- Professor Carol Archer gave the lecture at the 33rd Churches Emancipation Event at Webster Memorial Church
- She said Hurricane Melissa damaged more than 120,000 buildings
- About 40 per cent of Jamaica’s land is still unregistered, she said
- She called on the church, the state and communities to reform land laws and building practice
At the 33rd Churches Emancipation Event, held at Webster Memorial Church on July 26, 2026, the main lecture was about land, buildings and disasters rather than theology. Carol Archer, a professor of urban planning and public policy at UTech, linked Hurricane Melissa to what she called the unfinished business of emancipation. The Gleaner published an excerpt on August 3.
“Disasters in Jamaica are not just acts of nature; they are shaped by human choices,” Archer said, pointing to mangrove removal, poor adherence to building codes and weak urban planning. Melissa damaged more than 120,000 buildings and severely affected nearly 280,000 people, she said, hitting hardest in marginalised communities, many of them informal settlements without secure tenure or resilient infrastructure. Female-headed households faced the greatest challenges in recovery.
She warned that traditional knowledge that once guided Jamaican building has given way to foreign-inspired high-rises and materials ill-suited to the climate, that many new buildings do not meet the standards needed to withstand major storms, and that local authorities lack training on new building codes. After emancipation, she said, freed Africans were denied fertile land, pushed on to marginal plots and burdened with taxes and legal obstacles. “Today, about 40 per cent of land in Jamaica remains unregistered, perpetuating insecurity and vulnerability,” she said, calling for equitable access to titled land and sustainable land management.
Archer described the church as a historic sanctuary and centre for organising, but said it must adapt by using technology, improving public education on disaster preparedness and working more closely with local authorities. She called for reform of outdated land laws and cities designed for Jamaica’s natural realities, quoting Wangari Maathai’s three pillars of a stable society.
The lecture puts figures to issues this site returns to often. Unregistered land is harder to borrow against and easier to lose, and, as Archer noted, informal settlements without secure tenure or resilient buildings suffered most in Melissa. For Jamaican homeowners, returning residents and diaspora buyers, the practical takeaways are to get title in order, to build to code with materials suited to the climate, and to treat these steps as protection, not paperwork. Archer’s call for churches to lead public education on disaster preparedness makes congregations a natural place to start.
Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com
