Environmental policy and administrative management

In the Mavis Bank & Environs area, unreliable/inaccessible water especially during the March-August dry season results in intermittent farming. Open field, low yield farming promotes continual land clearing and deforestation which in turn lead to soil erosion. This erosion allows fertilizer and other contaminants into the watershed. The erosion also causes landslides, destroying crops, homes, and causing road blockages. The inability to farm consistently, as well as these resultant environmental damages, negatively affects the livelihood and available nutrition both of local farmers and other area residents. Therefore, although it is the farmers themselves who will most directly be involved in the Water to Farmers project, its effects will benefit the entire area community. The Mavis Bank and Environs area itself has approximately 9,000 residents according to recent figures from the Social Development Commission. A successful irrigation project was previously completed in the Top Road district of Mavis Bank, but the pipeline was destroyed when a bush fire ran over an area where the pipe had become exposed during Hurricane Dean. The Water for Farmers Project will also include reburying of all pipelines as part of its workdays to prevent further such destruction. Farmers in the Mavis Bank area will reduce their negative environmental impact and increase their earning power through installation of an irrigation system and construction of a managed agriculture structure. The Water to Farmers project will provide an adequate water system to increase land usage of existing farmland. Farm land usage will be maximized, reducing land expansion resulting in the preservation of natural forests and vegetation that protect the Kingston Watershed. The farmers will construct live barriers using pineapple, reducing area soil erosion and will plant Jamaica and Honduras mahogany, neen, maho and cedar trees to reclaim 5 acres of abandoned farmland.

Jamaica