eco-tourism
Established in the late 17th century and named after the river characterized by its dark hue from decomposing vegetation, Black…
Jamaica is often imagined through images of turquoise waters, golden beaches, and the rhythm of reggae drifting through warm air.…
UNESCO listing in 2015 transformed Blue Mountains into a global heritage destination. Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee’s global brand drives highland…
The summer of 2013 brought a comprehensive survey of Jamaica’s coral reef systems whose findings were both more nuanced and more troubling than either the reef’s advocates or its critics had anticipated. Recovery was occurring on some reefs. But the conditions required for that recovery to be durable were not present everywhere, and the threats that had driven decades of decline had not been removed.
The summer of 2010 produced sea surface temperatures around Jamaica that exceeded the thermal tolerance of the island’s coral reefs for an extended period, triggering a bleaching event that was, at the time, the most severe recorded for Jamaican reefs in over a decade. The event was a preview of the conditions that climate scientists had been projecting would become more frequent as ocean temperatures rose.
As the north coast resort boom accelerated in early 2005, the Portland Bight Protected Area on Jamaica’s south-central coast offered a striking counterpoint: a large coastal and marine protected area where the governance frameworks that were failing spectacularly on the north coast had, imperfectly but meaningfully, produced a different outcome.
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.