Briefing
- Two new north coast hotel developments held groundbreaking ceremonies in the second quarter.
- Commercial developers submitted a new application involving land adjacent to Winnifred Beach.
- Opposition MPs questioned Tourism Minister in parliament about beach access enforcement.
- Caribbean sargassum monitoring recorded a significant early-season build-up in the Atlantic.
- NEPA approved an amendment to a coastal EIA that reduced required buffer zones.
The groundbreaking season of 2018 on Jamaica’s north coast followed a pattern that had become familiar. A cleared site, some earth-moving equipment, a group of suited officials with hard hats, and language about jobs and investment that framed the transformation of a piece of coast into a resort as an act of national service. The economic argument was not wrong: hotel construction did employ Jamaicans, completed resorts did generate foreign exchange, and the island’s debt-to-GDP ratio made foreign exchange a genuine national priority.
What the groundbreaking ceremonies never included was a corresponding moment for the communities whose relationship with the coast those developments were altering. The fisher who had pulled his boat up on the beach at the development site for thirty years did not get a hard hat and a photograph. The family whose route to the sea passed through land that was now under construction hoarding did not receive a community benefit agreement or a promise of maintained access. The transaction was between the developer, the planning authority, and the government. Communities adjacent to the site were stakeholders in the process only to the degree that the process chose to include them, which was typically limited.
Parliament and the Beach Control Act
In June 2018, opposition members of parliament used a question time exchange to press the Tourism Minister on the government’s position regarding beach access enforcement. The exchange, reported in Hansard, produced an acknowledgement that the Beach Control Act’s provisions were limited in their practical application to the problem of resort-controlled beach access and that the government was considering how existing statutory tools might be better applied. The acknowledgement was notable for its candour; what it lacked was any commitment to a timeline or mechanism for change. The act remained as it was in 1956. The enforcement remained as limited as it had been throughout the decade. The communities waiting for a different answer to the question of who controlled Jamaica’s coast were still waiting.
Winnifred Again
A planning application involving commercial development on land adjacent to Winnifred Beach was submitted in Q2 2018, triggering another round of community organising and advocacy coalition activity. The application was the latest in a series of attempts to commercialise the area around Portland’s most famous free beach, each of which had been resisted and most of which had ultimately been frustrated. The community’s capacity to mobilise opposition was well-established; its ability to prevent any application being submitted, or to secure legal protection for the beach’s free character without undertaking this resistance every time a developer chose to test it, was the structural gap that no amount of community organisation could permanently close.
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