Social Impact with Emma » National Environment and Planning Agency : A Jamaica Gleaner Blog

Development Dramas and Urban Issues

February 9th, 2020

Issues surrounding housing and land in Jamaica seem to go round and round, spinning in ever-decreasing circles, while those affected seek “solutions” that are rarely arrived at. Here are a few examples… In Port Royal, the Government postponed plans late last year to relocate the long-standing (or sitting) squatter community in the town. Now, Member […]

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 […]

Powers of Persuasion

May 1st, 2018

I often pick up ideas from seemingly random comments on Twitter. I turn them over in my head. They coalesce, curl into a little ball. I uncurl them again later, and see if I can write about them. Many ideas can develop that way, if you give them the chance. So, a tweet from environmentalist […]

Trees R Us: Our Sustenance and Water Supply

October 31st, 2016

I am looking forward to joining a group of enthusiastic workers from the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) this week. We will be traveling up into the Blue Mountains, to a place called Content Gap in St. Andrew, where NEPA and its partners will engage in a pretty major tree-planting exercise at the Primary […]

Health Care Reform: Promoting Wellness and a Healthy Environment

June 9th, 2016

Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton has been doing a good job so far at keeping the Jamaican public informed on the strange complexities of the Zika virus. My husband and I recently had a bout of it; the only good thing about it is that it doesn’t last long. His huge portfolio, however, extends well […]

Healthy Seas…Happy People. Makes Sense!

May 27th, 2016

Do we think about the health of our seas, which occupy seventy-one per cent of the Earth’s surface? Or do we just assume they are managing just fine? It’s a funny thing, but I believe we tend to think “out of sight, out of mind” when it comes to the ocean. We rarely peep beneath […]