Water covers more than seventy (70) percent of the earth's surface. Water is in the oceans, rivers, lakes, ground, and even in the air we breathe. Humans can live without food for up to two months but can only live for a week without water. Our body is seventy (70) percent water, and as such water is involved in all our bodily processes: digestion, circulation, excretion, and homeostasis. Our survival is reliant on fresh clean water, but our freshwater sources are fast becoming exhausted and polluted, so how do we keep our water sources sustainable and clean? By adopting the Hawaiian proverb ‘Rain follows the forest’, this proverb underscores the importance of forests in mitigating water scarcity. Forests ensure sustainable water production, conservation, and quality.
When Christopher Columbus docked in 1494, the island was densely populated with forest, as such the word Jamaica was derived from the original Taino word Xaymaca, meaning “land of wood and water”. Land of wood and water…. how the mighty have fallen. According to the World Resource Institute Jamaica is considered a water-stress country. With a baseline water stress score of 5.0. This score indicates that more than 80 percent of the water available is withdrawn annually for domestic and industrial use. This translates to companies, farms, and residents highly dependent on a limited amount of water and vulnerable to even the slightest changes in the water supply; so how did the land of wood and water get bunched in with countries that have catastrophic water scarcity such as Yemen and Jordon?
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Well according to O.B. Evelyn and R. Camirand, research printed in the Forestry Department, Trees for Tomorrow Project, our tropical forests started depleting over a period of 300 years, from 1491 to 1791 at a rate of approximately 748 ha or 0.17% per annum to make way for sugar cane plantations. We are long past the sugar cane plantations, yet our vision for modernization has perpetuated an imbalanced ecosystem where housing schemes have replaced the cane fields. Jamaica’s 2030 vision for the environment speaks of a healthy and beautiful natural environment with clean air, an adequate supply of clean water, rich forests, hillsides, and an abundance of plants and animals. However, if the depletion of Jamaica’s forests is not stopped, this environmental vision is just a pipe dream. It is a no-brainer, countries with forests have more water than countries without forests.
Forests are synonymous with sustainable water production as trees use their massive network of roots to pull water from the water table deep within the earth and bring it to the surface through the process of transpiration. Transpiration is the process by which moisture is carried through plants from roots to stomata on the underside of leaves, where it changes to vapor and is released into the atmosphere. This moisture contributes to the formation of rain clouds that regulates rainfall in the neighboring areas. Plants are responsible for 10 % of the water vapor present in the atmosphere. An average oak tree transpires approximately 40,000 gallons of water in a year supplying water to the water cycle.
Scientific evidence highlights that forest has an enormous capacity to capture and store rainwater, therefore substantially less surface runoff occurs on forested land. Forested soil can store and infiltrate 15 times more water than pasture soil and 40 times more water than a cultivated field. When rain falls, the forest canopy intercepts the rainwater giving it time to infiltrate into the macro-pores and root channels of the forest floor. This rainwater eventually seeps down into the water table replenishing large underground reservoirs of groundwater. Groundwater is the source of our surface springs, stream, and the water we use when we drill wells. Hundreds of wells are drilled in limestone and alluvial aquifers throughout Jamaica, yielding 125 to 315 liters per second. Groundwater constitutes 84 percent of our total available water resources.
Forest removal, either partial or total results in increased surface runoff which result in increased streamflow. However, water produced from deforested lands is of poorer quality, due to the increased nutrients and sediment load. Forests are watersheds that produce better quality runoff, due to the presence of riparian forest buffers that help filter nutrients, sediments, and other pollutants from runoff and remove nutrients from groundwater. Forest buffers also help control flooding and erosion by stabilizing the stream and river embankment. Mature forest buffers can remove up to 90 percent of the nutrients running off the land.
Sedimentation is a serious problem in Jamaica, due to aggressive deforestation and soil erosion due to unsuitable farming practices. According to the Water Resources Assessment of Jamaica since 1998 the capacity of the Mona reservoir has been reduced by 33 percent due to sedimentation. While since 1957 Hermitage reservoir capacity has been reduced by 21 percent. The deposits in the reservoirs included large boulders, silt, and organic matter which all negatively affect water quality.
First-world countries such as Japan recognised the value of forests in producing higher-quality water, hence the Metropolitan Government Bureau of Waterworks in Tokyo manages the forest in the upper reaches of the Tama River to increase its capacity to recharge water resources and prevent reservoir sedimentation.
In 1995 World Bank vice president Ismail Serageldin made a prediction for the new millennium: 'If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water.' Serageldin has been proven correct much faster than he or anyone else thought, as two years into the 21st century, the global water war was upon us. In Nelspruit, residents are forced to buy drinking water from the Biwater Corporation, as the taps have run dry. The privatization of water means poor residents cannot afford to pay privatized rates. It is a scenario that is playing out all over South Africa, as these private companies completely reject the idea that water is a common property belonging to all living creatures. Their only goal is to commodify the earth's most precious resource.
The Land of wood and water may not be handing over the state-run National Water Commission to a private company, but our water security is in shambles. According to the Water resource of Jamaica, Jamaicans pay significantly less for water when compared with the rest of the world, so privatization of our water supply is a frightening prospect.
Jamaica needs to take a page from Brazil’s book, as in 1966, over 700,000 square kilometers of the Amazon rainforest was plundered to make way for sugar and coffee plantations. The results were catastrophic as the soil eroded, and worst of all Rio de Janeiro ran out of drinking water. Recognizing their folly, Major Manuel Gomes Archer in an effort to protect Rio's water ordered the replanting of all the trees. To date as far as the eyes can see, grows a dense jungle the Tijuca forest. Brazil now has the largest urban forest in the world, and the country’s water problem has long dried up.
Getting to zero deforestation is a mammoth task, but it starts with replanting and protecting our forests. This goal should be every Jamaican nationalistic goal, as scientific evidence does show that forests ensure sustainable water production, conservation, and quality.
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