coral reef Jamaica

The third quarter of 2000 saw the formal establishment of the National Environment and Planning Agency, the institutional merger that brought together Jamaica’s environmental assessment and land use planning functions. For coastal advocates, the new agency represented both an opportunity and an uncertainty.

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 first quarter of 1999 opened in the shadow of the catastrophic 1998 coral bleaching event. The full extent of coral mortality along Jamaica’s reef systems was being assessed, and the picture emerging from survey work was deeply concerning.

The fourth quarter of 1998 closed a year that would become a watershed in Jamaica’s reef history: the mass coral bleaching event driven by elevated sea surface temperatures had left large swathes of the island’s reef system bleached or dying, and the full extent of damage was still being assessed.

Four years after Jamaica’s environmental impact assessment process came into operation under the Natural Resources Conservation Authority, the third quarter of 1995 offered a moment to assess how the EIA system was functioning for coastal resort applications.