Minister Be On Your BRIEF! OMAR NEWELL Didn’t Come To Play🔥Argument💯

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Coastal erosion and extreme weather events impose fiscal burdens and disrupt livelihoods. Our policy posture therefore must be anticipatory, science-led, and economically disciplined.

[00:00:13]This you have heard from me in this house before, Madam Speaker. We still have no EIA regulations despite the responsible minister promising that same would have been tabled in his 2025 sectoral presentation. And interestingly, he made the same promise again earlier today. But the young man is so clinical in the questions he's asking that I warn government ministers and members, be up on your brief.

[00:00:55]The state of the environment.

[00:00:58]The global context is unambiguous.

[00:01:02]The United Nations Environment Program has characterized our predicament as a triple planetary crisis, climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

[00:01:10]These are not abstract threats. They are converging risk multipliers.

[00:01:16]Climate change intensifies storms and droughts. Biodiversity loss erodes ecosystem services like coastal protection and food security. Pollution of both the of both air, land, and of course marine undermines public health and economic productivity.

[00:01:31]Small island developing states like Jamaica are on the front line. Sea level rise, coral bleaching, coastal erosion, and extreme weather events impose fiscal burdens and disrupt livelihoods. Our policy posture therefore must be anticipatory, science-led, and economically disciplined.

[00:01:50]This you have heard from me in this house before, Madam Speaker.

[00:01:54]However, I think it's important this afternoon to introduce the concept of planetary boundaries in this honorable house.

[00:02:02]This graphic shows the current state with only two boundaries globally not being exceeded.

[00:02:08]The planetary boundaries framework highlights the rising risk from human pressure on nine critical global processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the earth.

[00:02:19]Crossing boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or and irreversible environmental damage. The impacts of these changes will not necessarily be immediate or drastic, but together the boundaries mark a critical threshold for risks to society and the biosphere we are a part of.

[00:02:38]Members of this house and those listening at home should be clear that this is already having an impact on Jamaica.

[00:02:45]But Madam Speaker, I also believe we must be unambiguous in acknowledging the current state of our environment. In some areas, Jamaica has led the world.

[00:02:56]In other areas, we are behind.

[00:03:00]Only by acknowledging the problems, similarly to the way the MHPM and indeed the DPM have approached crime in this country, can we solve them.

[00:03:09]Above is Jamaica's ranking as assessed by Yale University in their 2024 assessment.

[00:03:16]Jamaica sits at 68 out of 180 countries assessed in the overall ranking.

[00:03:22]Good. However, important for us to confront the areas in which Jamaica is not assessed to be progressing at the right pace.

[00:03:31]For colleagues' information, areas such as climate change are where ranked number 23 in the world in our management of the subject. Marine protection, 27.

[00:03:42]Um but there are areas of particular challenge. Um certainly waste management, our Red List index, we are in at 164 and 138 respectively. So, this gives you an idea of where we have to focus. The areas we're doing well, where we want to entrench the work. The areas we're not doing well, we want to invest more and give greater focus to ensure we move up the ranking and indeed protect our environment.

[00:04:11]And under sections 21 to 24, our environmental agencies can be directed.

[00:04:20]They can be told what time they need to make decisions within.

[00:04:25]And they can be ultimately overridden through a step-in order.

[00:04:31]Madam Speaker, we still have no EIA regulations despite the responsible minister promising that same would have been tabled in his 2025 sectoral presentation. And interestingly, he made the same promise again earlier today.

[00:04:48]Madam Speaker, some of our environmental groups have advised me that we have had cases, Madam Speaker, where our multilateral partners have had to step in and demand EIAs be done based on their internal guidelines because we had nothing that said an EIA must be done. And the dredging of project relating to the Kingston Harbor comes to mind.

[00:05:14]Madam Speaker, what this what is not in this bill is just as important as what is in it.

[00:05:21]There's no explicit requirement for environmental impact assessment.

[00:05:27]So, there's no preservation of existing environmental permitting thresholds.

[00:05:33]No protection against the waiver or compression of environmental review process. No clarity as to how regulators such as the as NEPA will operate within this framework. Madam Speaker, there there should be no ministerial bypass of our environment environmental protection system.

[00:05:56]Here is a political neophyte from Central St. Mary, Omar Newell, who is turning up to the parliament ready, very good with his questions, very detailed in his analysis of the reams and reams of paper in front of him, and not being uncharitable in the presentations when he's making them. But the young man is so clinical in the questions he's asking that I warn government ministers and members, be up on your brief.

[00:06:41]Because what Omar Newell is exposing, it is something to be applauded. He is to be encouraged because that is the sort of keeping the ministers on the toes in the parliament that we need from an opposition member.