Social Impact with Emma » deforestation : A Jamaica Gleaner Blog

Tourism’s Fragility Exposed

February 29th, 2020

I am not an economist (and I may well be corrected by my friend and fellow blogger Dennis Jones, who is!) but recent developments have given me the sense that Jamaica depends too heavily on two areas: Tourism and Bauxite Mining (an unsustainable activity – how much longer do we plan to go on mining? […]

“The End of the World Is Nigh”

July 1st, 2019

This was the message on a placard that a man on our London high street used to carry. Or rather, it hung around his neck as he shuffled along, head down. He was a gloomy sight: shabbily dressed, his features perpetually downcast. He was what we used to call a “sandwich man,” with a placard […]

Finding Their Voices for Climate Change

April 15th, 2019

It’s quite challenging. When we are talking about climate change, we need to “break it down.” We must find ways (not one way, several ways) to explain it. We need to demonstrate what is happening here and now, and what may happen in the near future. And we need to point to solutions. Gloom and doom […]

Comparing Ourselves to Others: The Singapore Syndrome

November 9th, 2018

We Jamaicans have a bit of an obsession with Singapore, don’t we? Our romance with this small, densely populated country – some 18,000 miles away, with a population twice that of Jamaica – still lingers. Some of the passion may have waned, as romances tend to do, in the past few years. But what sparked […]

Prioritising People: The Rebuilding of a Kingston Neighbourhood

October 29th, 2018

There has been a lot of public debate recently about urban development: The new Parliament building, twenty-storey buildings, road widening – and the felling of our city’s trees, which I have written and tweeted about before. It’s all quite overwhelming. What of the people who live in the midst of this sea of concrete mixers […]

The Deforestation of Our City

March 31st, 2018

I love my city of Kingston. I have my favourite spots, that I always enjoy. One of these is that little corner on the intersection of Old Hope Road and Lady Musgrave Road. A small church (the “Babbins Church,” founded in 1900 by Rev. Francis Bavin of the United Free Methodists) nestled there comfortably for 88 years, […]

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