Please post this message. It is educational and the more who are aware of the environmental issues of beloved Jamaica the better. We don't want to become another Haiti............

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22794929

How many ounces of gold is a mature red bullet or cedar tree worth alive? Bet that this has been quantified, somewhere. Oxygen, fixing carbon, water retention, supporting animals etc.

I can tell you about those that died prematurely; so much per board foot or per lb of coal and get to use some dried and ready to reform.

I've talked to coal burners and watched some old trees turned into a food. Off course I understand the feeling of pickney haffi eat and guh school, been there. The foresters of old knew culling and the ways of trees and beasts. There must be some deep a bush that could advise the imported advisors.

Dead forests for development in the land of great fecundity?

It all comes down to the bottom line. The ultimate bottom line: gold, metal, paper and e$ are all inedible and are all dead. Unless brought to life by the vision that is so talked about but is still to shine with sufficient brightness.

Sustainable Development guiding a Sustainable Economy or the money game with what's happening now?

J'can Export Charcoal Market...what a sickening prospect & sell-out of a natural resource (especially slow-growth hardwood species) with so many co-habiting benefits!

Does this government not have a say in the scaling-up of quantity-products, such as charcoal, in the scheme of international trade...with its power of licensing, duties and fees to discourage scarce resource exploitation? If so, as confirmed by a custom's seizure of charcoal being shipped out, why not the hammer of environmental agencies & their enforcement arms hitting back forcefully?

Do we not have a moral obligation, as stewards of unique creation, to protect complex eco-systems that under the most controlled human laboratory conditions are hardly replicable:

An export charcoal market would inflict further stress on the last remaining stands of tropical dry forest in Jamaica. In particular, we fear that a charcoal export trade would devastate the Hellshire Hills - arguably the most stellar remaining tropical dry forest in the insular Caribbean - causing the extinction of animals found nowhere else in the world.
According to published research conducted at the University of the West Indies, trees found in the Hellshire Hills are extremely slow-growing. These trees take up to 400 years to reach maximum size; therefore, the remaining forest is very old and may represent the only pristine forest remaining on the island.
Once cut, micro-environmental conditions change, making it near impossible for the forest to regenerate to an original state.

Gleaner: "Don't Chop Us Dry"
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20130301/letters/letters6.html


What a cruel irony, the BBC article mentioning: "Last December, customs officials stopped a container of charcoal that they said was on its way to Lebanon.

Among the stories of a godmother, whose family had emigrated from Lebanon to Jamaica in the 1920s, was the mystique about the Cedars of Lebanon or in her mythology, the Cedars of God.
The Ancient World and their Empires were vitally aware of this resource to build ships, temples, ignite furnaces, (later, railways) almost to the point of extinction. The cedars are so emblematic of the Lebanese soul that it is enshrined on their modern flag.

As in all great Natural Phenomenon, with the sense of a spirit emanations, our "middle eastern" ancestors conceived an eco- creation myth whereby the "forest, once protected by the god Enlil, was completely bared of its trees when humans entered its grounds 4700 years ago, after winning the battle against the guardians of the forest, the demigods..." (Wiki)

In modern times (1998), it took the listing of the Cedars of God on UNESCO's World Heritage Site to allow the better angels of our nature to truly take hold in that part of the world.
And about godmother and that Lebanese-Jamaican family...when they found a vibratory sensation and sacredness of the Cedars of God up in the arboreal Blue Mountains, they were impressed enough to acquire small plots (Pine Grove) for retreat, gatherings and protection of what they love deep inside.

Wiki: Cedars of God
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedars_of_God

Love the land and it will love us back. Bottom line, we are greedy and nothing will change that. We are on the brink of a human made disaster world wide and still not changing.
Love the world its the only one we've got.
The plant is living, one day it will fight back against us. Everything is connected to everything. 1LOVE