Editorial | PIOJ’s green Kingston

Monique Lewis’ call for the greening of Jamaica’s urban infrastructure is not entirely new. But given her job, she adds an important voice to the public advocacy for new approaches for dealing with the island’s growing urbanisation in the context of global warming and climate change.

What Ms Lewis and the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) – the quasi-autonomous government agency for which she works – must now do, is publish the background analyses, including costs and efficacy, of what is being proposed, compared to the traditional methods – or of doing nothing.

They should also earmark the government ministries and/or departments which should be the lead of the proposed initiatives, fitting them into the PIOJ’s revision of its Vision 2030, the lagging project to lift Jamaica to developed-country status, as well as Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ recent declaration of his administration’s “pivot” from macroeconomic stability to a quest for substantial growth.

Ms Lewis is the PIOJ’s urban and regional planner. In October, she made a little-covered presentation at a conference on climate change hosted by the University of Technology (UTech). However, the PIOJ recently posted a report of her remarks on its own website.

WIDER PUBLIC ATTENTION

The PIOJ clearly believes that what Ms Lewis said was important and deserved wider public attention. Moreover, she obviously spoke with the full imprimatur of the agency. Its report of her speech frames it as the “PIOJ … advocating for more widespread use of transformative green infrastructure solutions … to tackle Kingston’s rising temperatures and urban challenges”.

Among Ms Lewis’ suggestions are for an increased use of urban forests, green walls, green roofs, detention ponds, and permeable pavements.

Many of the problems faced by Jamaica’s urban communities, especially the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA), where a quarter of the island’s population lives, are intuitively understood, even if the hard data are not widely known.

For instance, as Ms Lewis observed, while Jamaica’s population has declined over the last decade, the proportion that lives in urban areas has risen from 54 to 57 per cent over the period.

Urbanisation generally means more densely packed communities, more motor vehicles, demand for roads to accommodate the vehicles, and traffic congestion.

In the KMA especially, changes in planning regulations, leading to a spurt in medium-rise and high-rise developments, place greater strain on an already-inadequate infrastructure. Additional run-off from rapidly expanded paved areas frequently causes flooding during even moderate rainfall.

But those are not the only challenges faced by the KMA and other urban communities in the island, which they have in common with urban areas across the globe.

HOTTER EARTH

A hotter Earth, and the climate change it has caused, is leading to more heatwaves, prolonged droughts or drier periods, more frequent and violent storms, intense rainfall and, often, devastating floods. In Jamaica, Ms Lewis told the UTech climate conference, flooding cost Jamaica 1.3 per cent of its gross domestic product in 2023.

Such costs must clearly be factored into the economic case for climate change resilience.

These problems are exacerbated in urban communities, where, compared to rural areas, there is substantially less forest cover, and emissions from vehicles contribute to hotter temperatures and poor air quality.

“This indicates there is a need for strategies to address both environmental and transportation challenges,” Ms Lewis said, in relation to the KMA.

Indeed, this newspaper has previously advocated for a long-term, multisectoral transportation policy that:

• takes into account where and how communities and roads are developed;

• places emphasis on urban renewal rather than greenfield projects;

• streamlines public transportation;

• places weight on a high-quality mass-transit system; and

• de-emphasises private vehicle ownership.

Given Ms Lewis’ observation, this is an assignment that the PIOJ should fulsomely embrace, if it has not done so as yet.

On the specific ideas she proposed, urban forests, green walls and green roofs are low-hanging fruits, easily reaped.

The government can facilitate the foresting of communities by showing residents what is possible in their specific environments, and seed these initiatives by providing planting material. It might also, at a regulatory level, require that some types of new developments, especially high-rise buildings, set aside space for green walls and roofs. Water harvesting could be part of this building/environmental permit regime.

The government has in the past engaged in tree planting in urban areas, but this was largely unstructured, poorly managed, and woefully maintained. This project should be robustly resurrected.

Indeed, Jamaica already has, in CityAdapt, a programme spearheaded by the United Nations Environmental Programme, not only the experience of a pilot project, but a blueprint for establishing forests in urban and peri-urban areas. That can be scaled up.

As an example, we agree with Ms Lewis that “street trees from the waterfront to the St William Grant Park can be extended as far north as National Heroes Circle, creating a green corridor and revitalising Kingston’s public spaces”.

The creation of detention ponds in areas of the KMA (Ms Lewis suggested one in the King’s House area) to slow the run-off, and the adoption of permeable surfaces to permit greater seepage of water into the earth are ideas worthy of serious exploration. We therefore look forward to the additional work of the PIOJ, and the intervention of the island’s engineers.