Coastal communities

The third quarter of 2001 ended with an event that would reshape global tourism: the September 11 attacks in the United States. For Jamaica, whose tourism industry was overwhelmingly dependent on American arrivals, the immediate effect was a sharp drop in bookings and arrivals that continued into the autumn.

The final quarter of 2000 found Negril’s Seven Mile Beach under discussion as a test case for whether Jamaica’s coastal management framework could handle the accumulated pressures it faced. The beach was narrowing; the reef was degraded; the development density had exceeded what original planning envisioned.

Two years after the catastrophic 1998 coral bleaching event, the second quarter of 2000 saw Jamaica’s scientific community publishing assessments of reef recovery trajectories. The picture was mixed: some sites showed encouraging signs of coral recruitment; others showed continuing decline.

Hurricane Lenny, which struck the Caribbean in November 1999 with the unusual characteristic of tracking from west to east, caused significant coastal damage across several Caribbean islands and generated new thinking about coastal vulnerability and development setbacks in the region.

The second quarter of 1999 saw a coalition of environmental and community organisations float a proposal for a Coastal Access Charter — a non-statutory framework of principles and commitments that would guide development decisions affecting public beach access.

The first quarter of 1998 saw the publication of Jamaica’s first comprehensive coastal zone management policy framework, developed with international support. The framework was intended to provide the overarching policy architecture within which specific coastal management decisions would be made.

The final quarter of 1997 brought accumulating evidence that Negril’s Seven Mile Beach was narrowing measurably. Systematic measurements taken at survey stations along the beach over several years were showing a clear trend of reduced beach width that researchers attributed to multiple converging causes.

The second quarter of 1997 saw eco-tourism gaining currency in Jamaica’s tourism policy discussions as an alternative development model that could generate economic value from coastal and natural resources while reducing the physical pressure that mass resort development imposed.

The fourth quarter of 1996 brought Jamaica’s Ramsar Convention obligations into focus as development proposals in wetland areas raised questions about whether the country was meeting its international commitments to protect wetlands of international significance.