coastal development
The Government’s new register of free beaches is welcome, but it does not answer decades of questions about disappearing access routes, commercialisation and communities increasingly separated from their coastline.
Along Jamaica’s coastline, a quiet form of dispossession is taking place. It does not always arrive with bulldozers or eviction…
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.
From the $1.3 billion Harmony Beach Park model in Montego Bay to tenders for Fantasy, Pagee and Success beaches, Jamaica is advancing its most ambitious public beach investment programme in a generation — but questions remain about pace, equity and long-term management.
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.
Kingston, Jamaica — 15 March 2026 A new wave of coastal real estate development centred around marina living and bayfront…
The Airports Authority of Jamaica’s $9.5 billion post-Melissa infrastructure programme includes works at Norman Manley International Airport on the Palisadoes tombolo — an internationally protected coastal spit where development decisions carry outsized environmental risk.
Kingston, Jamaica — Jamaica’s North Coast housing market is undergoing a sharp revaluation, with property values in premium areas such…
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 is in the middle of its largest hotel investment cycle in a generation, with several billion dollars of new resort and residential development at various stages of planning and construction. A look at the pipeline, the projects, the players, and the environmental and access questions they raise.
Jamaica’s National Environment and Planning Agency is the gatekeeper for major coastal development approvals. But environmental advocates, researchers, and affected communities have raised persistent questions about whether its EIA process is sufficiently robust to protect the island’s coast from the cumulative impacts of the current development boom.
A new condition attached to major resort approvals in Trelawny and St Ann requires developers to provide physical public access corridors to the beach. It may be the most significant practical change in how Jamaica manages its coastline in a generation.
From Priory in St Ann to Whitehouse in Westmoreland, fishing villages and farming communities along Jamaica’s coast are facing a convergence of threats that no single policy or project has yet been designed to address together.
Jamaica’s beachfront real estate market continues to attract premium prices even as the scientific case for its long-term vulnerability strengthens. How investors, buyers, and banks are — or are not — pricing climate risk into the island’s most coveted coastal properties.
Heavy equipment has moved into the Mammee Bay watershed in St Ann, beginning preparatory earthworks for the China Harbour Engineering Company’s controversial mixed-use coastal development. Environmental groups say the process has bypassed meaningful community consultation.