Jamaica is a popular holiday destination boasting world-class beaches and welcoming over four million visitors every year. However, for the locals it is a different story as 99% of Jamaica’s gorgeous coastline is off limits to the public as it’s all to accomodate the millions of international visitors that jet to the island country for the perfect getaway. Many beaches in Jamaica are reserved for all-inclusive resorts or hotel developments and the locals are demanding for that to change.
The Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement is a campaign that adovates for “the constitiual guarantee of universal rights and unrestricted access to all beaches and the sea in Jamaica. Many of the surrounding local communities are cut off from the beaches by walls and fencing. But the lack of access to the beaches is more than just missing out on sunbathing, the restriction has impacted the livelihoods of many individuals.
Speaking in an episode of Al Jazeera’s podcast The Take, Devon Taylor, the president of the Jamaica Beach Right Environmental Movement, explained that Steer Town, the community he is from, has been directly impacted by the situation.
He said: “One of the beaches that we use a lot there, you know, is a fishing beach. There’s a fishing beach that was also designated by the governmemt, and the fish folks in Steer Town have lost acess to that.”
In 2020, two companies bought the land that contained the pathways leading to the Maame Bay Beach, the beach which the local communities have been using for over 100 years.
Devon said: “We use the beach for religious, spiritual reasons, you know, therapeutic reasons, we’ve lost all of that. The kids cannot no longer just walk across the street and enter into the sea and so you can imagine a fisherman with his gear, you know, he’s over 70 years. You’d have to be riding a bicycle over three miles to get to the beach to fish.”
Access to the beaches for the average Jamaican is “just too difficult”.
The Beach Control Act 1956 that regulates the coastline states that “all rights in and over the foreshore of this Island [Jamaica] and the floor of the sea are hereby declared to be vested in the Crown,” with these laws in place it makes it easier for the land to be sold to private companies by the government to boost tourism and generate more income for Jamaica’s economy.
But in doing this, Jamaican residents are “legally excluded” from place that once felt like home.
Devon said: “Some do see tourism as the liberator of Jamaica. Most of us do not see it that way. There’s a space for tourism to operate in our society, but it’s the model, the kind of tourism I think we need to move away from.”
He added: “We need something more environmentally friendly, more inclusive and something that does not exclude are people from our land.”
