At What Cost? The Jamaican Coastal Communities Caught Between Development Pressure and Rising Seas

Briefing

• Jamaica has over 700 fishing communities; most lie within 200 metres of the coast.
• Sea level rise of up to 0.5 metres projected for Jamaica by 2050 under moderate scenarios.
• Resort development compounds coastal erosion by removing natural dune and reef buffers.
• Fishing landings have declined by over 30% since 1990 amid reef degradation.
• Community land tenure insecurity leaves residents vulnerable to displacement.

The village of Priory sits on a narrow spit of land in St Ann, where the Great River mouth meets the Caribbean Sea. The road through the village runs between the river on one side and the ocean on the other, with barely 50 metres separating the two bodies of water at the narrowest point. The houses on the seaward side sit on ground that floods regularly during storm surges and, increasingly, during high tides that were not an issue a decade ago. The residents of Priory are not making plans to move. They have been there for generations. But they are watching the water.

Their situation is not unusual. Jamaica has more than 700 fishing communities, the majority of them located on low-lying coastal land that development pressure and sea level rise are steadily making more precarious. The convergence of these forces — resort expansion, climate change, reef degradation, declining fisheries, and insecure land tenure — has been the subject of academic research, government reports, and NGO advocacy for the better part of two decades. What it has not yet been is the subject of a coherent national policy response that addresses all of these pressures together, rather than each in isolation.

The Economics of the Coast

For coastal fishing communities, the economic base has been eroding for years. Jamaica’s marine fisheries landings, measured by weight and value, declined by more than 30 per cent between 1990 and 2020, driven by the degradation of the reef ecosystems that support nearshore fish populations. Jamaica’s coral reefs have experienced repeated bleaching events, the impacts of chronic nutrient pollution from coastal development and agriculture, and physical damage from hurricanes and anchoring. Live coral cover on monitored Jamaican reefs declined from an estimated 52 per cent in the 1970s to under 15 per cent in recent survey data. Fish populations dependent on those reefs have declined correspondingly.

For a fisherman in Whitehouse or Rocky Point or Bull Savannah, that trajectory means travelling further offshore, burning more fuel, and spending more time at sea to catch less fish than his father caught within sight of shore. The financial mathematics of the fishing livelihood have changed substantially, and not in the direction of sustainability. Many younger coastal residents have concluded that the fishing life their parents and grandparents lived is not available to them and have sought work in tourism, construction, or the informal economy of coastal towns.

Development Pressure and Displacement

Resort development along the north coast, while generating significant employment and foreign exchange, has imposed costs on adjacent fishing communities that are rarely measured in the headline investment figures. The construction of large hotel compounds has in several cases reduced the beach area available to fisherfolk for landing boats and drying nets, introduced security arrangements that limit informal access to the shoreline, and degraded nearshore marine environments through construction runoff and altered water circulation patterns.

The legal framework protecting coastal communities’ rights to continue traditional fishing activities and to maintain boat landing sites is weaker than advocates argue it should be. The Fisheries Division has powers to designate fishing reserves and protect landing sites, but enforcement has been inconsistent and the process for asserting community rights against private development interests is slow and resource-intensive. Communities that lack legal representation and documentary evidence of customary use are particularly vulnerable to gradual displacement as development expands along their coastline.

The Climate Dimension

Overlaid on these economic and legal pressures is the physical reality of a changing climate. Sea level rise projections for Jamaica under moderate warming scenarios suggest an increase of between 0.3 and 0.5 metres by 2050, with higher scenarios projecting up to 0.8 metres. On low-lying coasts like those of Priory, Old Harbour Bay, and parts of Portmore, even the lower end of those projections would dramatically increase the frequency and severity of flooding during storms. Insurance for coastal properties in the most vulnerable communities is already difficult to obtain and expensive where available. The informal housing stock that characterises many fishing villages — built without formal permits, on customary land without title — has no access to government disaster recovery programmes that require proof of legal ownership.

The absence of a comprehensive coastal community resilience strategy — one that addresses land tenure, livelihood diversification, managed retreat where necessary, and meaningful participation by communities in decisions about their own coastlines — is not for want of knowledge. The research exists. The policy frameworks have been sketched. What has been lacking is the institutional capacity, political will, and sustained funding needed to translate them into programmes at the scale and speed that communities on the front line of Jamaica’s coastal crisis need.

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