Portland Bight’s Protection: Q1 2005 and Jamaica’s Most Successful Coastal Conservation

Briefing

• Portland Bight Protected Area continued to demonstrate effective coastal ecosystem management.
• UNESCO biosphere recognition provided framework for sustainable use alongside conservation.
• Fishing communities within the biosphere engaged in co-management of marine resources.
• South coast model cited by advocates as evidence that development and protection were compatible.
• PBPMA budget constraints limited ranger coverage across the biosphere’s 1,800 km² area.

The Portland Bight Protected Area, established in 1999 and recognised as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2003, covered approximately 1,800 square kilometres of coastal and marine habitat across the parishes of Clarendon and St Catherine on Jamaica’s south-central coast. By 2005, it was the most significant coastal conservation success in Jamaica’s recent governance history — not because it had solved the access, overfishing, and development challenges that beset Jamaica’s coastal ecosystems generally, but because it had created an institutional framework within which those challenges were being actively managed rather than ignored.

The biosphere model that the Portland Bight Protected Area operated under, managed by the Portland Bight Protection and Management Authority (PBPMA), was premised on the integration of conservation with sustainable use rather than the exclusion of human activity. The fishing communities that had long operated in the Portland Bight area were not excluded from its marine resources under the biosphere management plan; they were engaged as co-managers, with formal roles in the management process and formal recognition of their resource use rights within the sustainable use framework. This co-management approach had produced a level of community buy-in that was qualitatively different from the antagonistic relationship between fishing communities and coastal governance that was the norm on the north coast.

What the Biosphere Prevented

The most significant achievement of Portland Bight’s protection, in 2005 terms, was what it had prevented rather than what it had actively accomplished. The resort development pressure that was transforming Jamaica’s north coast had not penetrated the biosphere area in anything like the same way. The biosphere designation, and the institutional framework built around it, had created a regulatory environment that made large-scale resort development impractical — not technically prohibited, but practically difficult enough that the major developers who were building on the north coast had not pursued south coast applications. The mangrove forests, the seagrass beds, the Pedro Bank fishing grounds, and the relatively intact reef systems of Jamaica’s south-central coast retained their character in 2005 in a way that the north coast reef and beach systems did not, and the governance difference was the primary explanation.

The Model’s Limits

The PBPMA’s budget constraints were a real limitation on what the biosphere model could achieve. Covering 1,800 square kilometres with the staffing and equipment that the agency’s budget allowed was a significant operational challenge: ranger patrols could not cover the entire area consistently, illegal fishing activities (particularly the use of fish pots within restricted areas) occurred in the zones where enforcement presence was thinnest, and the infrastructure investment that would have made community monitoring programmes more effective was not available. The success of Portland Bight was real but partial, achieved on a budget that was inadequate to the management task and dependent on community cooperation that was itself a product of years of relationship-building investment.

Related: Property Market Analysis | NEPA Jamaica | UNESCO Biosphere Reserves

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