Environmental Protection

The spring of 2004 saw Jamaica’s scientists making the economic argument for reef conservation with a new urgency: not just that reefs were ecologically valuable, which no one disputed, but that their degradation was a direct economic cost to the tourism industry that depended on them. The argument was strategically targeted at the stakeholders whose decisions were most directly responsible for the degradation.

As 2003 closed, Jamaica’s coastal development planning system was visibly straining under the pressure of an expanded application load. The backlog of pending environmental impact assessments had grown substantially during the year.

The first quarter of 2003 brought renewed focus on the role of mangrove forests in coastal protection, as several resort development applications in the pre-approval phase proposed construction on or adjacent to mangrove systems.

The closing months of 2002 brought the long-running problem of illegal sand mining to particular prominence. Reports from multiple parishes described continued extraction of beach sand for construction, with enforcement proving unable to keep pace with the economic incentive driving the activity.

The first quarter of 2002 saw the Portland Bight Protected Area, designated in 1999, confronting the fundamental challenge facing Jamaica’s marine protected areas: designation on paper had not been matched by management capacity on the water.

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.

By mid-2001, the National Environment and Planning Agency had been in full operation for over a year, and the first patterns of its approvals practice were becoming discernible. The agency was processing a substantially larger volume of coastal development applications than its predecessor bodies had handled.

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.

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.

The opening quarter of 2000 offered a moment for stock-taking on Jamaica’s coastal development trajectory. The decade of the 1990s had transformed the north coast’s resort landscape; the institutional framework that would manage the next decade was still taking shape.

The final quarter of 1999 saw the gazettal of the Portland Bight Protected Area, a designation that represented Jamaica’s most significant coastal conservation commitment of the decade. The 187,000-acre protected area encompassed the island’s largest mangrove system and extensive coastal wetlands.

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.

By the summer of 1998, the all-inclusive resort model had become so dominant on Jamaica’s north coast that a significant proportion of the island’s premium beach frontage was now functionally inaccessible to Jamaicans who were not guests at the properties controlling it.

Seven years after the Natural Resources Conservation Authority established Jamaica’s environmental impact assessment process in 1991, the second quarter of 1998 offered a moment to assess how the EIA system was performing in its most demanding application: coastal resort development.

The first quarter of 1997 saw concerted calls for a review and modernisation of the Beach Control Act, the 1956 legislation that remained the primary statutory instrument governing public access to Jamaica’s beaches. Advocates argued the Act was inadequate for the development pressures of the 1990s.