Cockpit Country scandal
HYPOCRISY MEANS saying one thing, but doing another, the practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is actually the case.
I was in Gordon House on November 21, 2019 at the invitation of the prime minister, when he announced the creation of the Cockpit Country Protected Area (CCPA) as the fulfilment of the solemn promise made by the Government of Jamaica to “close the Cockpit Country to bauxite mining”. I have been a fierce critic of that sleight of hand, for the relatively quite small CCPA is much, much less than the actual Cockpit Country, defined using either geological or historico-cultural criteria. In 2013 consultants hired by the Government defined a much larger area for protection, and recommended that following international best practice, a “no mining”buffer zone should be created around the protected area as part of its legal protection.
I have argued that even if mining takes place outside the boundary of the CCPA, mining will still be taking place in the genuine Cockpit Country, and the Government would have broken its solemn promise.
But, I thought: at least this small area within the Cockpit Country would be protected from having its trees bulldozed, its topsoil stripped away, and the bauxite below carted off to a refinery in Jamaica or overseas to be converted into alumina.
During his speech on November 21, 2017, the prime minister explained that existing Special Mining Leases (SMLs) and Special Exclusive Prospecting Licences (SEPLs) would need to be modified if they contained lands which fell within the designated CCPA boundary. Part of SML-170 fell inside the CCPA.
On September 29, 2021, a government Public Notice under the Mining Regulations 1947 appeared i n The Gleaner, stating that JISCO Alpart Ltd “has applied for a Special Exclusive Prospecting Licence to prospect for bauxite upon lands described hereunder. An area of approximately 132 square kilometres located at Windsor in the parishes of St Elizabeth and Manchester encompassing the local areas known as Windsor, Nassau Mountains, Cowick Park, Wallingford and Mahogany Grove and others”. By this notice the Jamaican Government defined SEPL-643 to replace SML-170.
INSIDE CCPA
Dr Susan Koenig of the Windsor Research Centre based in the Cockpit Country plotted on a map the GPS coordinates provided in The Gleaner Public Notice, and discovered that SEPL-643 contained lands that fall INSIDE the CCPA.
What is even more interesting is that SEPL-643 includes about one-third of the lands awarded to the Accompong Maroons in 1796 and confirmed by survey in 1868. [Readers may wish to consult the maps at http://cockpitcountry.com/boundarySML-SEPL643.html].
Rum-loving readers may be interested to learn that SML-643 also includes the majority of the Appleton Valley.
Is it that the Ministry of Mining is so incompetent as to have published wrong boundaries in a Public Notice? Or that the Government of Jamaica is reneging on its promise to prevent mining within the CCPA? If you are not prepared to allow mining in the CCPA, why allow a mining company to prospect there for bauxite?
Even if one or two GPS points published in the Public Notice are incorrect, and Accompong lands are NOT included in SEPL-643 (which I hope is the case, although I doubt it), the fact is that the locations of other coordinates (especially at Wallingford, Mahogany Grove and Good Intent) signal that the Government of Jamaica does not intend to create a “no mining” buffer zone to protect the CCPA. Lands in that area (once part of SML-170) also fall within the CCPA.
The creation by the Jamaican Government of SEPL-643 as defined in The Gleaner Public Notice of September 29, 2021 is prima facie evidence that the Jamaican Government intends to break its promise to “close the Cockpit Country to bauxite mining”.
Or maybe it never intended to keep it in the first place (evidenced by the creation of a small CCPA), and its word is not to be trusted.
GOOD START
The Holness Government started well: it instituted a ban on single-use plastics and Styrofoam; it denied the Chinese firm China Harbour Engineering the ecologically sensitive Goat Islands as a port and base; it denied the Chinese firm JISCO permission to build a coal-fired power plant which would release large amounts of harmful greenhouse gases into the Jamaican atmosphere.
But on the other side, it reversed the decision of its own environmental regulatory agency to deny a permit to mine the ecologically valuable Puerto Bueno
Mountain (the Bengal Cliffs); it has decided to convert Grade A farmland at Bernard Lodge into housing, and to convert city Kingston’s last remaining green space into government buildings; and now the Cockpit Country scandal: claiming to protect the whole by officially protecting only a small portion of that ecologically valuable area, and then opening up the possibility of mining even in that small area by the Chinese firm JISCO, which will lead to massive deforestation and destruction of watersheds and valuable habitat for endemic wildlife.
Planting three million trees in three years cannot replace natural forest ecosystems.
This week Prime Minister Holness was in Glasgow, Scotland, making grand statements on the ways the Jamaican Government is committed to reducing climate change. Is it not hypocrisy to say one thing abroad while doing the exact opposite at home?