Protecting the environment or just another tax?

GOVERNMENT Senator Rose Marie Bennett-Cooper and her Opposition counterpart Allan Bernard disagreed strongly about the impact of the Environmental Protection Levy as the legislation was debated in the Upper House on Friday. Bennett-Cooper argued that the levy, which becomes effective October 1, is much more than a tax as it will ensure measures are implemented to protect the environment. However, Bernard questioned how much has been actually done to protect the environment since the levy was first implemented in 2007.

“I believe that, in considering this Bill, we must distinguish between the instrument and its purpose. But the greater purpose is environmental protection. And so, as we consider this legislation, we must keep our eyes firmly on the environmental mischief that it seeks to address.

We must focus on our responsibility to protect the Jamaica that we have inherited, not only for ourselves, but for the generations that will come after us,” said Bennett-Cooper. She argued that the effects of climate change, pollution, improper waste disposal, and the degradation of the country’s natural resources are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. “In fact, we do not have to look very far to understand the scale of our environmental problems,” declared Bennett-Cooper as she pointed out that since February 2022 when barrier interceptors were installed at the mouth of nine major gullies as part of the Kingston Harbour Clean-up Project, they have trapped more than 7.25 million kilogrammes of waste.

‘This is not an environmental problem we have to imagine. We can physically pull it out of our gullies,” the Government senator argued. She also highlighted that Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organisation dedicated to developing and scaling solutions to rid the world’s oceans of plastic, estimates that waterways connected to Kingston Harbour could be responsible for approximately 947,000 kilogrammes of plastic entering the Caribbean Sea each year.

“The problem is not simply the waste. It is also the way our patterns of production, consumption, and disposal can impose costs on the environment that are ultimately borne by all of us,” said Bennett-Cooper as she underscored that Jamaica’s coastline is one of the country’s greatest natural assets.