Norman Manley was a man who loved the earth. He was an environmentalist long before that word was fashionable. He was one of those in the Jamaica Agricultural Society who demanded that the mining of bauxite should not disfigure Jamaica, that the topsoil should be replaced after mining. He wrote the Beach Control Act, the Watersheds Protection Act and was involved with the writing of the Wildlife Protection Act.
He was the founder of Jamaica Welfare, financed by contributions negotiated by him from the banana shipping companies.y. Jamaica Welfare was Manley’s start in nation-building, a term I believe he invented. Jamaica Welfare was the paradigm and pattern for a host of community development efforts all over the world, using home grown techniques and home grown experts to develop programmes in which the poorest people were collateralised – as the saying now is – producing cottage crafts and selling them through cooperatives. Those programmes are now being re-exported to us.
Jamaica Welfare built its first community centre in Porus in 1937. It is still there. From Porus you can see the hills where Norman Manley was born.
Manley was born in Manchester, at the place called Marlborough southwest of Porus. It used to be a place of rolling hills, a cool and tranquil plateau of quiet unassertive beauty. At Marlborough, Norman Manley’s birthplace is officially, a National Monument.
Today, this monument to the man called the Father of the Nation is in the midst of a wilderness of bleeding earth. The rolling hills have been gouged and torn, their quiet beauty maimed as if gormandised by a cosmodemonic shark, the wounds in the earth transforming the National Monument into a grisly parody.
Marlborough has yielded up its bauxite, its beauty and tranquility to the draglines and back-hoes and insatiable profit seeking of Alcoa – the Aluminum Company of America
Alcoa was allowed to deprave this landscape by the Jamaica Bauxite Institute, which has been appointed by the National Environmental Planning Agency/Natural Resources Conservation Authority to be its surrogate in dealing with the bauxite mining companies. The JBI is supposedly the trustee of the Jamaican people in defending the national patrimony.
Oliver Twist on Steroids
In its Annual Report for the year 2000, Alcoa boasted of record revenues, earnings, and growth.
“Alcoa begins the 21st century with an unprecedented show of strength. In 1999 we posted record revenues earnings, and growth and topped the Dow's 30 companies by a wide margin with a total return for shareholders of 126%
“Revenues rose to a new high of $16.3 billion and earnings exceeded $1 billion for the first time in our history. Earnings per share increased by 17% to $2.82 The annual rate of return for Alcoa shareholders has averaged over 33% over the past five years.
“These are extraordinary results not only for Alcoa and for this year but for most industrial companies and for any aluminum company, ever. Still, its important to realize: Our 1999 performance is a milestone, not a destination.”
It was shortly after this that Alcoa let it be known that the Jamaican government’s levy was a hardship; the company was overtaxed, and the Government of Jamaica obediently obliged by changing the levy system into a notional tax.
That year the CEO of Alcoa was paid the equivalent of one million Jamaican dollars per working day. Jamaica got less from its entire bauxite industry than Mr Belda got from Alcoa.
Alcoa’s performance over the past five years does not impress the self-styled “Capitalist Tool ™” – Forbes Magazine, which has described CEO Alain Belda’s performance on behalf of his shareholders as mediocre.
After the performance of the previous five years anything would probably seem mediocre to “The Capitalist Tool™. Earlier this year Alcoa’s smaller shareholders (yes, there are some) passed a resolution criticising the company's retirement payoffs for its senior executives. The United Steelworkers Union of America (USWA) blasted the company for ignoring the shareholders' resolution and said :
“Basically, Alcoa shareholders decided that they cannot trust Alcoa’s Board of Directors to look after their interests … Alcoa executives and directors clearly look out for each other, but they are often oblivious to the interests of employees and other stakeholders.”
“ … oblivious to the interests of employees and other stakeholders?” What on earth can they mean?
Alcoa clearly doesn’t see it that way. In its latest Annual report the company boasts of its “Unflinching Values” and alleges that:
“Alcoa's partnerships and acquisitions have a remarkable track record, partly because they are based on mutual respect and kept promises.
“Values are at the core of our due diligence process.
“Employees and host communities recognize and respond to our priorities in health and safety, environmental responsibility, and respect for the individual. Alcoa brings its core values to each of its operations around the world”.
The people of Mocho and other places in Jamaica including the mayor of Falmouth and his parish council obviously do not share these sentiments. As far as they are concerned, bauxite they are still waiting after 30 years for Alcoa to fulfil its solemn undertakings – its promises– to rehouse them and rehabilitate their land. And this, notwithstanding the fact that in the annual report the 'values' statement is printed in a fetching, dewy green with a sprig of mint in the foreground, there being nothing fresher , more green.
Green of course is, in places other than Jamaica, the flag of the ecologically driven, of the environmental kooks like me who think that the Earth is precious and should be treated with respect.
Alcoa’s ‘green’ protestations make a strange background for the rage it has provoked round the world. In Iceland, in Brazil, in Trinidad and in Jamaica, –to name a few – stakeholders who share Alcoa’s mutual respect seem difficult to find'; “promises kept” seem non-existent.
‘A Milestone, not a destination’
"In Iceland, Artists, environmentalists, tourism operators and poets … are up in arms over plans by Norsk Hydro of Norway to dam the Jökulsá í Fljótsdal river north-east of Vatnajökull glacier in the Eyjabakkar region to power a proposed aluminum smelter in Reydarfjördur fjord" according to a community newspaper. Norsk Hydro and Alcoa are partners in a project regarded as the most gross insult offered to any European environment in recent history.
The statement "A milestone, not a destination" is obviously more a threat than a promise.
In Trinidad, the people of Cedros peninsula are up in arms about Alcoa’s proposed destruction of their environment to build three smelters; in Jamaica and across the Jamaican diaspora, there is a considerable wellspring of opposition to Alcoa’s plans to ravage the Cockpit Country for bauxite. As I reported before, the Cockpit Country is one of the most important pieces of real estate on Earth. It is what environmentalists call a biodiversity 'hotspot', a treasure-house of evolution, home to hundreds and thousands of rare life-forms – plants and animals. Cockpit Country is a hotspot within a hotspot, because the Greater Antilles are regarded as one of the more important hotspots in the world, making the Cockpit Country doubly precious.
There is a sickening fear among environmentalists, ecologists, scientists and just ordinary people about the plan to destroy an area which is not only biologically unique, but also a historical and cultural treasure. The Cockpit Country was the first independent republic in the western hemisphere, although is has never been so recognised. The Maroons of Accompong and Maroon Town were the first people to force the British to make peace with them and recognise their independence. Half a century later one of their ilk, a man called Bouckman, was the man who lit the fire of the Haitian revolution precipitating the abolition first of the slave trade and then of slavery itself and doubling the size of the United States. Stewart Town was the first Baptist Free Village, founded by William Knibb who, had he been born here, would surely be a National hero. Westwood and Calabar, both in the threatened area, were the first schools for the children of the former slaves.
It is a fearsome prospect that on the eve of celebrating the bicentenary of the end of the slave trade, the last vestige of that heroic tradition is to be destroyed to make frying pans and Reynolds Wrap.
As I’ve reported before. aluminum is perhaps the most power hungry industry in the world, using so much energy that some people describe aluminum as solidified electricity. The paradox of aluminum is that it is the most abundant metal on the surface of the earth, but it is always found combined with some other elements, usually as aluminum oxide or mixed with potassium and sulphur. Aluminum forms 8% of all the soil on earth, but the most abundant deposits are in tropical regions where it is the product of the decomposition of limestone. Since Jamaica west of the Wag Water is largely limestone the soil there is largely aluminum oxide – bauxite.
Jamaica’s position as a large supplier of bauxite was largely due to the second world war and Jamaica’s proximity to the United States. For nearly two decades we were the world’s largest producer of bauxite. The problem with aluminum is that to separate it from the soil is a messy and dangerous process, involving high temperatures and corrosive substances.
The asthma and pervading stink of caustic soda near Ewarton , Hayes and Kirkvine is the result of the refining process and as most Jamaicans know by now, the other major result is a caustic devil’s soup called red mud which dissolves everything including, it is alleged, the lungs of children and the bodies of murder victims.
The most notorious red mud depository, at Mount Rosser, was one of the environmental disasters left behind by the first company to refine alumina in Jamaica, the Aluminum Company of Canada. Another is at Kirkvine near Mandeville. When Alcan sold out to Marc Rich’s Glencore six years ago, they left these environmental time bombs as their memorial. This week Alcan announced that they will 'soon' begin to rehabilitate their 50 year old hell-hole at Mount Rosser, “ultimately rendering the site safe and transforming it into an aesthetically attractive area”.
'O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy. ...'
Whether they will be able to stop it from continuing to contaminate the groundwater of Central Jamaica (and Portmore) is another question. In St Elizabeth Alcoa contaminates hundreds of billions of gallons of water underground. If they get the Cockpit Country they will probably destroy the water supply of the entire north coast, and possibly the Black River as well.
And then of course, we'll be even better prepared for climate change and environmental catastrophe.
It is to avoid that and to protect a vital area of world heritage that a number of people, environmental groups and other organisations have come together to protect the Cockpit Country. As I understand it, the decision as to whether the Cockpit Country is to be raped and degraded now rests in the hands of the Minister of Finance – for no good reason that I can gather. The Minister of Finance is a likable and probably a very worthy person, his brother is chairman of the Jamaica Bauxite Institute, but his respect for the national patrimony may be gauged by the fact that his Ministry has turned a substantial part of National Heroes Park into a car park. Since that park is a Public Garden created by Act of Parliament, it should be interesting to hear an explanation of the legal means used by Dr Davies’ ministry to change its use.
To those of us who know the Cockpit Country as a sacred place, as an historical as well as a biological treasure, the idea of Dr Davies, the Jamaica Bauxite Institute and Alcoa getting their hands on it is a prospect to induce a century of nightmares.
If you feel strongly about this issue the people to contact are the Cockpit Country Stakeholders Group (http://www.cockpitcountry.org/) where you will find lots of information and maps and find out what you can do to save your heritage. You might also consider the Jamaica Environment Trust, the Northern Jamaica Conservation or the South Trelawny Environmental Protection Association or one of the other groups involved in defending the Cockpit Country. They need your help.
The government granted an exclusive prospecting licence to Alcoa in 2004. It covers an area of over 500 square kilometers,about the size of Trelawny but spread across three parishes. In shape the area resembles an automatic pistol,[see map] aimed at Negril and the Jamaican tourist industry.
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