Biodiversity in Jamaica

Martin Henry in the Jamaica Gleaner (Jamaica): ….World Environment Day, which passed on Thursday, June 5, would have offered some opportunity for reflection on the state of the Jamaican and global environment, the deterioration of which is a far more substantial threat to a secure future than crime, which can be reversed fairly quickly with bold and determined action, or the economy, which can be grown as well, fairly quickly, if we capitalise on our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses. And one of our strengths is our biodiversity with one of the highest levels of endemicity in the world - the plants and animals found here and nowhere else.

Well-timed for World Environment Day was the inaugural professorial lecture of UWI Professor Helen Jacobs, 'Natural Products from Caribbean Biodiversity - The Promise and the Challenges'. We already know of Canasol and Asmasol from ganja, which is a veritable pharmacological gold mine. Smoking the stuff is really wasting it. And wasting the smoker! The UWI has been a world-class centre for natural products chemistry with work beginning with the inception of the university.

But extraction of stuff is not the only way to benefit from biodiversity. A whole new applied science of Biomimicry is rapidly advancing. Biomimicry is "the science of designing things for humans, using nature's way of doing things as a blueprint," says the May 29 issue of Rachel's Democracy and Health News which reran an excellent article on the subject…..

Herman Moll: The Island of Jamaica, 1720, Wikimedia Commons