Question by NiyaBear: What are the enviormental issues of JAMAICA????
Please answer with correct responses and tell me more than 1 if u can PLEAZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
Best answer:
Answer by stingjam
1. Urbanization destroying small animal habitats. Urban development areas (Apartments, highways, housing developments) are consuming green areas so rapidly that animals have no where to go. Lizards and rodents that were ‘inivisible’ in brush and fields, now have to be looking for food and shelter in gardens, on patios and even inside closets.
2. Smog. Many urban streets and major rural thoroughfares are relatively small for the amount of traffic that has to pass on them. In peak traffic hours this is a significant health risk.
3. Beach Erosion. Rising tides and more powerful weather phenomena is accelerating the rate at which beachs are eroded. Many popular beachs are literally shrinking. photos change dramatically even over a 3-year period.
4. Soil Erosion / River sediment. Deforestation for the planting of crops in mountainous areas (esp. blue mountains for coffee) leads to weakened slopes and landslides. Larger amounts of soil and sediment get into rivers, which in turn damages our water purification plants. The main reservoir in Kingston is actually said to be more than 50% full of mud. its less than fifty years old. Water shortages are an annual occurence.
5. Bush Fires. These are usually started by either subsistence farmers or by flint stones. Small fires become big ones accelerated by wind and dry conditions. They threaten homes and lives (from mansions to shacks & farmers trying to save livestock), and usually are in areas not easily accesible to fire trucks. Usually Jamaican military helicopters have to be used to fight bush fires.
6. Garbage & Human Waste Disposal – The major cities are struggling to manage the volume of waste. We might be third-world, but we s**t just as much as any developed country, and we have less land space to use for disposal. We also have to worry about stopping chemicals from getting into our tourism product – the beaches.
7. Architectural Programming – I will add this last item as a personal observation as architectural graduate. Many large, low-income housing developments in Jamaica (especially some parts of portmore), are DESIGNED to become social problems. They dont allow for typical social expansion, and will fuel a range of other environmental problems as social resources battle and buckle with the design short-commings. Over time this will include crime, water, waste, traffic, health, etc. The building designs and layouts are basically catalysts for long term ‘environmental infections’. The low-income modular housing model used here has also been used in other developing countries and has repeatedly resulted in slums. The largest housing developer (WIHCON) actually built such ill-fated developments during aparthied in South Africa.
In a more EXTREME environmental example, at least one major housing project (low to middle income) built within the last 5 years is now at the bottom of a lake. Hundreds of residents (still paying mortgages) were left homeless. The housing planners only researched about 75 years of history. As it turned out, the lot of land that had been DRY for over 100 years, was once a lake, with a few rivers running in and out of it! An extended period of heavy rain restored the lake. The water is so deep that people can get boat rides over the submerged community. Houses are visible beneath crystal clear waters.
It would be interesting to study the impact that global warming may have had on this particular case.
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Tags:enviormental, Green, Homes, issues, Jamaica, Modular
