JaBBEM Calls for Halt to CHEC Mammee Bay Development Over Watershed Destruction Risk

Briefing

• JaBBEM issues public demand to halt CHEC Mammee Bay development in August 2024.
• Campaign cites flawed EIA, reef destruction risk, and displaced community access.
• China Harbour Engineering Company has Chinese state backing; project enjoys government support.
• Petition gains over 20,000 signatures within two weeks of publication.
• NEPA ordered to reconsider specific aspects of the environmental permit.

On a Tuesday morning in August 2024, JaBBEM — the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement — published an open letter to the government of Jamaica, to NEPA, and to the public. The letter called for an immediate halt to preparatory works at the China Harbour Engineering Company’s Mammee Bay development site, pending a full independent review of the project’s environmental impact assessment. The letter was accompanied by technical analysis commissioned by JaBBEM and by a public petition that, within two weeks, had gathered more than 20,000 signatures. It was, by the standards of Jamaican environmental advocacy, an unusually well-organised and well-resourced campaign.

The Mammee Bay site is located on the north coast of Jamaica in St Ann, in a shallow bay with a fringing reef system that the Reef Check programme had assessed as relatively intact compared to many heavily developed sections of the north coast. JaBBEM’s technical analysis argued that the EIA conducted for the development had not adequately assessed the cumulative impact of construction sediment runoff on that reef. The earthworks proposed for the site, which covered more than 100 hectares of a coastal watershed, would during heavy rainfall events generate turbid runoff that would smother reef organisms and suppress coral recruitment. The EIA had, advocates argued, treated the reef as a background condition rather than a primary ecological asset requiring specific protection measures.

The Beach Access Dimension

The second strand of JaBBEM’s objection was about community beach access. The Mammee Bay waterfront had historically served surrounding communities as an informal public beach. Residents from Priory, Mammee Bay village, and other nearby communities had used it for generations for swimming, fishing boat access, and recreational use. The development’s approved plans showed the beach within the resort compound, with access to it subject to the hotel’s management arrangements rather than free public access.

This was, in the context of Jamaica’s ongoing beach access debate, a live illustration of the general problem. A private development was absorbing a community beach. The planning process had not required the developer to provide equivalent or compensatory public access. The legal requirement under the Beach Control Act for public foreshore access had not been translated into a practical condition in the approval. JaBBEM’s campaign made the Mammee Bay case a test of whether the existing law — or the emerging policy framework — could prevent this outcome, or whether it would, as in many previous cases, prove insufficient.

The Regulatory Response

NEPA’s response to the campaign was cautious. The agency confirmed that it was reviewing the submissions made by JaBBEM and other objectors, and indicated that certain aspects of the environmental permit might be subject to reconsideration. A full suspension of works was not ordered. The development’s permit remained in force while the review process continued, and initial site preparation activities proceeded through the remainder of 2024 and into early 2025.

For advocates, the NEPA response was emblematic of a wider systemic problem. The EIA and permit system, as it operated in practice, placed the burden of identifying and demonstrating flaws on objectors rather than on developers. Mounting a technically credible challenge required resources that community groups and NGOs rarely had in abundance, while the developer — in this case a Chinese state enterprise with global resources — had access to legal and technical support of a different order entirely. The Mammee Bay campaign was better resourced than most. Whether it would be well enough resourced to produce a materially different outcome was a question that events in 2025 would begin to answer.

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