Briefing
- Global financial crisis effectively halted new coastal hotel investment from late 2008.
- Several partially-completed resort projects suspended mid-construction on north coast.
- Tourism arrivals fell significantly in 2009 as global travel contracted.
- Partially-built developments created new coastal access obstructions without delivering tourism value.
- Environmental advocates hoped crisis would force reckoning with boom-era coastal damage.
The global financial crisis that had crystallised in the autumn of 2008 had, by the end of 2009, restructured Jamaica’s coastal development landscape in ways that were more complex than simple cessation of activity. The projects that had been conceived in the boom years fell into several categories: those that had been completed and opened before the crisis hit; those that were far enough advanced in construction when financing dried up to be completed with the resources already committed; those that were suspended mid-construction, with cranes stationary and construction fences surrounding incomplete structures; and those that had received approvals but never commenced construction, and whose approvals were now entering the lapsing period.
The suspended mid-construction developments were a particular kind of coastal damage. They combined the physical disruption of the construction phase — the cleared vegetation, the altered coastal topography, the changed drainage patterns — with the absence of any operational use that might at least have generated revenue and employment. The construction fences that surrounded them were themselves new obstructions on the coast, blocking access through areas where public access had previously been possible, without even the arguable benefit of resort employment and tourism income that completed projects provided. They were, in a sense, the worst of both worlds: the environmental costs without the economic benefits.
Tourism’s 2009 Contraction
The contraction in Jamaica’s tourism arrivals in 2009 was severe by historical standards, reflecting both the global economic recession in the island’s principal source markets and the specific effects of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, which had depressed air travel volumes across the Caribbean in the spring and summer. The fall in arrivals was felt most sharply by the independent accommodation sector, which lacked the promotional commitments from tour operators that the large all-inclusive brands had negotiated. Small guesthouses and villas on the coast, many of them operated by communities in whose economic life they were significant, saw occupancy rates that made continued operation marginal.
The Reckoning That Didn’t Come
The environmental advocates who had hoped that the crisis would force a genuine reckoning with the boom era’s coastal damage were largely disappointed. The government’s attention in 2009 was on macroeconomic stabilisation, debt management, and the IMF engagement process; the environmental legacy of the development boom was not a priority in that context. The regulatory agencies that might have used the breathing space to enforce the access corridor requirements and environmental conditions that had been ignored during the boom did not receive the political direction or the additional resources that would have been needed to do so. The reckoning was deferred — as, in Jamaica’s coastal governance history, it repeatedly had been.
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