JAMAICA | NEPA Cannot Serve Two Masters: Shadow Minister Demands Immediate Transfer to Environment Ministry

KINGSTON, Jamaica February 27, 2026 - — The same ministry driving Jamaica's biggest infrastructure projects is also the one supposed to keep those projects in check. Shadow Minister Omar Newell says that arrangement has to end — now.

Opposition Shadow Minister of Environment and Climate Resilience, Omar Newell, MP, is demanding that the Government immediately transfer the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) out of the Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development (MEGID) and place it squarely where it belongs — under the newly created Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. It sounds like bureaucratic housekeeping. It is anything but.

MEGID is the Prime Minister's own portfolio. Dr. Andrew Holness simultaneously champions major infrastructure expansion and economic growth while overseeing Jamaica's principal environmental regulator. In plain terms: the referee and the team captain wear the same jersey. And when the game involves billion-dollar developments reshaping Jamaica's coastlines and hillsides, that conflict of interest is not merely optics — it is a governance failure with real consequences.

"Environmental regulation must not only be independent, it must be seen to be independent," Newell declared. "When the authority approving large-scale developments sits within the same portfolio driving those developments, the perception of conflict becomes unavoidable."

He is right. And the perception, in this case, tracks the reality.

Jamaica Has Done Better Before

This is not uncharted territory for Jamaica. Under Portia Simpson Miller's second administration, NEPA operated within the Ministry of Water, Land, Environment and Climate Change — a structural arrangement that gave environmental oversight its own institutional home and formally integrated climate policy at the ministerial level. It worked. Development did not grind to a halt. What it produced was a framework where regulatory credibility was protected rather than compromised.

The current administration chose to dismantle that coherence. Now, with a Ministry of Environment and Climate Change finally established — a welcome development, Newell acknowledged — the Government has created a ministry without its most critical regulatory tool. A watchdog without teeth is not a watchdog. It is window dressing.

The Global Standard Is Clear

Jamaica's current arrangement runs counter to established international practice. In the United Kingdom, the Environment Agency operates under the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs — not the Treasury, not the Business Department. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency functions as an independent federal body, insulated from the political pressures of growth ministries. These structures exist for a reason: environmental oversight loses its meaning the moment it becomes subordinate to economic expansion.

Jamaica is not exempt from this principle simply because it is a small island state. If anything, the opposite is true. Small island developing states bear a disproportionate share of the climate crisis they did the least to create. Every governance failure in Jamaica's environmental framework is a vulnerability that a strengthening hurricane season will eventually exploit.

The Urgency Is Not Abstract

Newell is not raising this as a theoretical governance debate. Jamaica is already living the consequences of institutional misalignment. Stronger hurricanes. Accelerating coastal erosion. Deepening water insecurity. These are not projections — they are present realities shaping the lives of ordinary Jamaicans from Hanover to St. Thomas.

"At a time when Jamaica faces stronger hurricanes, coastal erosion, and increasing water insecurity, we cannot afford governance arrangements that undermine confidence in environmental decision-making," he warned.

He is calling on the Government to realign NEPA and the Natural Resources Conservation Authority under the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change and to strengthen statutory safeguards ensuring genuine regulatory independence.

A Non-Partisan Test

Newell has framed this as a structural issue, not a political one. That framing deserves to be taken seriously — and tested. If the Government agrees that environmental protection should not appear subordinate to economic expansion, the path forward is straightforward: move NEPA where it belongs, strengthen the statutory protections, and demonstrate that Jamaica's environmental governance is built for the century ahead, not the century behind.

The question now is whether the administration will act — or whether protecting the Prime Minister's consolidated portfolio matters more than protecting Jamaica's environment.

—WiredJa