Jamaica making its own steps to ‘green’ economy

JAMAICA, FOR its part, has started its own march to a green economy, which is intended to ensure economic prosperity is not achieved at the expense of environmental degradation. However, up to last year, things appeared to have been slow going.

“It is definitely not dead. It hasn’t been carried forward so much under the theme of the green economy, but things are still happening,” now former chief technical director in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Jon Creation, Colonel Oral Khan, told The Gleaner at the time.

He cited as one example of this, the Green Business Certification Programme of the National Environment and Planning Agency, which provides businesses the chance to voluntarily incorporate environmentally friendly processes into their day-to-day operations.

This was in addition to the ongoing Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience, which aims to help national governments integrate climate resilience into development planning, as well as to finance innovative public- and private-sector solutions to climate-related risks.

It was more than two years ago that Jamaica published its Green Economy Scoping Study that was prepared for the Government, also with the support of the EU and United Nations Environment.

The study identified agriculture, construction, energy, tourism, and water as priority sectors and recommended the sustainable use of resources, minimising greenhouse gas emissions, the provision of decent jobs, incentivising green investments, and dis-incentivising ‘brown’ investments as important elements of a strategy for greening.