The Gleaner

Local firm makes trek to sustainability

– pwr.gleaner@gmail.com

THIS YEAR marks 30 years since Environmental Solutions Limited (ESL) put the ‘open’ sign on their doors and a ‘closed’ sign is nowhere on the horizon, even with the bracing reality of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

With the mission to ‘provide practical solutions required to ensure harmony between development and the environment’, chairman and chief executive officer, Eleanor Jones, has made no bones about her commitment to having ESL get its work done. Indeed, in the face of a changing climate and a host of conservation challenges that threaten lives and livelihoods, she insists her team must get on with it.

It is the reason that while several entities in the environment sector have threatened to or otherwise buckled under the weight of the pandemic, ESL has instead reached for its continuity plan to help safeguard ongoing operations while also celebrating 30 years on the grind, which they did on Earth Day, April 22.

“There is strict adherence to sanitisation protocols in house, the wearing of masks and social distancing, plus work from home where possible,” Jones told The Gleaner, reflecting provisions in the plan.

Their work includes the offer of environmental health services such as physical and chemical analyses; environmental risk management, as well as pollution prevention and control; occupational health and safety; in addition to food safety and security.

Their most celebrated achievements over the years, Jones said, is the “high-level integration of environmental principles to sustainable engineering design of strategic road, airport, infrastructure projects”, as well as the application of environmental and social safeguards of international development partners to large, funded projects.

She and her team of now more than 30 employees are proud, too, of how they have applied disaster risk management to regional and international programmes of governments, the private sector and other stakeholders; and of their having had the “first private sector environmental laboratory accredited to the ISO/ IEC standard and which has the largest accredited environmental scope in the Caribbean”.

However, the company has not only been focused on contracted outputs.

They have also been seeking to make a difference at the level of communities and through volunteerism.

Jones herself has journeyed to a number of global climate talks as part of the Jamaica delegation. Her participation in those deliberations, where climate deals are brokered among countries, has yielded useful information and networking opportunities to help local private sector interests connect the dots between their bottom lines and a sustained, comprehensive climate change response from Jamaica and the world.

Climate change – with its impacts including sea level rise and the loss of coastal livelihoods as well as extreme weather events that have devastated lives – is fuelled by the emission of greenhouses gases, including carbon dioxide. Businesses, and in particular those that have failed to operate climate smart, help to drive these emissions through non-renewable energy consumption, among other ways.

ESL has also led on the hosting of the inaugural climate walk in Jamaica. Held on October 24 – the International Day of Climate Action – in 2015, the walk took place in bands that reflected a series of health and wellness themes – from water to food, energy, and waste management. They have not stopped there. The environmental consultancy firm is even now working on similar kinds of contributions. As part of their ongoing celebration of 30 years in business, ESL has made provisions to undertake climate change adaptation initiatives recommended for select communities in the upper Rio Minho Watershed, while also seeing to environmental health in schools.

They are greening the Mount Hermon Infant and Primary School as a pilot in St Catherine “to improve indoor and ambient air quality, potable water supply, waste management and sanitation”.

The team is also working to support the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica’s participation in Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ national treeplanting initiative. That effort, now being led by the Forestry Department, aims to have three million trees in the ground within three years.

“Trees are the lungs of the earth, and the lungs of the earth are connected to the lungs of the body,” Jones told The Gleaner last year.

With the millions of infections and deaths associated with COVID-19, a respiratory illness, planting trees, and especially in urban centres, has never been more important, the ESL boss said at the time.

They are also hosting a series of webinars intended to showcase nature-based solutions to climate change and health.

EARTH TODAY

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2021-06-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

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