Jamaica Beach Campaigners File Five Court Cases to
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- Jabbem is filing five court cases later this month challenging privatization of Mammee Bay, Little Dunn's River, Blue Lagoon, Bob Marley beach, and Flankers/Providence beach, targeting the 1956 Beach Control Act that gives the state ownership of the foreshore and seabed.
- Jabbem founder Devon Taylor described the legal fight as one for survival, arguing that cutting Jamaicans off from the sea amounts to "setting us up to starve" because the sea is the only source of wild food in Jamaica.
- Environment Minister Matthew Samuda defended the system, saying 112,000 to 116,000 Jamaicans work directly in tourism and an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 — more than 10% of the population — benefit through connected industries, and insisting recent developments must "carve out corridors to the sea."
- PM Andrew Holness proposed a beach access and management policy in March that promises to modernize the 1956 law, but Taylor and Jabbem director of community engagement Damion Coombs dismissed it as offering only "qualified rights" set by developer licences rather than free, legal, unfettered access.
- The Narra Act, passed in March to fast-track Hurricane Melissa rebuilding, is the campaigners' second target: Taylor said it will weaken the 1882 Prescription Act that protects public access routes, impose a secrecy clause, and concentrate power in the prime minister's office to a "supreme leader" degree.
- Shadow environment minister Omar Newell backed those concerns, saying Narra "concentrates a ridiculous amount of power in the hands of one minister," while Samuda countered that the law still requires parliamentary approval and permits and only speeds "large-scale, urgent procurement."
Why it matters: The five cases put Jamaica's 69-year-old Beach Control Act in direct judicial scrutiny at a moment when roughly 350,000 Jamaicans — over 10% of the population — depend on tourism-linked work, forcing the government to defend a system critics say converts public coastline into private resort frontage while sidelining fishers, vendors like Clive "Up Up" Ivy, and elders like Roseroy Gay who have lost livelihoods to closures.
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