Briefing
- North coast resort construction at its highest sustained level in Jamaica’s tourism history.
- Tourism sector forecasting continued growth through 2010 based on new supply coming online.
- NEPA processing highest-ever volume of coastal development applications.
- Beach access corridor compliance at systemic lows despite growing advocacy pressure.
- Coral reef monitoring showed continued degradation at resort-adjacent sites.
The end of 2007 found Jamaica’s north coast in the middle of its most transformative decade of coastal development. The resort belt between Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, which had been substantially built out over the preceding twenty years, was being extended and intensified: new all-inclusive megaresorts were going up on sites that had been undeveloped or lightly developed as recently as 2000; existing resorts were expanding their room counts and amenities; and the secondary development ecosystem of tourism facilities, commercial properties, and residential developments that supported the resort economy was filling in the gaps between the major hotels. The physical character of Jamaica’s north coast was being permanently reset, and the process was happening at a pace and scale that had no precedent in the island’s history.
The industry’s forward projections, prepared on the basis of the continued strong occupancy and rate data of 2007, anticipated that the new supply coming online over 2008 and 2009 would be absorbed by continuing growth in arrivals, and that the investment cycle would continue into the next decade. The projections were not irrational given the data available in 2007; they simply did not assign sufficient probability to the scenario that was about to materialise. The global credit crisis of 2008 was not foreseeable in its specifics from the vantage point of Jamaica’s resort development industry in late 2007, and the island’s tourism planning was not premised on it.
What Was Being Lost
The environmental monitoring organisations that were documenting Jamaica’s coastal condition in 2007 were, in their technical reports and advocacy publications, making explicit what the boom was costing. The beach narrowing at monitored sites was measured in metres per year. The coral cover decline at north coast survey transects was measured in percentage points per year. The access violations at newly opened resort properties were inventoried site by site, corridor by corridor, with approval conditions quoted and ground conditions documented. The documentation was meticulous and it was accumulating. What was lacking was the institutional and political mechanism to translate that documentation into action.
The Advocates’ Long Game
The advocates who were fighting for beach access and environmental protection in 2007 were not, in most cases, expecting to win in 2007. The political economy of the boom — the alignment of government, industry, and international investment interests around the tourism development project — was too strongly constituted against them for immediate victory. They were playing a longer game: building the documented record that would be available when the political conditions changed; cultivating the relationships with journalists, academics, and international organisations that would amplify their arguments when the moment came; developing the legal theories that might eventually produce enforceable rights. The boom that defined the coast in 2007 would end. The coast it had made would not. And the work of holding those who had made it accountable, and of building something better from what remained, would be the work of the years that followed.
Related: Property Market Analysis | Latest Jamaica News
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