Page 9 - 10th Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference and Festival Magazine

Charles Town Maroon International Conference Magazine June 2018

Feature article on Indigenous Environmental Sustainability

Cockpit Country and Bauxite Mining:
Protecting Jamaica’s Heart, Lungs and Veins

Esther Figueroa, PhD

In the Cockpit there are some birds, some Cockpit Country was born about twelve million
bats, some trees, some insects that are found years ago when it rose out of the sea. With an
nowhere else in the world. So to be in such a ecological system directly connected to half of
Jamaica, Cockpit Country is an expansive area of
unique position, we are against any west-central Jamaica, spanning the parishes of
destruction of the Cockpit. It is our history, Trelawny, St. James, St. Elizabeth, Manchester and St.
the wars against the British was fought in the Ann, and contains Jamaica’s largest remaining intact
Cockpit and so we see it as a sacred area. We rain forest.
will fight it, down till the last Maroon is left,
to make sure that there is no mining done in This forest is Jamaica’s lungs, acting as a carbon sink,
the Cockpit Country. We want it to remain for absorbing such greenhouse gasses as carbon dioxide
our children and our children’s children, while providing oxygen, clean air, and cooling temper-
remain for all times. atures - ecological services valued at over a billion dollars
Colonel Sidney Peddy, Accompong Maroon a year and essential to Jamaica’s ability to resist the harsh
Colonel (1999-2009) impacts of global warming and climate change.
Interview excerpts from Cockpit Country -
Voices from Jamaica’s Heart, 2007 Containing the most biodiversity in Jamaica, Cockpit
Country is home to species that exist only there, or
were once common throughout Jamaica, but now only
The Government is of the view that this area have Cockpit Country as a refuge. The forests attract
is too valuable in terms of its ecological and high levels of rainfall, making Cockpit Country the
hydrological importance and uniqueness to veins of Jamaica. The rain percolates down through
allow mining, which may result in permanent the porous karst limestone that defines the shape of
and irreversible harm and deprive future
generations of the benefit of this national
asset. While we will forgo the extraction of
millions of tonnes of high-grade bauxite and
limestone with potential earnings of billions
of United States dollars, we cannot put a
price tag on the loss to our water resources
and biodiversity.
Prime Minister, Andrew Holness
Excerpt, address to Parliament declaring
Cockpit Country Protected Area, November
21, 2017

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