Portland Bight and the Protected Area Paradox: Q1 2002

Briefing

• Portland Bight Protected Area three years old but management capacity still developing.
• Fishing communities inside the PA reported unclear rules on permitted activities.
• Development pressure at the protected area’s boundaries growing in Q1 2002.
• Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation working to establish management protocols.
• International funding for PA management crucial but uncertain beyond short-term grants.

The Portland Bight Protected Area, gazetted in 1999, covered the largest remaining mangrove system in Jamaica and the coastal waters of Portland Bight, encompassing a mosaic of mangrove forests, seagrass beds, and coral reef systems that supported both significant biodiversity and the livelihoods of fishing communities spread across multiple south coast parishes. By Q1 2002, the protected area was three years into its designated existence, and the gap between what the designation implied and what was happening on the ground was becoming apparent.

The Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation had been established to manage the Portland Bight PA, but management of a protected area of this scale — covering 187,000 acres of terrestrial and marine environment — required financial and institutional capacity that a relatively new foundation with grant-dependent funding could not easily sustain. The rules governing what was and was not permitted within the PA were understood by managers but were inconsistently communicated to the fishing communities whose traditional practices occurred within the protected area’s boundaries, creating friction and compliance problems that a more adequately resourced management regime could have addressed through community engagement.

The Boundary Pressure Problem

The development pressure at Portland Bight’s boundaries was a different kind of problem. The PA designation protected the core area but did not extend to the hinterland catchments that drained into the protected coastal environment; agricultural and other activities in these catchments continued to generate runoff that affected water quality within the PA. Developments proposed at the margins of the designated area raised boundary interpretation questions that the management framework had not fully anticipated. The fundamental design challenge — that protected area boundaries could not be drawn to include all the landscape influences that shaped the protected ecosystem — was present at Portland Bight in classic form.

The National Environment and Planning Agency‘s role in supporting the Portland Bight PA management was significant, and the agency was working with the Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation on the management plan development that would give the PA’s protective designations operational meaning. But the timeline for converting designation into effective management was proving longer than the designation process itself, a pattern that was common to protected areas globally but was particularly consequential in Jamaica given the development pressure the coastal zone was under.

Related: Property Market Analysis | NEPA Jamaica

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