This Master Plan aims at: ensuring sustainable development and use of water resources; balancing economic development, environmental protection, and public welfare; strengthening national planning frameworks, such as Vision 2030 and the Water Policy; providing data-driven assessment of water availability and demand; addressing current and projected water needs, including climate change impacts. This Master Plan is a comprehensive national planning instrument that combines hydrological analysis, policy alignment, and sectoral demand forecasting to ensure the sustainable management of Jamaica’s water resources in the long term. Implementing section 16 of the Water Resources Act, and in alignment with international obligations of Jamaica, the Master Plan recognises the right to water and adopts the Integrated Water Resources Management. The Master Plan concerns the following matters: analysis of the importance of water resources management across relevant sectors such as: agriculture and fisheries, with focus on irrigation and aquaculture, livestock water use, industry, tourism, recreational and domestic uses of water; economic dependency on water resources; hydrological structure of the country and territorialisation of water governance, essential for licensing, allocation and monitoring water management; description of hydrogeological process, wetlands, rainfall and temperature; monitoring system for groundwater and surface water; description of environmental pressures on water resources management: urbanisation, land use management, water quality standards and level of contamination caused by: industrial effluent from rum and sugar factories, sewage, saline and seawater intrusion. Concerning water resources assessment, this Master Plan focuses on the following topics: surface and groundwater availability; groundwater safe yield determination through: precipitation, effective rainfall, streamflow, submarine discharge; groundwater inventory; impacts of climate change on water resources. The Master Plan also provides for: components of water supply; rural water supply; tourism demand; industrial demand; agricultural and irrigation demand; potential effects of climate change on crop and sugarcane water requirement; building water resources institutional capacity; increasing water storage; rainwater harvesting; treatment, recycling and reuse of wastewater; incentives for water conservation; water fund and payment for ecosystem-services.
جامايكا · 2022-03-01