{"id":736447,"date":"2026-06-14T15:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T15:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/736447\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T15:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T15:52:09","slug":"jamaicas-beach-access-crisis-we-shouldnt-be-forced-to-fight-for-what-is-already-ours-jamaica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/736447\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamaica\u2019s beach access crisis: \u2018We shouldn\u2019t be forced to fight for what is already ours\u2019 | Jamaica"},"content":{"rendered":"

Devon Taylor remembers when the Mammee Bay shoreline in St Ann, Jamaica<\/a>, was filled with children frolicking in the ocean after school, fishers haggling with locals over the price of their daily catch and craft vendors carving souvenirs under almond trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up on Mammee Bay,\u201d Taylor says. He recalls fetching seawater in bottles for his grandmother when she was no longer able to go to the beach, learning to swim in the shallows, and watching generations of fishers cast their nets. \u201cThat beach raised us. It fed us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Mammee Bay is ground zero in his war against a multibillion-dollar all-inclusive tourism model that the government says is the backbone of the country\u2019s economy, but that he and other activists argue is \u201cplantation tourism\u201d, designed to benefit rich visitors and the elite and disadvantage most Jamaicans.<\/p>\n

In 2019, locals were locked out of the beach by a fence and armed state and private security guards hired by investors building all-inclusive luxury hotels, Taylor says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn protest, the community ripped down the fence and reoccupied the beach, but because of the restrictions on movement in Covid, you could not be there at certain times, and when they came back they met concrete walls,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

This escalated into a \u201cviolent displacement\u201d, says Taylor, the founder of the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (Jabbem). \u201cGunshots were fired to disperse the protest.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the people, it was a fight for survival, Taylor adds. \u201cWhen you cut us off from the sea \u2026 you are actually setting us up to starve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mammee Bay and Little Dunn\u2019s River in the northern parish of St Ann, the Blue Lagoon in the north-east, Bob Marley beach in St Andrews and Flankers\/Providence beach in Montego Bay are the subject of five court cases, with the first trial scheduled for later this month.<\/p>\n

Each beach has its own story, Taylor says, but what they all have in common is communities that are being denied access to spaces that have social, economical and even spiritual significance, because successive governments have failed to address inequities inherited from colonial times when beaches and other land were owned by the British monarch.<\/p>\n

\u2018We call it plantation tourism\u2019, campaigners at the Blue Lagoon: Wilbourn Carr, Colin Beckford, Roseroy Gay, Leroy Patterson, Roy Williams, Donald Robinson. Photograph: Destinee Condison\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Still referred to as \u201ccrown land\u201d, these were handed over to the Jamaican state when the country gained its independence in 1962, but much of the legal systems managing these lands, including the 1956 Beach Control Act, were retained.<\/p>\n

The law, which gave the state ownership of the island\u2019s foreshore and seabed, meaning anyone wanting to use or develop on the beach needed government permission, is at the core of the all-inclusive tourism model that Taylor views as discriminatory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call it plantation tourism because it has all the characteristics of a plantation \u2013 exploitation of a poorly treated labour force, and wealth that either does not stay in our country or is only in the hands of the elite.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the parish of Portland, campaigners say they were misled and betrayed by local authorities who closed the Blue Lagoon in 2022 with a promise to reopen in 90 days with improved facilities and more opportunities for local guides and vendors.<\/p>\n

They claim it was later discovered that the intention was to permanently close public access roads to the lagoon to facilitate the building of private villas, which they describe as an infringement on their rights.<\/p>\n

locator<\/a><\/p>\n

The 55-metre-deep (180ft) lagoon, hugged by lush, green vegetation and renowned for its mystical, fluid colour palette that is turquoise, sapphire or azure depending on how the sun hits it, is a treasure that they refuse to surrender.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor generations this beach has sustained all the communities around it,\u201d says Colin Beckford, the president of the Blue Lagoon Alliance.<\/p>\n

Wilbourn Carr, 73, who has been going to the lagoon to swim since he was 14, says: \u201cThis space is not just for recreation, food and vending, it is also where our elderly come for the healing properties of the mineral spring from the mountain that feeds the lagoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Flankers, campaigners are fighting for the beach, which has been neglected by the state for decades, to be restored. Photograph: Destinee Condison\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

More than 100 miles away in Flankers, fellow campaigners have filed an injunction to block developers from building in the sea and are fighting for the beach, which has been neglected by the state for decades, to be restored.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur foreparents shed blood for this land. We shouldn\u2019t be forced to fight for what is already ours,\u201d says one campaigner, Olando Brown. \u201cBeing a Rastafarian, I meditate a lot, and this provides a space for me to do that. Why take away this beautiful gem from the people instead of trying to develop it with us?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fisher folk need this space,\u201d says Jabbem\u2019s community coordinator for western Jamaica, Monique Christie, adding that it is important for local families who cannot afford expensive holidays. \u201cYou can pack some food, freeze some juice, walk to the beach and enjoy some of the natural resources of your country without it being a massive expense for the family.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Little Dunn\u2019s River, Jabbem\u2019s director of community engagement, Damion Coombs, echoes Taylor\u2019s concerns. \u201cWe are generating the revenue but we\u2019re not gaining from it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u2018An anti-colonial fighter\u2019 \u2026 Devon Taylor at Portland. Photograph: supplied<\/p>\n

Speaking above the acoustic rush of the cascading waterfall, he compares the justification that beach access protects the tourism industry from crime to the colonial logic of \u201ckeeping out the savages\u201d, with the local people considered unworthy of enjoying their coastlines.<\/p>\n

Matthew Samuda, Jamaica\u2019s minister of environment and climate change, said his government was committed to ensuring \u201cthat its natural assets also benefit its citizens\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s why we built the Harmony beach park in Montego Bay. It\u2019s why we will build the Success beach park on the eastern side of St James,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He added that recent approvals for new development, \u201cespecially where public land was involved in the development, have insisted that developers carve out what you call corridors to the sea\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jamaica\u2019s geography made beach access a complex issue, Samuda said. \u201cJamaica is not blessed quite with a total surrounding of our coastline by beach. We have a lot of rocky areas \u2026 [and] areas that are inaccessible because of wetlands and biodiversity reserves that you simply can\u2019t get through to get to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Generating revenue but not gaining from it\u2019, waterfalls in Little Dunn\u2019s River. Photograph: Destinee Condison\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

In March, the prime minister, Andrew Holness, proposed a beach access and management policy<\/a>, which promises to modernise the legislation and increase access<\/a>. Campaigners say the policy still allows unacceptable restrictions.<\/p>\n

Coombs says: \u201cWe are still talking about \u2018qualified rights\u2019, meaning somebody can decide if you come in \u2013 and maybe charge a fee. What we are fighting for is free, legal, unfettered, forever rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jabbem is also concerned that the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (Narra) Act, passed in March to fast\u2011track the country\u2019s post\u2011Hurricane Melissa rebuilding, will have a negative impact on current and future court cases.<\/p>\n

Campaigners say the act is designed to weaken the older Prescription Act<\/a>, which they say protects the legal right to land or pathways that have been continuously used as a public access route for at least 20 years.<\/p>\n

Taylor says Narra lacks checks and balances and concentrates power in the office of the prime minister.<\/p>\n

But Samuda defended the act, insisting that it facilitated the \u201clarge-scale, urgent procurement \u2026 required to build in resilience before the next storm\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no weakening of oversight,\u201d he said. \u201cYou still have to come to the parliament. You still require the necessary permits. What it does is it guarantees a timely response to delivery of projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jabbem has stressed it is not partisan and that administrations from both the ruling Jamaica Labour party and the opposition People\u2019s National party (PNP) created the beach access crisis. \u201cThe government\u2019s power \u2026 also comes from the opposition\u2019s complicity when they formed the government,\u201d Coombs says.<\/p>\n

The shadow environment minister, Omar Newell, said he recognised the \u201csignificant value\u201d of the beaches to local communities and his party was listening to the concerns of beach access activists. \u201cYes, successive administrations have presided over the privatisation of our beaches. It needs to stop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Taylor, an immunologist who has a PhD in biochemistry, says the battle for beach access has made him an \u201canti-colonial fighter\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a Rastafarian and a son of Jamaica,\u201d he says, \u201cand so this movement has driven me to become an environmental defender, but also an anti-colonial fighter, fighting against the vestiges of colonialism and the colonial logic of land dispossession, exploitation of people and the degradation of the natural environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Guardian\u2019s connections to enslavement: can an institution atone for its history?<\/p>\n

On Thursday 2 July, join Maya Wolfe-Robinson, Ebony Riddell Bamber, Prof Verene A Shepherd and Ahmad Ward in this free event<\/a> for a wide-ranging discussion on the Guardian\u2019s Legacies of Enslavement programme. Book tickets here<\/a> or at guardian.live<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Devon Taylor remembers when the Mammee Bay shoreline in St Ann, Jamaica, was filled with children frolicking in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-736447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}