THERE ARE some arguments you can never win and some bets you can never collect. Politics and religion (for some they are the same) are subjects to avoid if you want to have consensus, and in our often backward country, human rights and the environment should be added to that list. Views are strong and not usually based on reason or rationality, and sometimes not even on facts. So often people start from their desired conclusion, and no evidence to the contrary can convince them otherwise.

I am not really interested in winning a bet with Dawn Ritch or anyone else; I do not have a lot of knowledge or experience with gambling. I do, however, know a little about the Jamaican environment and public policy, but the trouble with this debate with Dawn is that she does not know much about it herself, and has to rely on information from misinformed people. Her interest in this debate is not because she has any particular environmental sympathies, but because she wants to 'big up' the JLP and Edward Seaga. She took umbrage when two weeks ago I stated that neither the PNP nor the JLP care much for the environment, and she bet me the princely sum of $100 (which in her generosity she has raised to $200) that I can't come up with "credible evidence" of the JLP's poor environmental record in the 1980s. I adequately did so, but frankly I do not expect a JLP or PNP tribalist to accept defeat in any such discussion, and although the environmental movement is short of funds, I have little hope that we will benefit from her financial contribution. But let me give her a little of the benefit of the doubt; her informants have misinformed her. Maybe with a little explanation she will agree that neither the PNP nor the JLP care much for the environment.

For example she says that the Wildlife Protection Authority, the Watershed Protection Authority and the Beach Control Authority had been merged by the PNP administration of the 1970s under the Natural Resource Conservation Department, so there was no need for separate boards. This is just not true. The merger took place under the Natural Resource Conservation Act of 1991 and it was only then that the Boards were merged. In the 1970s, the Boards were legally separate, but for efficiency the government appointed the same people to all three boards, and so they were able to address environmental matters with some co-ordination; but legally they were separate. As I said last week, in 1983 the JLP government of Edward Seaga did not re-appoint the three boards - jointly or separately - causing their portfolios to languish. What resulted was an environmental free-for-all, and our natural environment suffered greatly. The bird-shooters had a field day! Deforestation advanced. Many public beaches were divested; places like Jackson's Bay Beach have not recovered to this day.

Not to appoint Boards to manage Jamaica's wildlife, watersheds and foreshore and floor of the sea is a serious matter, which Dawn might not appreciate. The massive layoffs in the 1980s (remember them!) especially among local government officers drove many to use their severance pay to buy fishing boats and big nets and chainsaws. Our world-class record in deforestation and overfishing is an inevitable result of the expansion of natural resource exploitation without proper management or regulation. Conservation of the environment requires monitoring and enforcement. It is not possible to absolve the JLP government of the 1980s of their guilt for environmental mismanagement and neglect.

The second example I gave of JLP environmental mismanagement in the 1980s was the debacle of the Forest Industry Development Company (FIDCo). Started by the PNP government in 1978, the JLP in the 1980s accelerated their work. This time Dawn has a good source - Keats Hall - and she makes my case for me, although she has her dates a little mixed up! She says correctly that Hurricane Allen in 1980 proved Caribbean Pine to be "ecological nonsense," yet she does not explain why the JLP government elected in that year continued to rip up Jamaica's natural forests to plant Caribbean Pine for eight more years!

FIDCo had only been in operation for two years by 1980 and they had not had time to do much "ecological nonsense;" if they had decided to abandon FIDCO in 1980 we would have been much better off, but they did not. The JLP government of the 1980s through FIDCo continued to devastate the natural forests of Jamaica to plant pine, until Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 convinced them of the stupidity of their ways by wrecking their pine plantations. But the damage had already been done, and our forests have not yet recovered. They tore unsuitable roads through forests areas, doing untold damage; they gave access to coal-burners and other stealers of forest products, and caused tremendous soil erosion. It was scandalous that this took place in forest reserves, where the forest is supposed to be conserved!

This is not hearsay on my part. From the 1970s until today I have regularly visited Bangor Ridge, Malabre Turn, Mignotte Gap and Mahoe in the Portland Blue Mountains, and in the 1980s I myself witnessed the levelling of forests down to bare earth, the planting of pine seedlings, the soil erosion causing many rivers to run brown with even light rain; and I myself saw the lines of trees pitifully split and splintered by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, a strong testament to the poor environmental practices of the JLP in the 1980s. The same is true in other areas I visit less regularly.

I am pleased that my colleague Dawn Ritch has spent so many column inches in the last two weeks exposing to the public how successive JLP and PNP governments have - by commission and omission - contributed to the environmental devastation that is Jamaica. I invite her to take up this subject more often in her columns; we will be the better for it! But watch your sources, Dawn!

But as we vote today, these matters will be far from our minds, for none of the parties have made environmental concerns even low on the priority list. Indeed, the lack of issue-oriented campaigning has exposed our politics for what we have been told that it is: the fight for scarce-benefits and spoils. The issue is not what is best for Jamaica, but who will pay the most for our votes (now or later). The JLP will not criticise the government's human rights record because theirs has not been much better. The politicians of both sides say they want peace, but their actions belie that. With all this political murder and violence, has any politician fingered one gunmen among their supporters? Whichever government wins today actively supports garrisons and gunmen and Dons and the underground economy. God help us!

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.