Sophia Frazer-Binns | The interconnected crisis

The quote by John Muir ‘When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.’ or by Chief Seattle, that “All things are bound together. All things connect”, is in every way the reality of the environment.

When we speak about “the environment” many wonder what a healthy coastline, increased forest cover or the need to plant more trees, rising sea levels, proper and fit-for-purpose drainage systems and physical infrastructure have to do with their daily lives. They ask how these affect their lives, monthly expenses, or simply their efforts to make ends meet.

For some, when speaking about the environment, the honest response is ‘the environment cannot eat’. Yet the truth is that the environment is not a distant, separated reality. It is a part of who we are. It is wrapped up in every aspect of our daily lives. It is in every way who we are. It is the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water that sustains us, and the ground beneath our homes. It is our economy, our public health, our children’s safety, and our national security; it is all these and more, all bound together. When the environment suffers, every aspect of life suffers.

That reality has never been clearer than in the wake of the back-to-back hurricanes that battered Jamaica. Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 and Hurricane Melissa in October 2025. These hurricanes were not isolated “acts of God”; they were a reflection of how human choices have magnified natural hazards. Both hurricanes revealed how environmental neglect, weak infrastructure, and social vulnerability are woven into one devastating cycle.

INTERCONNECTED CRISIS

In recent years, we have seen what happens when environmental imbalance meets social inequality. Increased ozone emissions, deforestation, poor waste management, and unplanned development in floodplains have created fragile systems poised to collapse. When the hills are stripped bare, rainfall turns to landslides and mudslides. When mangroves are cleared for development purposes, storm surges batter our coasts with nothing to break their force. When gullies are clogged with plastic, domestic and other waste, entire communities flood, resulting in significant losses for families and businesses.

These are not coincidences. They are the results of choices made by humans. Choices to ignore the warning signs of climate change and to treat the environment as expendable. Every hurricane simply exposes the cracks we have refused to mend globally and locally.

When Hurricane Beryl struck Jamaica in July 2024, its over-140-miles-per-hour winds lashed the southern coast and left behind widespread damage. Crops were destroyed, homes flattened, and livelihoods disrupted. But beyond the physical destruction, Beryl revealed how unprepared we were. Rural farmers lost everything in a night. Churches and schools became makeshift shelters. Coastal communities without the protection of mangroves faced the brunt of storm surges.

The recovery from Hurricane Beryl was slow and, for some, uneven, with many communities unable to return to life before Beryl. In all of this, there lingered the unanswered question of what lessons were learnt from Beryl.

As the country, especially the southern side of the island, began rebuilding from Beryl, Hurricane Melissa struck one year later. Hurricane Melissa, a Category-5 monster, is deemed by the experts as the most intense and catastrophic hurricane to hit Jamaica. With winds at approximately 185 miles per hour, rainfall was unprecedented in duration and force, with storm surges reaching up to four feet above normal tide. Entire roads disappeared beneath mud and debris. Thousands of Jamaicans were displaced, and the fragile economy so painstakingly built by successive governments experienced unprecedented losses estimated to be 41 per cent, just under half of the country’s 2024 GDP.

BEYOND THE STATISTICS

But beyond the statistics are the faces of the affected: the family who lost their home and everything in it, the fisher in St Elizabeth who lost his boat and livelihood, the mother in Hanover who continues to live in a shelter with her children, praying that she will one day rebuild and her children can again attend school. The elderly sisters who have been forced to live in a shelter because they are unable to cross the newly created river, to be with other family members. The rising water level in Content in Williamsfield, Manchester, where homes and livelihoods are being submerged at the will of nature. These are the human stories behind our environmental reality.

Hurricane Melissa’s fury is not simply about climate change; it is about vulnerability, substandard and inferior housing, degraded watersheds, poor waste disposal, and inadequate planning. It is about the painful truth that everything is connected to the environment, which, when destroyed, destroys, and the poorest and most vulnerable suffer the most

In them, we see that environmental degradation is not an abstract idea. It is the difference between stability and survival. When crops wash away, when bridges collapse, when contaminated water spreads disease, it is the vulnerable who bear the weight.

Environmental protection, therefore, is not a luxury or an option; it is a must-do. The health of our ecosystems directly determines the well-being of our people. Protecting forests, rivers, and reefs can no longer be seen as just conservation, but must be seen as protecting lives, livelihoods, and our future.

If we are to build a future that endures, we must accept the interconnected relationship of humans, our lives, livelihood and environment, which compels us to be climate resilient. This means a robust governance structure, unequivocal legal enforcement, citizens’ empowerment with access to information and justice.

Restoration of our mangroves, reforestation of hillsides and protection of watersheds. We must invest in green infrastructure, renewable energy, climate-resilient shelters and sustainable agriculture. The interconnection also means empowering our people so they can be a part of the movement to build climate resilience at home or at work, in business and recreation. As a small island developing state, Jamaica’s story can and must be one of resilience. Resilience that is not reactive, but proactive, grounded in inclusion, research and technology.

Hurricanes Beryl and Melissa demonstrate the interconnectedness of man and environment. The environment does not stand alone but is the nucleus which holds us all together. If we protect it, it will, in turn, protect us. Nature has spoken, will we listen?

Sophia Frazer-Binns is an attorney-at-law and a climate and environmental justice advocate. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com