Restoring Parottee’s Wetlands: A First Step in Protecting What Remains

Parottee, St Elizabeth, 3 February 2026

Government agencies and community members gathered at Parottee on World Wetlands Day to begin the physical work of restoring one of Jamaica’s most ecologically important coastal systems, damaged during Hurricane Melissa’s passage in October 2025. Debris, bulk waste and storm detritus were removed from the mangrove belt that lines the Parottee coastline, in an operation coordinated by the National Environment and Planning Agency with support from the Forestry Department, JPS Foundation, GraceKennedy Foundation, the National Water Commission, the National Solid Waste Management Authority and the IKI Foundation.

The minister responsible for water, environment and climate change described the condition of the wetlands he encountered as a difficult thing to absorb. The damage to buildings from Melissa is visible and has been widely documented. The damage to forests, wetlands and hillsides, assessed from the air, is of comparable scale but less immediately legible to those on the ground. For the Parottee mangrove system, the storm deposited debris and obstructed the hydrological flows that enable the wetland to function as both a productive ecosystem and a coastal buffer. Restoring those flows is not only an ecological priority. It is a prerequisite for the coastal stability that the community’s long-term habitation, whatever form it takes, depends on.

Why Mangroves Matter for Housing and Land

Mangroves are among the most effective natural coastal defences available to low-lying Caribbean communities. Their root systems stabilise shorelines, reduce wave energy during storm events, and prevent the kind of accelerated coastal erosion that can make settled land uninhabitable within a generation. In Parottee, where the debate about whether to rebuild or relocate is being actively contested, the condition of the mangrove belt directly affects the viability of the land on which residents’ homes stand. A healthy mangrove system does not make Parottee immune to storm surge, but it meaningfully reduces the rate at which the shoreline retreats and the frequency with which the community is flooded during weather events short of a Category 5 hurricane.

For landholders in and around Parottee, this is not an abstract environmental point. It is a practical question about whether the land they own retains long-term value and habitability, or whether coastal erosion and repeated flooding progressively render it unliveable regardless of the quality of the homes built on it. Wetland restoration is, from this perspective, a form of property protection, and its absence is a form of property risk that compounds over time.

A Beginning, Not a Resolution

The minister was clear that the World Wetlands Day clean-up was the beginning of a longer process, not a solution. Similar operations would continue throughout 2026, and the full restoration of the Parottee wetlands from Melissa’s damage will take years of sustained management. The broader question of the relationship between Parottee’s wetland system and the decisions being made about the community’s future, whether to relocate it, support it in place, or some combination of both, had not been formally integrated into the government’s redevelopment planning as of early February 2026.

That integration matters. A coastal community whose mangrove buffer is restored and maintained has a different risk profile from one that sits on an eroded and degraded shoreline. If the government’s eventual decision is that some households in Parottee can remain while others must move, the condition of the wetland system will be one of the variables that shapes the risk zoning on which those decisions should be based. Investing in wetland restoration while simultaneously planning community relocation is not contradictory. It is the kind of joined-up thinking that post-Melissa Jamaica needs to demonstrate it is capable of.