From Floods to Droughts Climate Change and Jamaica's Water Problems

This episode explores Jamaica’s dual water challenge: scarcity and excess, examining drought, supply restrictions, uneven access, and increasing urban flooding. Through a nature-based solutions lens, the discussion highlights sustainable water management approaches such as watershed protection and green infrastructure, to store, slow, and manage water more effectively. It also considers how community-led actions and policy interventions can improve efficiency, reduce risk, and ensure equitable, long-term water security and climate resilience. 

Produced by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica with funding support from Global Affairs Canada.

This podcast was recorded at Harry J Studio, Kingston, Jamaica. 

Producer: Reneiquca Walker-McKnight 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome everyone to another episode, in fact, episode number five of season one of the Resilience Naturally Podcast. Each episode we try to bring climate change conversations front and center, making what some might consider far removed and complex issues more relatable. This Resilience Naturally podcast produced by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica as part of the Jamaica Urban Solutions for the Environment or J Use Project, which is funded by the Global Affairs Canada. My name is Carol Narcis, and I'm the gender and social inclusion specialist with the J Use Project. And with me as co-host is Renica Welcome at night. And I'm the special project officer on the J Use Project. And in this episode, we will be exploring water. Water, water, water. It's the most essential thing to everyone on earth. We therefore want to explore Jamaica's dual water challenge, scarcity, and excess, examining the drought, the supply restriction, uneven access, and increasing urban flooding. Water is important to life, and therefore we should address it. So therefore, we have to include it in our discussions today and then bring it in the context of nature-based solutions so we can look at the sustainability and the sustainable management of water. And to help us with this discussion, we have as our guests for this episode of the podcast to help us go through all these issues, is the former managing director of the Water Resources Authority, Mr. Basil Fernandez. And we also have with us in studio Andre Reed, who is Watershed Area Management Coordinator within the Ecosystems Management Branch at the National Environmental and Planning Agency. And as well with us, who um civil and water engineer is Lise Walter. Welcome to the podcast. And thank you. Thanks for having us. And so let me start with you, Basil Fernandez. You know, many who are listening to this episode may well be very familiar with you with your voice and with the many years that you spent uh championing and advocating and educating us about our water resources. So let's start there. Um what have been the natural resources of water and how how have we taken care or not taken care of them? What's the state of them when last you you um had a look? Well, I think that our water resources on a whole is in pretty good condition. Um pollution has been, I think, reduced the last time that I looked. But we especially have um a strong reserve in terms of groundwater, which is more reliable than surface water systems, which depends, of course, on rainfall. And with the prediction by the climate change group at UWI for a decrease in rainfall as well as an increase in temperature, we anticipate that um some surface water systems, rivers and streams may become somewhat more unreliable. While groundwater tends to be more robust in terms of standing up to um the changing times. The changing times, yes. But for for our listeners, Mr. Fernandez, the the the issue of groundwater, many people listening may say, but wouldn't our groundwater, the the water that's below the surface, wouldn't the groundwater depend a lot on precipitation to be replenished? Well, you're correct in that the groundwater system depends on rainfall for recharge. So we we also have to look at uh that aspect of it in that with reduced rainfall, there would of course be reduced recharge to the groundwater system. I think also the uh impacting the groundwater system might be the increase in in impermeable surfaces, which creates a greater runoff of rainfall rather than more infiltration into the groundwater system. So the anthropogenic behavior of man in terms of what is constructed is also has a large bearing on on the reliability of our water resources, especially groundwater. All right, let me ask Andre Reed. Andre, you are watershed area manager for management coordinator um within the ecosystems management branch at NEPA National Environment and Planning Agency. So watershed management is really crucial to the things that Mr. Fernandez was just talking about, um, both in terms of the above-ground um water supply in the form of rain um and and so on. What can what have been the issues with respect to our watershed? And just explain to listeners who uh may not all be aware of A, what's the what we mean by watershed, and B, how does it function to keep us in in water supply? Alright, so it's a conversation that I have each time I do an outreach in terms of how to ground the definition of watershed. So one of the things that works best for me is just to imagine like an A-frame roof. Yes. Say typical zinc coming up in a triangle, one side of it, once rain falls on it, it comes off on the left, on the other side it comes off on the right. So if you were to use that as a watershed analogy, one side of a roof would be drained into a common area, so that's one watershed, and the other side of the roof draining to another common area is also a watershed. So similarly, within our island, land of wood and water, you have a river. Any water that falls on the land and drains towards that river is considered a part of its watershed. So many times persons are out there and they see a river and they say, Well, the watershed in their minds is where they're seeing the water. When the reality is that every activity that you're doing feeds into directly or indirectly, into a watershed because everything is connected in that way. So is a watershed a specific geographic space, a specific area? Yeah, so um over the years, RA from Mr. Basil Fernandez's time till now have been doing excellent work in terms of delineation of the watersheds. So what has on the on the on the books right now, we have a pretty good understanding of where drains towards which river. And from a management standpoint, it helps us now prioritize our interventions across the island. So I wanted to ask, since based on how you explain what watersheds are, and being that everyone um based on what they do, it impacts the watershed. I'm viewing it now as an interconnected system. It is. So how if a watershed is degraded, how does it affect an individual or how does it affect us on a whole? So watersheds in general, so we like to speak about ecosystem services. Right. So that are benefits that you derive from nature. So most times when you think river, you think about the water itself. When you're looking at a wider scale, looking at the watershed, you look at services such as sediment retention. So one of the issues that we have is that, for example, we might have a lot of rain, and the immediate question is why we don't have water right after that. Right. When in reality, your watershed is not functioning very well in terms of sediment retention. So you have all of that sediment going into the system and it's not usable by the NWC. All right, I want to make sure that people who are listening are really, really following this conversation. So in the watershed area, what happens so that you have increased sedimentation occurring? What is the what is the thing that's happening that causes that? All right, so in actuality, like if you're looking at watershed modeling in general, you find that certain land cover categories like a tree or forest cover behaves better in terms of sediment retention than if you have an open bear land. So in general, for example, if you go up in the upper watershed reaches, you know that there's a competition between conservation and economic gain. So you have a need to earn and a need to protect. So on one hand, you have like Nepal forestry pushing the whole conservation of forests. But the reality within these communities is that there's not much in terms of economic opportunities. So their economic opportunity comes from clearing a piece of land and deciding to work that land in terms of putting in either some coffee or some cash crop. Once that land becomes cleared, it becomes more vulnerable to sediment movement. So one of the things that we've been working on is how we balance that with our farmers. So we've been doing a lot in terms of encouraging agroforestry. So just last quarter, which is August, even just last week, I was up in an area called Woodford, handing out some trees. So we understand that there's a need to earn and you would have established your cash crop, but we're now encouraging you to do. So that you have some amount of sedimentary tension in that area. So then uh Mr. Fernandez, the more tree cover you have in in in general in in the country and in specific areas, perhaps, is there talk with to us about the connection between the extent of tree cover that we have and the extent of um how that how that um impacts our water systems. Well, as Mr. Reed has just stated, when you have a denuded forest, basically you get a rather rapid runoff of the rainfall. Yes. The first thing we must understand is that trees, it cannot be the trees break the velocity of the rainfall so that it doesn't do much erosion. Um raindrops can do quite significant bit of erosion when it falls on bare soil. So the more trees you have, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna have a better watershed because trees have a very high evapotranspiration rate and you can lose a lot of your water back to the to the atmosphere, but it still goes back into the hydrologic cycle. But having the proper trees and the watershed in extremely good condition, you should have outflows which are very, very low, if not totally absent of sea and sediment that would reduce your treatment and allow you to basically um use your water quite easily and adequately. If we look at Hope River, for instance, when Hope River, there's a heavy rain up in the Hope River watershed, um, and it comes down, they will reversing spate. Half of the time that water can't be used or can't be diverted into the mono reservoir because it has such a high sediment load that you're you're literally getting more of a mud flow rather than a water flow. And you end up with a situation where you can't treat that water, it's it's the sedimentation level is beyond the treatable level of on any of your install systems. So you have to wait a while until a lot of that water and initial sediment runs out to sea, so we lose a lot of the water that way before you can actually harness the low sediment water that's coming behind that. We're saying if you're a farmer, you're living in the hills, etc., what you do impacts your water supply and everyone else's water supply. And from what you've heard just now, the issue of how you farm that land, um, how much you clear every piece of vegetation and is beer soil. So when the rain falls, that soil is just washing down into the rivers, etc. And that is impacting our water supply. So then um, Lise, Lise Walter, Lise is a civil and water engineer, and I want our listeners to understand what do civil and water engineers do. Okay, so civil engineers generally make urban spaces and then allow us to have good life. So we are responsible for your transportation systems, your your water systems, your wastewater systems, and general accessibility to modernity. I primarily do water resources engineering, I do other parts of civil engineering as well. So my most of the time function within the engineering sphere is I do urban development. So primarily for housing. So we lay out communities, I make sure we have access to water from generally from the NWC and ensure the pipe sizes to get water to you are correct at the right pressure. We design drains to make sure that we manage runoff from the planned community back into nature with a balance. We try to do no more than was would have been going before. We also do wastewater treatment because anywhere you have people, you are using water and you're generating waste, and so we have to treat that water to send it back to the environment according to regulations for health. Now, one of the things that was mentioned earlier, I think by Mr. Fernandez, was that the groundwater is replenished. It's replenished from the runoff, from rainfall, etc. When rainfalls, it percolates down. But we have been covering up our surfaces with with material that no no no no water can get through, right? Otherwise known as impermeable surfaces. So we have paved parking spaces, parking lots, paved driveways, um, etc. etc. So we're increasing the acreage of paved surfaces. How could we change that ratio of permeable to impermeable so that we're allowing more water to reach the groundwater level to percolate? Okay. So every space has has an assignment of value that would be called permeable or impermeable. So let's say it's from zero to a hundred, right? So what you do is you balance to make sure that you create impermeable spaces of a certain value and recreate permeable spaces so that you can get that balance back. And then you create areas where you send your excess rainfall the overland flow so that those areas, detention, retention areas, will then function as areas for infiltration, percolation, retent and rate management of rainfall runoff. So the civil engineer works with the urban planner to make sure we still have that balance without affecting people downstream or around us negatively. So then let's talk about some of those things that I'm assuming it's NEPA that has given developers and others who are transforming spaces into urban city type um uh locations, uh you are you have guidelines so that because you understand that we we need to develop the city and still manage our water resource uh in a way that allows us to manage water and water resources well. What are some of those existing guidelines? And all right, so it is twofold. So from this from the very top of it, you have what we call our development order process. Yes. Now, even though most people see the development order process as a planning document, the reality is that the environmental side of the agency, even other commenting agencies like the RA, the forestry department, they provide input into that document. For example, within the Kingston and St. Andrew Development Order, there are some policies that will push the whole idea of the nature-based solutions. There's a need for permeable um pavements in terms of your driveways. There's a push towards getting some amount of greenery in the space. So it's not just open space in terms of like a space that you might have a hard surface. It's open space in terms of something that is contributing to both the ability of the area to retain some amount of the water coming in, as well as you know, pushing towards getting some more biodiversity in inputs within that area. You're using the word pushing towards. Does that translate into actual stated required um stated specifications? For example, specifications about tree cover. You're you're developing an area, you remove trees, is there a specification about the amount of tree cover to be preserved or replaced? Yeah, so we do have recently developed a landscaping guideline document. Okay. So that will actually guide the developer in terms of what needs to be retained. So for example, even within the Kinston and St. Andrew area, there's a government trust towards retention of lignum vitae. So if you have a development area and you're within that space, you might have lignum vitae or other trees that are we tend to say like above a certain diameter, breast height, so above a certain thickness, generally the agency will push for you to retain those trees on the property and then kind of build that into your landscaping plan. And do we have um do we have any requirements around permeability versus impermeability? Are we saying especially within the Kingston area, you will tend to have a condition that speaks to permeable surfaces. Where is it located that within the permit that you would get from the agency? So if it's something that comes into the the agency and you know that the NRC is different. So the NRC or the board is the one that gives the the approval, but at the same time, one of the conditions that will be put within that permit that you get from the agency is something that speaks to the retention of permeability or permeable errors. All right. We've been talking about keeping the supply going. One of the other aspects is how how do we deal with with how do we respond to and prevent flooding in the urban context? So, Mr. Fernandez, I don't know if you want to come in on that. Well, I think basically we need to understand that flooding is a water resources problem, it's not an engineering problem. There are structural and non-structural solutions to flooding. Structural, we have discussed earlier dealing with the watersheds and the state of the watershed, and structurally dealing with um drainage which Lise had had mentioned before in terms of providing the required drainage. Now, if you look in the corporate area, I think over the years what you have seen is an increase in the impermeable surfaces. There are more high-rise buildings, there are more paved areas, there are more roads, there's less areas for infiltration to take place, and in fact, there's less drainage systems. Some of the drainage systems that have been constructed over the years are no longer valid in terms of the volume that of discharge that they can manage. So they are overcome quite easily by the intensity and duration of the rainfall that we are now getting, um, which is short duration, high-intensity rainfall that creates all this problem. So, what we have to look at is how do we create areas where we can have more infiltration? For instance, does do we have to pave a parking lot totally? Or can we use some other materials designed in such a way that there will be infiltration in the parking lots into the groundwater? subsurface. So there are different ways that we can look at it. But clearly, if we continue building in Kingston without providing the necessary infrastructure to deal with both infiltration as well as to channel the runoff into areas where our all our streets are going to become rivers. If we take what Mr Fernandez just said and our actual experience, it sounds like we're actually designing the city for disaster as opposed to designing the city to avert disaster. Because as Mr. Fernandez has said, we decided we would increase densities, but we didn't do anything about the the drainage system. Not to mention the heat that we're designing for. Because the increased heights and so on, the increased use of concrete in the city is in fact accelerating our our run up to the heat island effect. And that's gonna impact our water supply as well. Yes Lee. So there are many ways to ameliorate those issues. Yes. What needs to happen is our municipal council needs to enforce some of the NWA guidelines for drainage and flood management which would force more of the development money to be spent in managing the site for environmental good than for return on investment. Yes in a beautiful building because there I mean you can put in a green roof that will slow your rate of runoff. You can put in permeable paving which a lot of us see around the place where people put in like an aggregate parking lot or the interlaced brick pavers sometimes grow and some of those are painful to people who find it difficult to go out there once a day and sweep off gravels that have moved when a car peels out or some people don't want to they don't like the vegetation that grows in these spaces. They're not well chosen and they're not sometimes beautiful and it's and when the whacker comes through and wax and stones fly everywhere and everybody complains so the next thing they do is go in and pave. But there are there are other paving methods you know there we as Jamaica can investigate and decide to use a permeable asphalt and you can buy a permeable asphalt and make sure your parking areas are sloped and your asphalt is permeable and the water is going down you can design a base that retains water gravels sands and and we allow good percolation you can drain your roof directly into chambers underneath so they don't leave the site you can put your low areas on your property recognize that they are going to have water come there plant the species use it as an open space entertainment zone recognize nobody's going to be out there when two inches of rain are falling and so you'll go there tomorrow or later in the afternoon by which time if you are properly designed the water will be going down and you might have a couple millimeters. So there are so many things that can be done if the space as a whole is designed and not just the building okay thank you Ms. Walters so I wanted to add that it's also has it also has to do with the awareness and the knowledge of nature-based solution and the economic value because many business people will say oh this is quite expensive to transition to a more sustainable material and the upfront cost is quite a lot but then maybe this the long-term cost could be something that's to look at what would you what what's your feedback on that Mr. Reed well yeah as I would have mentioned most times up developers thinking in terms of return on investment so which is why as I would have mentioned the development order there's policy statements within it that will say that we will encourage for example and then that's how we take our our guidance in terms of the processing of an application. So once we for example you come into the agency so persons are of the belief that you come into the agency and whatever you put forward you get it's harder like that. So there are many times for example we have a decision making process our decision support process where you would have a review of the application and you can then make recommendations to the developer with this new development order and the policies contained within that order we have more of a leeway then to to mandate certain inclusions within a design and that's something as I would have said it's something that is conditioned at the end of the approval process. I know that you said you encourage does encouragement mean incentives so yes there are many times when there are incentives built into a development order process. So I was in a meeting with a better mind in terms of planning. So my senior manager in planning and he would have mentioned something along the waterfront where if you have an open space consideration you can get probably an increase consideration in another regard. So you might have like planning considerations in terms of like density which you would have mentioned you can get increased density if it is that you're open to having an open space a usable open space is one thing that I keep pushing. So the whole idea as put forward by Liz something where it's not just a concrete structure that persons go underneath but a green area that is supported by trees and and some you know we have complementary wildlife coming in as a result of that tree. So once you do things like that there are allowances within the development as it is now for incentives to be applied to your development. Okay thank you in a perfect world Mr Fernandez um if we were to dream a little bit about the Jamaica that would be organized sustainably in terms of its water management and supply um what would that perfect world have us doing? We have to look at the infrastructure where we place things do the modeling determine what needs to be put in place and then we we maintain those systems that is that critical aspect the whole maintenance of systems. If you go up to University of the Western is over biomanagement you'll see where they have used some building blocks with holes and they have inserted that which gives you a firm foundation but it allows a certain amount of seepage vertical seepage infiltration into groundwater. So there are things that we can look at and deal with but we clearly cannot continue as we are doing now because we are going to be having serious serious problems same question ideal ideal world from from your standpoint uh watershed area management coordinator ideal world what would we be doing so so for us it's it's all about creating that balance so we as NEPA we have a vested interest in having conservation being at the forefront of watershed management but there's a recognition which is why even within the watershed policy now that was just confirmed it we there's a need for partnership across agencies. So we know that there's a radar and we know that the radar will have its vested interest in terms of choice farmers we know that the NWC has a vested interest in terms of getting the water out. So what we've been doing is a lot of work in terms of trying to get that balance in right. So as Mr Fernandez would have said some of it it takes amount of modeling so you'd have heard me mention that we're in a specific space now Woodford and we're doing some delivery of trees that comes out of modeling so we would have realized that that particular catchment area is important in terms of sediment retention. That's amount of mud that Mr Fernandez would have mentioned earlier coming into the Hope River getting the trees into that area is important in reducing that. So within the last two months we've delivered just over 500 trees within that space alone. So we're using the data and we're trying to see how best we can have conservation being meshed with the need for earn and it's done in such a way that there's a balance so that the persons who are downstream of these intervention areas are benefiting as well. And as we develop our urban spaces already Lise you were describing some of the things that we can do so elaborate on what are some of those things in the in the ideal world or in really just the practical world we know that um within the nature-based solutions field people talk about the use of bioswales and rain gardens as one element of the way to to channel um water. So so in my ideal world yes because I don't work in buildings I work in subdivision and larger land development so in my ideal world I want what Mr Fernandez wants I want a model that's out there with some data that I can just do mine plug into instead of creating the whole catchment model as part of my tiny project. Because in the ideal world that's what I end up having in the today world that's what I do. I have to model the the watershed and plug in my piece and then send it back to the agencies to look at ideal world I'd have that model and if I had that model that I could plug into that means other development engineers could have that model that they could plug into so we'd be all be working on the same platform and understand each other. And in the next part of the ideal world is that there would be infrastructure up and downstream to connect to so that the cost of doing things within my development is not so high and they take out the fun pieces of open space where the plantings are perfect as opposed to just too little palm. And three needs to be the fashion so there is modeling and data and understanding of downstream so you're just connecting in instead of you taking on inventing in my ideal world it would be the ability to incorporate a few more open spaces that are not somewhere somebody goes and plays football but somewhere that you have um a tree pollination you have pollination stations you have a you know for bees somewhere where you have a there's a guangu tree that stays or you even maybe you plant back a guangu tree and it just becomes an environment that's peaceful and full of birds and and where human beings go and feel much better. Feel much better yeah somewhere you can go with your children and they're it because of the way it's intentionally designed it serves multiple purposes it serves multiple purposes how would the green space serve the the the the flood water management purpose as well or can how can it? There's a lot of ways and it's very intricate so because you in our regular world when rain falls on green spaces some of it is goes through and it retains on top you have an inch or two of water at times on the surface. Maybe it's an only an hour or two but it it is where it is a catchment and a release area. So to allow it to catch and release the open spaces to catch and release the um the rainfall the channels the man-made channels that I make are not overwhelmed so it slows down a rate control and a volume control method mechanism. We always have to look at the end user and the end maintainer. And in many communities like even mine our open spaces are paid for and mowed and managed by the 75 houses in my neighborhood. So if you if it is your new neighborhood the mechanism to maintain appropriately has to be built in and the way to fund it has to be built in anything I design that's intricate that might need some kind of vacuum to remove sediment or might need um augers to aerate soil you can't do that if you don't know who is managing your space. Understood so so to get the things we want in our ideal world we have to be intentional about it. We have to design it with all the things we want out of it we have to think about maintenance and we have to plan for maintenance we have to plan who is the is it the local authority that's responsible for some of it residents responsible for others. So you look at community management and how does that work along the public streets in some areas some parts of the world the engineering of the public street not only has a ha uh a kind of grey infrastructure for drainage it also has green infrastructure alongside Mr Fernandez whilst you were at um water resources authority was there any consideration for hybrid systems uh for for water managing runoff yes there was some thought about that but of course all that has to come from the floodwater controller which is managed by the National Water Commission but I'll give you an example um we faced a problem over water resources and the JBI who was beside us the Ministry of Agriculture going right down that line all the rainfall that falls up at UTEC runs its way down across properties and through several yards creating problems going right down to Hope Boulevard and the traffic light where it used to flood that entire area and the whole vet department in that area was completely flooded then we said well let's put some sidewalk they were expanding the the roadway widening the roadway and putting in sidewalks and instead of putting in a hybrid system which is some gravels and planting some things there they concreted the entire thing and extended the concrete all the way down so it creates an additional runoff area and reduces the infiltration though the the drainage system is not able to take all that water but then and these are some of the things that we need to look at. Just to help all the the listeners to understand what the green uh infrastructure would have entailed can you describe um what that would would have would have had would have involved well that that would have involved not filling the the behind the the edges of the the roadway behind us with some gravels and planting some plants that are um can use water quite easily readily and allow that once the water gets in that gravel it it soaks away and things and we will have less runoff all these concrete structures and all that stuff has to be done and it may create some problems in terms of people are wheelchair using sidewalks but of course we still have that problem with the light post in the middle of the the sidewalk but I think basically what uh we were looking at was the using gravel instead of of concrete to allow infiltration rapid more rapid infiltration and less runoff in the in the area okay thank you Mr Fernandez and for our listeners what Mr Fernandez is actually describing is actually a bioswale using materials such as the gravel vegetation to use as a conveyance or a channel to channel that water and also to help it to infiltrate within the soil and so these are the kinds of solutions that the Jamaica urban solutions for the environment project JUS project being implemented by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica these are the kinds of solutions that we are advocating and promoting and funding ultimately and so we've in this episode of Resilience Naturally we've been talking with Mr Basil Fernandez Mr Fernandez of course was former managing director for many years and a familiar voice and a much loved voice and valued voice at the Water Resources Authority the WRA we've also had Andre Reid Watershed Area Management Coordinator within the Ecosystems management branch at the National Environment and Planning Agency Nefa and we have had the pleasure of having Lise Walter are you the only female civil and water engineer you're not okay I don't think so I'm sure there are a lot more have you met them most of the civil hydraulic engineers I know that are female are all are mostly in coastal okay alternate to that they are in potable water resources and they work at the NWC I'm not sure if I know any females in drainage particularly interesting um so you know young young person young female listening to this program there is a whole universe of uh careers that you might investigate more about we ask each of our guests on this podcast as we wrap the conversation um we've said many things in the course of this conversation is there one thing that you would want those who have been listening to take away um as as an important thing to hold and to consider Mr. Fernandez let me start with you what would be your one takeaway that you want listeners to remember well listeners should remember one thing if you can reduce flooding and allow more infiltration you will be added to your water resources that would provide you with a more reliable and probably higher quality resource in your pipes and and that's one way of dealing with climate change in terms of um reducing the the total runoff and channeling that underground. Thanks for that and um Mr Reed for sure anytime there's a conversation about the environment Nipper comes up but what I'd want our listeners to realize is that there's a conversation surrounding you as an individual. So Liz would have alluded to it is it's not enough for you to say we don't want to have to deal with the maintenance of a green area. It's not enough for you to have your land space and concretize all of that and then be on the back end complaining about lack of water and flooded. So there's an individual responsibility that comes into play. The agency or the ministry would have set a policy directive and it's now us as individuals to take into consideration those directives. Awesome because you know you can't be a farmer who says well me no care me going just clear everything so that we can plant my thing understand that you're there's always going to be a connection and a reaction further down and your water supply is so precious that you what you're doing has an impact on it. Lise what would be your um so if we're thinking fully urban yes we are I would like lot owners and redevelopers of individual lots to recognize that this is our island and our future and what we are doing may needs to m go to not our bottom line in our investment today but our investment for the next 50 years while what you're building is functioning. So to think about your piece of land holistically and enjoy redevelopment with nature included and on that note we are really really so happy to have had just to uh tell you again our very special guest former managing director at Water Resources authority Mr Basil Fernandez Andre Reid Watershed Area Management Coordinator within the ecosystems management branch at the National Environmental and Planning Agency and civil and water engineer Lise Walter and thank you all you can keep up with the Resilience Naturally podcast and everything the JUs Project and the EFJ are doing by following the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica on social media on Facebook and LinkedIn just search for the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica and on Instagram it's the underscore EFJ that's the underscore EFJ and visit our website at www dotj.org dot jm and you know we should give special thanks listeners to Renika Walker Matt Knight sitting here and functioning as co-host Renico is head cook and bottlewasher of this of this podcast uh she's our producer and our everything and coordinator of our guests and so on so thank you very much Ranika and as well we owe thanks and appreciation to Harry J Studios at number 10 Herb McKinley Drive formerly Roosevelt Avenue Harry J Studios where you can record just about any and everything music records podcasts uh etc so we thank Harry J Studios for the production and post production support of this podcast I'm Carol Narcis and I'm Renika Welcome at night thank you for listening join us again when we'll do another episode of Resilience Naturally podcast take care