Gates Going Up: The Quarter When Little Dunn’s River Was Enclosed, Tourism Hit a New Record, and Beach Access Reached a Breaking Point

Briefing

• Jamaica’s tourism sector reported 2.68 million stopover arrivals for 2019, a new record.
• Little Dunn’s River in St Ann was commercially enclosed and gated in the fourth quarter.
• JaBBEM held community forums and announced plans to pursue legal action at contested sites.
• North coast resort construction at multiple sites continued through the year-end season.
• Environmental advocates submitted concerns about EIA quality for coastal development applications.

By the end of 2019, Jamaica’s tourism industry was in its finest shape in the island’s history. The Jamaica Tourist Board reported 2.68 million stopover visitors for the year — a figure that represented a record for a sector that had taken decades of sustained investment to build. Room occupancies on the north coast were running at levels that made every proposal for new resort capacity seem not just viable but necessary. The hotels were full. The industry was confident.

In the same quarter, at a site a few kilometres from some of those hotels, an act was taking place that advocates would spend the following years in court contesting. Little Dunn’s River — a beach and river mouth in St Ann that had been freely accessible to the local community for as long as anyone could document — was fenced, gated, and converted to a commercial operation. Visitors who had previously arrived at the site without charge were now presented with an entry fee. The community that had used the beach for generations found its access governed by commercial terms it had not agreed to and had no voice in setting.

JaBBEM Escalates

The Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement had been building its campaign through 2019, using a combination of social media, community forums, and media coverage to amplify the stories of communities locked off beaches they had historically used. The enclosure of Little Dunn’s River in Q4 2019 gave the movement a new focal point and a new specific grievance to build a legal case around. Dr Devon Taylor and JaBBEM’s legal team began the process of gathering evidence of the beach’s historical use — witness statements, photographs, local documentation — that would form the foundation of a prescription rights claim under the 1882 Prescription Act.

The movement’s theory had not yet been tested in court at the end of 2019, but it was increasingly well-articulated, well-publicised, and supported by a community of advocates, lawyers, and ordinary Jamaicans who had their own experiences of arriving at a beach they remembered as open and finding it closed. The political environment was shifting: opposition politicians were beginning to ask questions in parliament about beach access, and government ministers who had previously treated the issue as peripheral were finding themselves required to have answers.

The Development Pipeline

The year ended with a substantial coastal development pipeline in various stages of approval and construction. The Mammee Bay project in St Ann, Harmony Cove in Trelawny, and multiple smaller resort expansions along the north coast were all advancing through planning and regulatory processes. The Jamaica Tourist Board‘s investment promotion work was generating interest from international hotel brands seeking to add Jamaica product to their portfolios. The economic case for continued coastal development investment was compelling, and the institutional machinery that had always accommodated it was functioning as designed.

What was new, as 2019 closed, was the strength and specificity of the case against the existing approach. JaBBEM’s legal theory gave the beach access argument a form that courts could engage with rather than simply note and defer. The record tourism numbers that made coastal development seem obviously correct were also the evidence that the current model had produced an industry whose benefits were unequally distributed and whose physical footprint was expanding at the expense of communities that had not been consulted about the deal.

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