NaRRA’s Hidden Clause: How Jamaica’s Reconstruction Law Could Strip Coastal Communities of Their Land

Briefing

• NaRRA Act passed in Parliament in April and May 2026.
• JaBBEM warns law exposes coastal communities to land dispossession.
• Tens of thousands of fisherfolk hold no formal land title.
• Critics say structural flaws leave no recognition or compensation route.
• Post-Melissa rebuilding context creates urgency and political complexity.

When Jamaica’s House of Representatives passed the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority Act 2026 on 28 April, the legislation was framed primarily as a response to the devastation left by Hurricane Melissa. The storm, which had struck western Jamaica as a historic Category 5 in October 2025, caused an estimated USD 8.8 billion in damages — equivalent to approximately 56 per cent of Jamaica’s GDP. The case for a central, coordinating reconstruction body was hard to argue against.

The Senate passed the Act on 8 May 2026. What followed was not celebration from coastal communities, but alarm. The Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement published a detailed analysis of the legislation’s implications for informal landholders, and its conclusion was unambiguous. According to JaBBEM, the Act contains structural flaws that will expose tens of thousands of informal coastal landholders, fisherfolk, hurricane survivors, and generational beach-community residents to permanent land dispossession — without recognition, compensation, or legal remedy.

The Communities at Risk

The scale of what is at stake is best understood through the geography of Jamaica’s coastal settlements. Communities like New Hope, Black River, Alligator Pond, Lucea, Rocky Point, Old Harbour Bay, Falmouth, Manchioneal, Little Bay, St Ann’s Bay, Port Maria, and Belmont — among many others — are home to generations of fisherfolk and their families who have lived on and worked coastal land for decades, in many cases for over a century. Very few hold registered titles. Their claims rest instead on the kind of informal tenure that has historically been recognised through the courts under Jamaica’s Prescription Act, through established usage patterns, and through the simple fact of uncontested possession over time.

That form of informal tenure is legally precarious in the best of circumstances. In the context of a reconstruction authority with broad powers over land use and development approvals in affected areas, it becomes more precarious still. JaBBEM’s analysis argues that the NaRRA Act does not include adequate provisions to identify, document, or protect informal coastal land rights during the reconstruction process — meaning that families who lost structures to Hurricane Melissa could find themselves displaced not by the storm, but by the reconstruction that follows it.

What the Act Does

The Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development has presented NaRRA as a vehicle for eliminating the bureaucratic fragmentation that slows post-disaster rebuilding in Jamaica. The authority is designed to coordinate across government agencies, reduce project delays, and serve as the central body through which reconstruction resources — both domestic and international — are channelled. The government has spoken explicitly about the potential for NaRRA to catalyse broader real estate and infrastructure development as part of the rebuilding effort.

That framing is not entirely separable from the concern. When a reconstruction authority is designed both to accelerate rebuilding and to “supercharge” the real estate sector, the question of whose rebuilding and whose real estate interests are being served becomes a legitimate one. Communities without formal title have no obvious mechanism within the NaRRA framework to assert their stake in the land on which they live, particularly where that land has development value.

The Jamaica Observer reported that the Act underwent twenty amendments before final passage — an indication of the intensity of scrutiny it received. Whether those amendments addressed the specific concerns raised by JaBBEM about coastal land rights has not been confirmed by the organisation.

A History That Informs the Fear

JaBBEM’s concern is not abstract. It is grounded in a pattern that runs through Jamaica’s post-independence development history: coastal land occupied by low-income communities has repeatedly been identified for tourism development, and the legal protections available to those communities have repeatedly proved inadequate. The Beach Control Act, still technically in force despite its age, was never designed to protect residential or fishing tenure. Planning frameworks have historically prioritised investment over existing community use. Court remedies exist in principle but are inaccessible in practice for most families operating without legal representation or formal documentation.

Hurricane Melissa created an additional layer of vulnerability. Families who lost their physical structures to the storm lost with them the most tangible evidence of their presence on the land. Rebuilding without formal title documentation is difficult under any framework; rebuilding in the context of a reconstruction authority with broad land powers, in areas that have commercial development potential, is a scenario in which informal tenure holders are structurally disadvantaged.

What Campaigners Are Calling For

JaBBEM has called for the NaRRA framework to be amended to include explicit protections for informal coastal tenure, including a requirement that reconstruction plans in affected areas document and recognise existing land use before any new development approvals are issued. The organisation has also called for the creation of a coastal land rights registry that would give informal holders a formal mechanism to record their claims.

These calls have not yet been formally incorporated into the Act or into the regulations that will govern NaRRA’s operations. The urgency of post-Melissa reconstruction has created political pressure to move quickly, and measures that add complexity to the approval process — even protective ones — face resistance from those who argue that speed is itself a form of justice for displaced communities.

The tension is real. The same communities that JaBBEM is seeking to protect from land dispossession are among those most desperately in need of the homes and infrastructure that NaRRA is intended to deliver. How the authority navigates that tension — whether it rebuilds existing communities in place or treats the post-Melissa landscape as a development opportunity — will say a great deal about the values embedded in Jamaica’s reconstruction framework, and about who the coast is ultimately for.

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