Social Impact with Emma » Prime Minister : 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? […]

Road Safety Seems to be More About Roads Than People. Correct Me If I’m Wrong.

January 17th, 2020

I tuned in to a live stream of a two-day conference co-hosted by the World Bank and the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities in Washington, DC this week. It is an annual event under the umbrella of Transforming Transportation 2020. This year’s theme was “Connecting People for Sustainable Growth.” So, how did the agenda look? […]

Cockpit Country: Is It Really All About the Boundaries?

November 29th, 2019

Ceiling fans whirred and night sounds crept through the windows of the Webb Memorial Baptist Church in Stewart Town, Trelawny earlier this evening. A Town Hall Meeting was in progress, streamed live on Facebook on the websites of the sponsors, the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ), the Public Access Channel (PAC) and the Jamaica Gleaner. […]

The Road Safety Problem: Are We Missing Something?

July 23rd, 2019

It’s always interesting, when you have visitors, to see aspects of Jamaica through their eyes – whether negative or positive. So when a recent friend observed that, having come to Jamaica, she is more afraid of the mayhem on our roads than crime, I quietly agreed. Not that we don’t have a crime problem too. […]

“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 […]

But…Can It Be Business as Usual?

April 27th, 2019

Perhaps it’s just me, but the year 2019 seems to have been one of considerable upset for the world. A second, extremely fierce cyclone has arrived in Mozambique (the first one killed over 900 people, although it hardly received mainstream media coverage). On the beautiful island of Sri Lanka, which I visited in late 2017 and […]

Older Entries