Briefing
- Advocacy coalition conducted and published first systematic north coast access corridor survey.
- Survey found majority of surveyed properties non-compliant with corridor conditions.
- Government response disputed methodology; advocates challenged government to conduct its own audit.
- Sand mining complaints from communities in Hanover and St Elizabeth compiled for first time.
- New NEPA coastal development guidelines published; advocates called them inadequate.
The access corridor survey that a coalition of Jamaican civil society organisations conducted and published in the summer of 2004 was methodologically straightforward: surveyors visited resort properties that had been granted development approvals requiring beach access corridors, attempted to use those corridors, and documented what they found. Where corridors were present and accessible, they were documented as compliant. Where they were absent, blocked, unmarked, or impassable, they were documented as non-compliant. The survey covered a sample of properties across the north coast parishes from Westmoreland to St Mary, and its findings were compiled into a report that named specific properties and described specific compliance conditions.
The government’s response to the survey was to dispute its methodology rather than its findings. The tourism ministry argued that the survey’s compliance criteria were too strict, that negotiations were ongoing with named non-compliant properties, and that the appropriate forum for assessing compliance was the ministry’s own inspection process rather than a civil society survey. The advocates’ response was to invite the ministry to conduct its own audit using its own criteria and publish the results. The ministry did not accept the invitation at that point, but the public nature of the exchange — specific properties named, specific compliance failures documented, government response on the public record — created an accountability context that had not previously existed.
The NEPA Guidelines
NEPA‘s 2004 revised coastal development guidelines represented a genuine policy improvement over what had preceded them. They were more specific about setback requirements, more explicit about the conditions under which coastal vegetation clearance would be approved, and more detailed about the environmental management plan requirements that development applications needed to address. Advocates who called them inadequate were not disputing their technical content so much as their enforcement — the argument that guidelines whose predecessors had not been consistently enforced would fare better was not established, and without an improved enforcement architecture, better guidelines were better intentions rather than better outcomes.
Sand Mining Complaints
The first systematic compilation of sand mining complaints from coastal communities in Hanover and St Elizabeth provided an aggregated picture of a practice that was widely known but poorly documented at the community level. The complaints described consistent patterns: extraction from beach areas at night; the use of unlicensed vehicles and equipment; the involvement of local intermediaries who arranged the extraction and the sale of the sand to construction projects; and the absence of any regulatory presence that might deter the activity. The compilation was forwarded to the mining ministry and to NEPA, initiating the slow bureaucratic process that would eventually produce the 2012 audit response to what was, in 2004, already an established problem.
Related: Property Market Analysis | NEPA Jamaica
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