Sav misses out on sustainable development

Claudia Gardner, Assignment Coordinator

WESTERN BUREAU:Westmoreland is yet to garner enough funds to prepare and complete a Local Sustainable Development Plan in keeping with a pledge made at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, in 1992.

"We are at a juncture now where we have to put in place a Local Sustainable Development Plan. Currently, the parish has received funding through the Sugar Transformation Unit, but the funding we have received so far cannot facilitate the development of the plan," chairman of the Westmoreland Parish Development Committee, Pius Lacon, said, during a recent Gleaner 'State of the Capital' Editors' Forum in Savanna-la-Mar.

NHT FUNDING

"We are looking at the possibility also of getting funding from the National Housing Trust, but there must be an operational and functioning parish development committee, which is now in place, in terms of the secretariat, etc," said Lacon. "I know, based on information, that we are currently looking at recruiting persons like planners with specific skills to engage persons in those activities."

The UNCED conference, also known as the 'Rio Summit', resulted in the crafting of Agenda 21, a global consensus on and political commitment to development and the environment.

At the time, Jamaica and other countries pledged to ensure that by 1996, "most local authorities in each country would have undertaken a consultative process with their populations and achieved a consensus on a local Agenda 21" (sustainable parish development plans).

Local Sustainable Development Plans (LSDPs) require that parish councils lead a local sustainable development planning process suitable to their own circumstances and build and institutionalise a parish development committee to enable community participation in development decisions and actions related to the sustainable development of the parish.

Now, 22 years after the Rio de Janerio summit, none of the parish councils in western Jamaica has commenced the preparation of its LSDPs as for the most part, they are being affected by little or no funding.