Following Jamaican rivers from the hills to the ocean

Photo by Jeffrey Valenzuela on Unsplash

When the Jamaican sun gets too hot, locals and tourists alike head for the historic Spanish Bridge to take a cooling dip in the White River. Built in the 1770s, the bridge which links the parishes of St. Ann and St. Mary over the clear blue water has become an Instagram favourite. But despite the idyllic scene, all is not as it should be and the White River - along with several others in Jamaica - are under threat.

Unsustainable farming, fishing and tourism, combined with the impacts of climate change and loss of biodiversity, are taking their toll on Jamaica’s watersheds and river systems. Prolonged dry spells and unpredictable rainfall in the island’s central highlands mean less water downstream - except when hurricanes rip through the island, as they have done with increasing intensity and frequency.

“It is really important for Jamaica to have a healthy natural environment,” says Reanne MacKenzie, Manager of the White River Fish Sanctuary, situated in the Ocho Rios Marine Park which includes the mouth of the White River. “Because Jamaica is an island we are surrounded by water and a large percentage of our population are based along the coast, that makes this project that much more important.”

The project Reanne refers to is the Jamaican Path from Hills to Ocean (H2O), funded by €4.9 million from the EU’s flagship climate change programme GCCA+, and €1.9 million from the Jamaican government. Originally set to start in 2020, but delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the five-year project was finally officially launched in 2022. It aims to increase the climate resilience, reduce poverty and protect the livelihoods of fishing communities and others who rely on both freshwater and marine resources.

The project area also includes the Wag Water, Rio Nuevo and Rio Bueno - all popular tourist destinations for bamboo rafting and tube riding. As visitor numbers rebound after the pandemic, pressure on these fragile ecosystems grows. Other threats come from urban sprawl, poor waste management and widespread deforestation.

“Most of the watersheds look fairly healthy, until you start looking at the details,” explains Dr Eric Garraway of the University of the West Indies Mona. “When you look at the Wag River, as you follow the river from where it starts in the mountains down to the sea there are some rather drastic changes.”

Photo by Paul Mathew on Unsplash

As part of H2O, Dr Garraway and other experts from the university were tasked with carrying out a rapid ecological assessment (REA) of the three watersheds covered by the project, which together account for about 17% of Jamaica’s land mass. In addition to damage from unsustainable tourism, they found local industry is also having an impact.“There’s a lot of sand mining which creates a ponds or pools rather than a flowing river system,” he adds. “We found species that looked more like what you would find in a lake. A lot of these animals don’t really belong in a river system, they shouldn’t be there in the first place.”

The findings from the assessment will be used to plan more sustainable opportunities for farmers, fisher folk and business - and especially for women and young people. For Reanne, that can’t come quickly enough. “We’ve seen coastal development which can contribute to nutrient pollution in the water, we’ve seen over the years a number of tourist attractions and businesses right on the edge of the river and we know the sort of impact that can have on the watershed,” she says.

Jamaicans who were born and brought up on the banks of the island’s rivers have welcomed the project. “In the early days, Wag Water was most important for fishing, for recreation, for trading. Everyone on the banks of the Wag Water could swim by the time they were ten years old,” says Oswald Ayre, President of the Wag Water Valley Development Committee. “In the river there is a very deep hole which would retain water and feed the stream even when the river was low. By the time it was empty, rain would come again and refill the stream. All that is gone today.”

Getting the affected communities onside is vital to the success of H2O. “If people have a better understanding of what their actions do and why it matters, that’s what is going to make a difference,” says Belinda Collier-Morrel, Chair of the White River Marine Association. “When people clear land, it gets into the river and then out to sea where it smothers the corals - you can see it, the river turns brown and it goes out to sea for miles. This project will help address things like that - better farming practices will affect the river, and that will in turn affect what we are doing out at sea.”

Among the activities planned for the rest of the project are sustainable landscape management programmes which involve bioengineering, restoration and climate-proofing, as well as sustainable farming systems to boost food security and agricultural livelihoods. Wetlands will be restored and preserved, including the removal of solid waste and the installation of advanced water-monitoring systems. Alongside these, H2O will run public awareness-raising campaigns and training programmes for farmers and fisher folk.

H2O is not the first time the GCCA+ has been active in Jamaica. In the wake of Hurricane Ivan, which devastated the island in 2004, an EU-funded €4.8 million mangrove restoration project helped to rebuild the island’s resilience to extreme weather events. Nearly a decade later, Jamaica aims to become a centre of excellence for environmental management, climate-change mitigation and climate-change adaptation. 

“We have a lot of action to take, and establishing ourselves as a centre of excellence will require a lot of work,” says Matthew Samuda, Minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation. Speaking at the official launch of H2O in 2022, he added “It’s terribly important because we have to lift our people out of poverty and, if we don’t become a centre of excellence in environmental management and in the issues related to climate change, we will not lift our people out of poverty; we will be in the perpetual cycle of recovering from disasters.”

Sources:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8WwSPWHBrI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54PlVcmlDUY&t=7s
• https://our.today/jamaica-gets-more-climate-change-funding-from-eu/
• https://jis.gov.jm/nepa-preserving-watersheds-under-h20-project/
• https://www.pioj.gov.jm/192-million-eu-goj-environmental-project-launched-a-jamaican-path-from-hills-to-ocean/
• https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20221228/govt-partners-eu-climate-change-adaptation-project