Beach access law must change

THE EDITOR, Madam:

People in authority, knowing the facts, talk about “beach access”, but they don’t explain the details: high-water mark access versus shoreline/ beach land access.

By law, the space up to the high-water mark, where the heaviest waves reach, belongs to the Jamaican people, in the Crown. Getting there is the problem. Except by boat, helicopter, parachute, submarine, ship or swimming, how do you reach it? The cumbersome legal reason is that private lands run right up to the high-water mark.

Under the Beach Control Act of 1956, you have no general right to walk, bathe or sit on that foreshore. Only fishermen retain rights from before 1956. Bathers and hustlers have none. So, the beach is “public” in name, but we are fenced out in reality.

Jamaica has 424 beaches and approximately 795 km (494 miles) of coastline. Beach-access advocates contend that only 72 beaches are publicly accessible and that less than one per cent of Jamaica’s shoreline is readily available for public use.

These exclusionary laws existed before Emancipation in 1838, before Independence in 1962, and were locked in by the Beach Control Act of 1956, six years before Independence. Let that sink in. There was never really any reform.

I have been to Barbados. Anywhere I saw a beach, I stopped and entered. No argument, no fencing, no security guard and no harassment from anyone, not even sellers. I found that strange coming from Jamaica.

In Barbados, every beach is public up to the high-water mark, even in front of the biggest resort. They have 85 public access beaches for a population of nearly 290,000. There is a 30-metre/33-yard setback. Imagine one and a half cricket pitches from wicket to wicket. No hotel can tell you to leave the sand.

Jamaica needs that civilised model, not this primitive exclusionary plantation model, even if we have to adopt the Barbados model going forward. Prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, kindly advise Jamaica on the framework for eliminating this exclusionary approach to beach access.

MICHAEL SPENCE

micspen2@hotmail.com