The Protected Area that Wasn't

The Palisadoes strip, near Kingston, Jamaica

I start with this fuzzy picture to establish that the value of this place is personal to me. There are some who will disparage that, characterize it as ‘emotional’, but how else does love and respect for place arise? This is me at about two years old with a great aunt on the Palisadoes strip. For those non Jamaicans reading this, the Palisadoes tombolo is a long strip of land, a peninsula of sorts, which created Kingston Harbour.

My parents, grand parents and grand aunts took me and my sisters to that beach when we were children. We threw stones into the waves as they chased us back up the beach, collected shells, ran around. In those days, you could just walk or drive through short gaps in the sand dunes, and the view of the coastline and the setting sun was there for us all.

The beach at Palisadoes was also a catalyzing event for my environmental activism, when I discovered that the same beach had become a garbage dump – I don’t mean litter, I mean, truckloads of waste. Somebody should do something, I thought, standing there. Later, when that somebody had become me, the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) began beach clean ups on the Palisadoes, and when they had become too well attended for the space available, we moved them to a place called Fort Rocky, farther down the strip, about a mile away from the historic town of Port Royal.

Fort Rocky is a historical site, listed on the Jamaica National Heritage Trust’s website. It was built in the late 19^th century and then improved in the 20^th to prevent access by warships to Kingston Harbour. The guns were removed after the end of World War II.

By then, this area had been declared the Palisadoes/Pt Royal Protected Area under Jamaican law, and was also a Wetland of International Importance under the United Nations Ramsar convention. Despite legal protection, degradations continued – armouring of the coastline between Harbour Head and Gunboat Beach, mangrove clearing for various reasons, garbage washing up from the gullies emptying into Kingston Harbour. Management plans proceeded at a snail’s pace.

At the end of JET’s annual beach clean up, tired and sunburned, I used to climb up the old fort and there I would see the sparkling stretch of the coast, Lime Cay just offshore, and the towering Blue Mountains behind me. And I would imagine Fort Rocky as a place where anyone could come just to look at the sea, be soothed by it, walk around an old site and think about what came before, perhaps take a boardwalk through the vegetation and the dunes, maybe buy a coconut from a vendor.

In October 2017, Fort Rocky was declared an entertainment zone by Jamaica’s Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport. It was unsuitable in every way for large, all night events – limited area for parking, right on the sea, heavily vegetated with mangroves on the coast and other plants, including endemic species, and a turtle nesting beach. Despite whatever objections were raised at the time, this idea went ahead with the support of Jamaica’s environmental regulator and the protected area manager, the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA). Things went quiet for a time and it was possible to hope that this would be another grandiose idea that would never come to completion.

But no. This week the bulldozers arrived, and despite the requirements of the long delayed management plan, ripped out a swath of small dunes, mangroves, and other vegetation, apparently with the blessing of the Culture Ministry for a party called Good Times, scheduled for March 15.

At the time of writing, there has been no formal response from any of the state agencies involved but rumour has it that stop orders were issued by NEPA yesterday which, as is the norm for our environmental regulator, were sent out AFTER the damage had been done. And bulldozing continued this morning.

Did I mention NEPA is the park manager? I see that I did.

One thing I learned during my 28 years leading the Jamaica Environment Trust is this – any action, no matter how egregious, how destructive, how incomprehensible, can, and will be defended. So I can already hear the excuses, the explanations, the deflections, the finger pointing, the promises of restoration and accountability, none of which will be achieved. My bet is the party will go ahead. The ‘development’ warriors will put down some kind of surface which will channel oil and garbage into the sea. Maybe some small clump of mangroves will be replanted and there will be a celebratory sign. Inescapably, however, the environmental laws have been broken once again and that will be shrugged off – ah nuh nuttn.

I’m glad I had my time with the Palisadoes, as a child, as an adult, as an activist. Soon, if our state agencies have their way, what was once there and deemed worthy of legal protection will live only in photographs and memory.