Kingston, Jamaica, 28 June 2026Jamaican municipal officials in two of the island’s most visited resort towns have publicly reaffirmed their commitment to…

Jamaica’s government reaffirms public beach access commitments in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, but the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement says the new Beach Access Policy entrenches coastal privatisation rather than reversing it.

The mayors of Montego Bay and St Ann’s Bay say public beach access and sound management go hand in hand, pointing to upgrades at several public beaches.

The Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association pushes back on critics of managed beach access, as the Government reviews a proposed coastal policy that has divided advocacy groups, investors, and the public.

A growing number of legal disputes over beach access in St Ann, Portland, St Andrew and St James are raising deeper questions about who benefits from Jamaica’s coastal development model.

From Barbuda to Jamaica, Caribbean communities are escalating their resistance to foreign-backed coastal developments, with less than 1% of Jamaica’s beaches remaining freely accessible to local residents.

When a barbed wire fence appeared across a section of Negril’s iconic Seven Mile Beach in April 2026, the viral outrage it generated was not really about the fence. It was about everything that had been building for years along Jamaica’s most celebrated shoreline.

A government proposal to encourage hotels to charge Jamaicans a fee to access hotel-controlled beaches has drawn fierce opposition from campaigners, who argue it would formalise the privatisation of the country’s foreshore and turn a legal right into a commercial transaction.

In October 2025, residents of Flanker and surrounding communities filed legal action in the St James Parish Court to protect their right of access to Providence Beach, as Sandals Montego Bay prepared to build overwater bungalows and wetland modifications that campaigners say will permanently alter the coastline.

Jamaica’s beaches have been ‘public’ since 1956 under the Beach Control Act. Yet generations of Jamaicans have been locked out of them. An explainer on what the Act says, why it has failed, and what replacing it would actually require.