Down To Earth Jamaica Beaches Public Access Privatisation Campaign

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Every year, millions of visitors from across the globe visit Jamaica to enjoy its gorgeous beaches, fuelling a multibillion dollar tourism industry. But, in recent years, its picture-perfect coastlines have become a battleground for access after successive governments privatised its shorelines to support the country’s thriving all-inclusive hotel industry.

The complex row, which has seen protesters clashing with police and campaigners tearing down barriers around privatised properties, is now playing out in the country’s courts. We take a closer look at each side’s case, and what’s at stake.

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In focus

On beach access in Jamaica, the battle lines are drawn. Five simultaneous civil court cases are being brought against the government and private landowners in an effort to prevent privatisation of beaches in some of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. Already, at sprawling beach resorts across the country, locals are prohibited from accessing the coastline unless they pay to join hotel guests.

On one side of the dispute are community members, craft vendors, fishers and other locals who make their living from the sea. They say cutting off their access to beaches is “discriminatory”, a breach of their constitutional rights and a continuation of a “colonial logic” that suggets that Jamaicans do not deserve to enjoy and benefit from their own natural resources.

They are fighting the 1956 Beach Control Act, passed when Jamaica was still a British colony. The law put the island’s foreshore and seabed into state ownership, and activists say the government’s current beach licensing regime has given private companies exclusive control of sections of Jamaica’s coast.

In March 2018, Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, proposed a new beach access and management policy (pdf), which promises to modernise the legislation and increase access. But campaigners say the policy only allows for “qualified rights” that are still subject to conditions.

On the other side, the government argues that income from the country’s billion-dollar tourism sector benefits everyone, and beach access activists risk causing costly reputational damage to an industry that is the backbone of Jamaica’s economy.

Matthew Samuda, the minister of environment and climate change, has said that while the “idea of access needs to be explored”, the government has to consider how it could convert Jamaica’s natural assets into an “economic benefit that helps you, me, every single citizen, the poorest among us, the richest among us”.

He said that between 112,000 and 116,000 Jamaicans are employed in the tourism sector, and an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 – more than 10% of the population – benefit from it through connected industries.

He has also pointed out that recent approvals for new developments, especially on public land, require developers to carve out corridors to the sea. Campaigners argue this is at the discretion of landowners, and fails to address their concerns about existing private beaches.

At the heart of the unfolding legal battle is the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (Jabbem). The organisation was born out of necessity, its founder, Devon Taylor, tells me. Taylor, an immunologist with a PhD in biochemistry, says the battle for beach access has made him an “anticolonial fighter”.

He founded Jabbem in 2020 after months of protests by locals against the privatisation of Mammee Bay, previously a public beach in the parish of Saint Ann, an area popular with tourists, near where Taylor grew up.

Central to the group’s case is the 1882 Prescription Act, which protects the legal right to land or pathways that have been continuously used as a public access routes for at least 20 years This, they argue, includes beaches.

Many of Jabbem’s members and the other campaigning community groups have strong cultural connections to their beaches. They are where they learned to swim, and for families who can’t afford trips abroad or expensive hotel passes, they remain their primary space for leisure and relaxation. For others, such as the Rastafarians, beaches are of spiritual significance, places to meditate and connect with nature. The enchanting Blue Lagoon (where the group of campaigners in the top photo are pictured) in the north-eastern parish of Portland – where mountain-fed mineral springs meet the ocean – is medicine for elderly people.

And, importantly, Taylor says, beaches have provided a livelihood for generations of fishers, and are a source of food for local communities. “When you cut us off from the sea … you are actually setting us up to starve,” he says.

Carolyn Cooper, a Jamaican professor emerita at the University of the West Indies and volunteer adviser to Jabbem, calls the access restrictions are “outrageous”. She adds: “It’s as though this government, and successive governments of Jamaica, don’t seem to realise that Black Jamaicans are entitled to leisure.”

Campaigners say that they are not anti-tourism, adding that there are examples in other Caribbean nations where citizens have beach access rights and tourism is flourishing. In St Lucia, for instance, all beaches must be made accessible to the public.

Activists’ concern is that current laws are destroying their coastlines, keeping locals from accessing places of leisure and are designed to benefit only a wealthy few, with most major hotel profits going to the elite or being funnelled out of Jamaica entirely to foreign owners.

While the legal process could go on for years, and trials have already been postponed, at great expense to campaigners, Taylor says their resolve remains strong.

“Our evidence is overwhelming, and nothing can defeat this case for prescriptive rights,” he says. “So we continue on. We are very patient. And we’ll see the victory.”

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