Earth Today | Environmental champion wins Norman Manley Award for Excellence
Published:Thursday | December 23, 2021 | 12:08 AM
FOR MORE than three decades, Diana McCaulay has translated her passion for environmental conservation into public education and advocacy – a feat that has oftentimes won her more criticism than acclaim.
Recently, however, she scored a significant victory, copping the 2021 Norman Washington Manley Award for Excellence, in recognition of her protection and preservation of the environment.
As is her way, she used her acceptance speech as a demonstration of an environmental case, providing insight into what it takes to lobby for the protection of natural resources while reinforcing the need to do so.
“There were many who came before me who sounded warnings about the wanton damage we were doing and many who stood with me on filthy beaches and garbage dumps, in courtrooms and classrooms, even in corridors of power, many who dried my tears, soothed my anger, told me not to give up, and I thank them all,” said McCaulay.
She was chronicling her experience from conviction to champion the environment, given what she witnessed of its pollution to being emboldened by the words of a friend that she could become a part of the solution.
According to McCaulay, founder of the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), public education is one of the cornerstones of environmental conservation work since “people would only seek to protect what they understood”. Still, she cautioned that while ‘foundational’, education is an insufficient condition for change.
“It is not the walls and roof of a structure that can deliver attitudinal or behaviour change. Education in schools has to be repeated, year after year, because every year there us a new cohort of children, wave after wave. Environmental problems were not created overnight – they arise over the long term and can only be fixed in the long term,” she explained.
Public education
JET has for many years used public education in their work, including through the Schools Environment Programme, which is currently without financing.
The use of the law is another essential element of conservation work – something McCaulay discovered only after her education in public administration and environmental policy at the University of Washington in Seattle on a Hubert Humphrey Fellowship.
“The law is a powerful tool, but only if you pick it up and use it. And rights may be written down on paper, but they only exist when we assert them,” explained the woman who has been given labels, including as a ‘tree-hugging’ and ‘ivory-tower dwelling member of Jamaica’s elite’.
Despite the labels, she has persisted in her advocacy and maintains that there is need to adjust the lens through which those engaged in activism are seen.
“Activist too often connote troublemaker … I mean, what, do we want people who are not active? Who do not speak up for what they believe in? Who are too afraid of the real threat of victimisation and therefore lapse into silence? Do we not want the engagement of our people?” she queried.
Also requiring attention is the long-standing challenge of satisfying core costs, including the employment of personnel, in the operations of an NGO.
“I cannot tell you how many times I heard that funding was approved to deliver teacher workshops, plant trees, provide experiences in nature for inner-city children, develop public service announcements – but with no funding for staffing,” she lamented.
“So if we value the work done by civil society groups, we have to be prepared to fund the people who do the work or all the good people who are moved to join that sector burn out and leave in a few years,” added McCaulay who, having resigned as chief executive officer of JET, now sits on its board.
The Norman Manley Award for Excellence is given by the Norman Manley Foundation to an individual assessed as an outstanding contributor over their lifetime in a category of activity that contributes to the nation’s life.