has determined otherwise.
When the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) was in Opposition and the People’s National Party was pursuing its environmentally destructive policies, I would challenge my readers to name the JLP shadow minister of the environment. So silent were they. Few were able to guess, and successive spokesmen remained silent.
Now I ask: Who is the present portfolio minister of the environment? Matthew Samuda, you may suggest? Wrong!
The Government has hidden the environmental portfolio within the same ministry trying to increase GDP and increase jobs. Few are hopeful that those in the private sector who pollute will be called to book; no one wants to discourage even environmentally damaging entities. Those who seek local investment will not introduce whole-cost accounting.
And now, I ask: Who is the PNP shadow minister of the environment? When last has he or she said anything about wildlife or fisheries, pollution or protected areas? Does that person have a grasp of the portfolio?
Give us vision, lest we perish.