Jamaica and the Conservation of Globally Important Bird Habitats
Jamaica and the Conservation of Globally Important Bird Habitats
This chapter describes how the Cockpit Country, a mountainous limestone forest region in the northwestern section of the island, was threatened by the possibility of bauxite mining, which would displace local residents and degrade natural resources. It then traces how a transnational network participated in the creation and implementation of the GEF project titled the Project on Sustainable Conservation of Globally Important Caribbean Bird Habitats. It shows how the network developed a scientific consensus after members held a series of transnational workshops and knowledge building exercises on bird habitat management in Cockpit Country, thus becoming an epistemic community. Despite having a consensus, the network could only persuade those policymakers with whom they socialized in the Forestry Department and the Ministry of Environment to adopt new environmental regulations. Moreover, although the network initially used economic justifications to argue for conservation, policymakers in the Jamaica Bauxite Institute and the Ministry of Agriculture rejected these, asserting the importance of short-term economic exploitation. Only when the network was able to mobilize the mass public around justice claims was the network able to generate sufficient political will to curb bauxite mining in Cockpit Country.
Keywords: Jamaica, Epistemic community, Bauxite mining, Cockpit Country, Transnational network, Scientific consensus
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
