Michael Taylor | Tackling flooding – we cannot keep doing things the same way

We note with deep distress the dislocation in many Jamaican communities occasioned by the flood rains of last week. For many, including the article authors, the distress is compounded by how frequently the headlines are repeating themselves. In August 2021, it was New Haven in Kingston. In November 2021, it was Montego Bay. And here we are again.

As climate researchers, we ‘preach’ about the emergence of a new climate normal. We also stress that climate change demands our collective attention because it impacts quality of life and diminishes standards of living. The citizens of Port Maria, after only a few hours of rain, will attest to this. But the burden is not theirs alone. Over the next few weeks, significant resources will be expended to restore life to some semblance of normality. These would have otherwise been used to expand the affected businesses and provide employment, tackle crime, improve education, construct new roads, fight COVID-19, commission new water supplies, establish agricultural greenhouses, or increase public sector pay. The repeated loss of developmental opportunities with each climatic event pushes Jamaica farther away from achieving its 2030 goal of becoming the “place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business”.

Truthfully, climate will not ‘give us a break’ in the near future, according to the science we do. If it is not intense flooding, it will be long-term drought, or an intense near-pass hurricane, or hot extremes, or beach loss due to sea-level rise, or the acidification of our oceans and loss of coral content. We will always be recovering from one or more of these events at the same time. From the news snippets, the solutions proffered so far for towns like Port Maria seem to make little mention of coming to terms with how climate is changing. Undoubtedly, we will have to clean the drains and keep them properly maintained. But it can’t just be in anticipation of the hurricane season in June. Rather, it will have to be a year-round exercise as climate change has introduced unpredictability in our rainfall patterns.

REDESIGN DRAINS

It is true that we will also have to redesign drains and waterways to accommodate more water – but not to current standards. Climate change will continue to shorten the recurrence period for the one in one-hundred-year flood and we will likely live through a once-in-a-lifetime event two or three times. It is also clear that we must look upstream of our towns and re-consider our development pursuits in environmentally sensitive areas. Climate change is making a mockery of ill-conceived, economics-only driven activities not premised on sustainability principles. It magnifies their downstream consequences that were never contemplated.

The recent floods are reinforcing the need for a multipronged, collaborative and coordinated approach to tackling climate’s challenges. We suggest that the efficacy of any single solution will be short-lived if it ignores climate, which is changing faster than we are figuring out ways to respond and having a wider impact beyond what we think it should. Using the Port Maria floods as reference, it seems going forward that, among other things:

• New infrastructure must be designed to reworked standards that account for present and future changes in intensity and frequency of climatic events. Equally, plans must be developed to retrofit existing structures over time to these reworked standards.

• Weather and climate considerations must consciously factor into the decision making and daily operations of local government authorities who are responsible for zoning and planning; the construction sector, national works agencies, and utility companies that build out public works and provide essential services; waste management entities; schools and the media which can engender behavioural change; the financial sector and the finance ministry who size insurance products and contingency budgets; community groups and NGOs that cater to the most vulnerable; NEPA and Forestry Department which monitor, protect, and permit use of our natural resources; and the private sector which drives town and city expansion; among others.

• Mechanisms that facilitate groups working synergistically e.g. across agencies as ‘joined-up-government’ are strengthened. So, too, are the monitoring mechanisms for work plans, from final approvals through execution, to ensure end-to-end consideration of climate.

• Laws to confront wilful neglect of the environment are in place.

• Early warning and response agencies like the Meteorological Service of Jamaica, Water Resources Authority and Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management are well-resourced to play their increasingly important role in a changing climate.

• Groups like ours are mandated to ensure climate information for Jamaica is readily accessible, understandable, and up-to-date. Similarly, science e.g. modelling, is given a role in planning. This also speaks to a need for sustained funding for research.

Though we will never be able to escape climate’s growing fury, we can over time minimise the extent of damage and dislocation and enable a quicker recovery and return to normality after an event. Last week’s flooding is yet another climate wake-up call, however. We cannot continue doing things the same way.

Professor Michael Taylor is dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology; codirects the Climate Studies Group, Mona (CSGM), at The University of the West Indies, which studies the science of climate variability and change for Jamaica and the Caribbean. Send feedback columns@gleanerjm.com