Editorial | Let’s plant trees - but do more

The Government’s initiative to plant three million trees, which Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced at the United Nations yesterday and which he will formally launch in a week’s time, is a welcome development that should receive broad support.

However, we hope that unlike too many ideas that come from Government, it is well planned and sustainable over the long term.

Mr Holness, of course, is assured of this newspaper’s backing for the idea, which we commended to the administration three months ago in the wake of Ethiopia’s planting of more than 350 million trees over a 12-hour period, or about three for each of Ethiopia’s citizens, or nearly 820 saplings per square mile. Jamaica’s project isn’t nearly as ambitious. We intend, under this programme, to plant around one for each citizen, and we expect to do it over three years.

We, of course, don’t have the scale of Ethiopia’s problem with regard to deforestation and the impact therefrom. Only four per cent of Ethiopia is under forest, down from a third of the country a century ago, or similar to Jamaica’s current 30 per cent. But there is no cause, as the Government’s project suggest, for Jamaica to be comfortable about its circumstance.

Four years ago, the Government estimated that the island was losing its forest at rates of 0.1 per cent, or 350 hectares a year, while the Forestry Department replanted 120 hectares, or fewer than four hectares for every 10 that are cut down. Importantly, too, while the Forestry Department’s mandate for protection and conservation covers 109,514 hectares of state land, there are another 226,401 hectares of land, more than twice the amount controlled by the State, which are privately owned and for which, according to a 2015 policy document, there is “no comprehensive legislative framework to govern their protection”.

There are good reasons for concern over the loss of forest cover. The absence of trees contributes to land degradation, including, especially in tropical countries, desertification, and, as increasingly evidenced in Jamaica, flooding in times of even moderate rainfall. The destruction of forests in watershed areas not only exacerbates these problems, but also has severe implications for the availability of this critical resource. In Jamaica, 19 - or more than 70 per cent - of the island’s 26 watersheds are deemed to be in need of rehabilitation.

Climate change

Additionally, trees sequester carbon dioxide, the rapid increase in whose emission by humans since the industrial revolution has led to global warming, erratic and extreme climate activity, and rising sea levels, which threaten coastal communities and small island states like ours. Jamaica and its neighbours in the Caribbean are increasingly victim to extreme weather, such as violent hurricanes and long droughts.

Planting three million trees in Jamaica over three years won’t, of itself, reverse global warming or the weather conditions that are now part of the existence. But each bit counts towards slowing and, hopefully, ultimately arresting the problem. However, planting trees is one thing. We have done much of that in the past. Usually, what has been lacking is the follow-up and the after care. The planting becomes the end. The Government must ensure that doesn’t happen this time.

Additionally, there should be a comprehensive review of the Forestry Act to ensure a more efficacious protection of forests, including those that are privately owned. Perhaps, too, this is an opportunity for the Government to review its policy on the Cockpit Country to expand the definition of the area and add robustness to its protection from all forms of mining, especially for bauxite.