Activists in Jamaica are waging a legal and community battle against what they describe as “plantation tourism” — a multibillion-dollar all-inclusive model that they argue locks ordinary Jamaicans out of their own beaches, repeating patterns of colonial dispossession. The term, coined by campaigners from the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (Jabbem), is not merely rhetorical: it is grounded in decades of legislation and land ownership that, they say, treats local people as unwelcome intruders on the shoreline while wealthy visitors and elite investors control the coast.
‘That beach raised us. It fed us’
Devon Taylor, an immunologist with a PhD in biochemistry who now leads Jabbem, grew up on Mammee Bay in the parish of St Ann. He recalls fetching seawater for his grandmother, learning to swim in the shallows, and watching generations of fishers cast their nets. “That beach raised us. It fed us,” he says. But in 2019, locals were locked out by a fence and armed state and private security guards hired by investors building all-inclusive luxury hotels. The community tore down the fence and reoccupied the beach, but during Covid restrictions they were barred from the area at certain times, and when they returned they found concrete walls. Taylor describes the outcome as a “violent displacement”, adding: “Gunshots were fired to disperse the protest.” For the residents whose livelihoods depend on the sea, he says, cutting them off “is actually setting us up to starve”.
More than 100 miles away in Flankers, Montego Bay, campaigners have filed an injunction to stop developers from building in the sea and are fighting for the restoration of a beach neglected by the state for decades. “Our foreparents shed blood for this land. We shouldn’t be forced to fight for what is already ours,” says Olando Brown, a Rastafarian who meditates there. Monique Christie, Jabbem’s community coordinator for western Jamaica, says the beach is vital for families who cannot afford expensive holidays: “You 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.”
In Portland, the Blue Lagoon — famed for its 55-metre-deep turquoise-to-azure waters — was closed in 2022 with a promise from local authorities to reopen in 90 days with improved facilities. Colin Beckford, president of the Blue Lagoon Alliance, says the community later discovered the intention was to permanently close public access roads to allow the building of private villas. Wilbourn Carr, 73, who has swum there since he was 14, emphasises that the lagoon is not just for recreation: “It is also where our elderly come for the healing properties of the mineral spring from the mountain that feeds the lagoon.” Official statements from the Jamaica National Heritage Trust have claimed the lagoon remains publicly accessible free of charge, with renovations undertaken, but campaigners dispute this, pointing to ongoing restrictions and the involvement of Sandals chief executive Adam Stewart in the lease of surrounding lands.
At Little Dunn’s River, also in St Ann, Jabbem’s director of community engagement, Damion Coombs, speaks above the cascade of a waterfall. He compares the argument that restricting beach access protects the tourism industry from crime to the colonial logic of “keeping out the savages”. “We are generating the revenue but we’re not gaining from it,” he says. The site, one of the few remaining free beaches on the North Coast corridor, was closed in August 2022 by the Urban Development Corporation and police following a homicide investigation; campaigners argue the closure was punitive and has devastated local businesses.
‘Plantation tourism’: colonial roots of a modern injustice
At the heart of the conflict is a legal framework inherited from British colonial rule. The Beach Control Act of 1956, enacted before Jamaica’s independence, granted the state ownership of the foreshore and seabed but did not establish any general right for Jamaicans to access beaches. Access depended on licences, special permissions or long-standing customary use by communities such as fishers. “The law is at the core of the all-inclusive tourism model that we view as discriminatory,” Taylor says. “We call it plantation tourism because it has all the characteristics of a plantation – 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.”
The term “plantation tourism” draws a direct line to the island’s history. Much of the land in dispute was originally “crown land” owned by the British monarch; it was transferred to the Jamaican state upon independence in 1962, but the legal systems — including the Beach Control Act and the Prescription Act of 1882 — were retained. The Prescription Act is used by campaigners to claim customary rights to land and pathways that have been continuously used by the public for at least 20 years. However, its application to beach access remains contested. Under the Beach Control Act, Jamaicans have no inherent rights to the sea and beaches; without specific permission or established use, access can be legally denied. Amendments in 2004 did not significantly alter the core provisions.
The result, activists argue, is that ordinary Jamaicans are locked out while foreign-owned hotels and all-inclusive resorts dominate the shoreline. One report from 2025 claimed that less than 1% of Jamaica’s coastline is accessible to locals, with much of it requiring an admission fee. Jabbem’s campaign, which it calls “Beach Birthright”, seeks to protect access for leisure, spiritual practice and livelihoods, opposing what it sees as corporate exploitation backed by the state.
Legal fights and legislative concerns
Five court cases are currently active across the island, covering Mammee Bay, Little Dunn’s River, the Blue Lagoon, Bob Marley Beach in St Andrew, and Flankers/Providence Beach. The first trial is scheduled for later this month. Each case has its own specifics, but all share the claim that communities are being denied access to spaces of social, economic and even spiritual significance because successive governments have failed to address inequities inherited from colonial times.
Campaigners have also raised alarm about the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (Narra) Act, passed in March 2026 to fast-track rebuilding after Hurricane Melissa. Taylor says Narra lacks checks and balances and concentrates power in the office of the prime minister. Jabbem argues the act is designed to weaken the Prescription Act, which protects customary rights established through continuous public use for at least 20 years. Minister of Environment and Climate Change Matthew Samuda defended Narra, insisting it facilitates “large-scale, urgent procurement … required to build in resilience before the next storm” and that parliamentary oversight and permits remain required.
Jabbem stresses it is not partisan, noting that administrations from both the ruling Jamaica Labour Party and the opposition People’s National Party created the crisis. “The government’s power … also comes from the opposition’s complicity when they formed the government,” Coombs says. Shadow environment minister Omar Newell acknowledged the problem: “Yes, successive administrations have presided over the privatisation of our beaches. It needs to stop.”
Government response: new policy, old frustrations
In March 2026, Prime Minister Andrew Holness tabled a Beach Access and Management Policy that promises to modernise legislation and increase access. The policy focuses on developing inclusive definitions of beaches and foreshores, outlining access improvements, proposing legislative amendments, and revising development approval considerations. Samuda pointed to Harmony Beach Park in Montego Bay, a 16-acre free-entry public beach developed by the Urban Development Corporation, as evidence of the government’s commitment. He also cited planned upgrades on nine public beaches, including Success Beach in St James, and said recent approvals for new developments “have insisted that developers carve out what you call corridors to the sea”.
But the government’s geography adds complexity, Samuda argued: “Jamaica is not blessed quite with a total surrounding of our coastline by beach. We have a lot of rocky areas … areas that are inaccessible because of wetlands and biodiversity reserves.”
Campaigners remain deeply sceptical. They say the new policy still allows “qualified rights” — meaning access could be conditional or involve a fee — rather than the “free, legal, unfettered, forever rights” they demand. Newell criticised the policy for treating access as “managed permission rather than a fundamental public right”. Coombs is blunt: “We are still talking about ‘qualified rights’, meaning somebody can decide if you come in – and maybe charge a fee.”
Taylor, a Rastafarian and a son of Jamaica, sees the fight as larger than any single piece of legislation. “I am 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,” he says. At Mammee Bay, where children once played after school and fishers haggled over their catch, the concrete walls stand as a monument to the battle still being waged.
