Already, Mr Holness says that the National Housing Trust (NHT) has just over 12,000 homes under construction and another 9,600-plus on the drawing board. Another government institution, the Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ), which has several projects under way, will contribute 8,000 by the time the administration’s term ends in September 2025.
Also in the mix of the 70,000 houses, we expect, is the 17,000 that are to be in the new city being planned at Bernard Lodge, on the St Catherine plain, on what the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) described as the island’s “most fertile A1 soil”. The land for the township, on a former sugar plantation, is already being divested to private developers.
Given the island’s long-standing housing backlog, and an estimated current demand of over 15,000 homes annually, Jamaicans, no doubt, welcome the Government’s commitment to deliver affordable homes. What, however, is missing from the administration’s discussion of the issue, including of the planned incursion into the Bernard Lodge farmlands, is how the island’s new cities and suburban developments are being planned in the context of global warming and climate change. In other words, how does Jamaica expect its homes to contribute to the building of if not a carbon-free future, one with net-zero emissions? This topic requires a broader, and deeper, conversation on where people will live and work, how they commute, how they build, what of Earth’s resources they consume, and how much.
Jamaica accounts for less than half of one per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet as a small island nation, it, like its neighbours in the Caribbean, will suffer disproportionately from the consequences of a heating planet if the world fails, by the end of the century, to keep the rise in Earth’s temperature to below 1.5° Celsius, compared to the pre-industrial period. Indeed, Jamaica is already feeling the effects of prolonged droughts, more violent storms, and rising sea levels associated with a hotter climate.
REDUCE CARBON EMISSIONS
The best science says that the surest way to reverse this trajectory towards a worse climate catastrophe is for the world to radically reduce, and ultimately eliminate, carbon emissions, the largest portion of which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, energy used in factories, and transportation. But humans, whose actions account for the bulk of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, haven’t, despite their promises, been very good, so far, at curbing their behaviour.
In 2020, as economies went into lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, global carbon emission fell by 2.3 billion tonnes, or approximately four per cent, from the 59 gigatons in 2019. But emissions have risen this year – it is expected to be back to previous levels – as the major economies recover from the pandemic-induced recessions. Indeed, emission from fossil fuels is estimated to have jumped around five per cent compared to 2020.
The behaviour of households – how they heat, and in Jamaica’s case cool, their homes, how they travel, and what they consume – scientists say, accounts for upwards of 70 per cent of greenhouse emissions. In the case of housing, therefore, it matters where developments are planned and that homes are designed to maximise energy efficiency and how they are served by public transportation systems.
These are the kinds of issues on which the architect and urban planner Patricia Green, in her columns in this newspaper, consistently challenges Jamaica’s policymakers. It was the same matter being addressed last week by landscape architect Mark Martin when he suggested the development of mini-parks across Kingston to enhance the aesthetics and psychological well-being of the city and at the same time contribute to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Things like that, though, shouldn’t be one-off affairs. They should be central to development planning, in which even Prime Minister Andrew Holness might have taken a broader perspective with the housing design competition he launched earlier this year. The submissions he asked for were primarily to address the cost of homes. He wants the cheapest solutions so as to make homes affordable to the largest number of Jamaicans. Which is appropriate and good.
GREENING OF HOUSING SOLUTIONS
What, though, the request lacked was a parallel emphasis on the greening of housing solutions, which should be a matter exercising the architects, planners, and students at the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of Technology (UTech) and scientists at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona. Indeed, the relevant government agencies, including the NHT and the HAJ, should be in the forefront of financing such research. So, too, might private venture capital investors wishing to be at the queue in making bets on cleantech projects. There are models, especially from the United States, that people in Jamaica and the Caribbean, who have capital, can adapt for this kind of investment. By the first half of this year, American venture capitalists had pumped US$16 million into cleantech start-ups, nearly as much as the amount for the entirety of 2020 and slightly behind the US$17.9 billion of 2018.
However, in planning for the new circumstance, policymakers need not reinvent the wheel. Other people have developed workable, smart, green cities – that work. Take Palava City, a development of 4,500 acres and the home of over 300,000 families, on the outskirts of the western Indian city of Mumbai. Now touted as a global show city, it was developed by one of India’s biggest developers, the Lodha Group. The homes are designed for energy efficiency; all have solar power; rainwater is collected for domestic use; and wastewater is recycled. Homes are in the proximity of shops and offices to limit the use of public transport. Variations of this theme exist in an old city like Barcelona, Spain, where the municipal authorities have deliberately worked to reshape the environment. In Singapore, the city-state that is the size of the parish of St Thomas, there is the mandatory planting of trees and the development of green communal areas, even atop high-rise buildings, to help with the absorption of CO².
Doing many of these won’t require huge budgetary outlays by the Government. They need government policies that are enforced. The Government, for instance, can insist that all new developments have water-collection systems and grid-tied renewable energy systems. Cities and towns can be zones to reduce vehicle traffic and emissions. And venture capital can be incentivised to invest in cleantech, especially those that are domestically developed.
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