Last Season of the PNP Government: Q1 2016’s Development Approvals, Winnifred Beach Defence, and an Election That Would Change Everything

Briefing

• Jamaica held a general election on February 25, 2016; the JLP won by one parliamentary seat.
• Tourism arrivals for 2015 were confirmed at 2.12 million stopover visitors, a record at the time.
• A developer submitted plans for a commercial operation at Winnifred Beach; community opposition was immediate.
• The outgoing government approved two major coastal hotel developments in its final weeks.
• C-CAM submitted a five-year management plan for Portland Bight Protected Area.

The general election of February 25, 2016 was called by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller while Jamaica’s tourism sector was in the middle of reporting its best-ever calendar year. The 2015 figures — 2.12 million stopover arrivals, a record — were the backdrop to an election in which the ruling PNP’s economic management was at the centre of the debate. The JLP’s one-seat victory was narrow enough that the new government’s mandate was immediately contested, but it was sufficient to change the direction of Jamaica’s coastal policy.

In the final weeks before the election, the outgoing PNP government approved two coastal hotel developments that had been working through the regulatory pipeline for months. The approvals were procedurally straightforward — the projects met the criteria that the system required — but their timing, in the lame-duck period between the election call and the change of power, was noted by advocates who had been monitoring both projects’ progress.

Winnifred Beach Again

A planning application proposing a commercial operation at Winnifred Beach was submitted in January 2016, triggering the community response that had become practised through years of defending the same site. The Portland community’s network mobilised quickly: residents, advocacy groups, environmental organisations, and local politicians who understood the electoral arithmetic of opposing a popular community beach all contributed to the opposition. The application attracted more sustained public attention than previous similar proposals, partly because the political environment of an election campaign made coastal access — and the specific symbolism of a community’s free beach — a more salient issue than it might be at other times.

Portland Bight’s Five-Year Plan

The Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation submitted its updated five-year management plan for the Portland Bight Protected Area in Q1 2016. The plan set out objectives for reef monitoring, mangrove protection, fisheries management, and community engagement over the coming five years, and identified the resource requirements — staff, equipment, operating funds — that implementing the plan would require. The gap between the plan’s resource requirements and the funding that had historically been available to C-CAM was substantial, and the plan was candid about the constraints this imposed on what could realistically be achieved. It was a model of transparent planning; what it needed was a model of adequately resourced implementation.

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