Hazard Mitigation Funds to Rescue Jamaica’s Negril

In the latest efforts to mitigate the hazards associated with climate change, the Jamaican authorities are turning their attention to Negril, where decades of unplanned development is destroying the local ecosystem and eroding the famous beach.

Studies indicate that in the last 40 or so years, Negril has lost more than 55 meters of beach. And the Negril morass, first drained by government in the 1950s to provide additional agricultural lands, combusts regularly, choking the once sleepy town with smoke from smoldering peat.

The National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), the agency responsible for the management and protection of the island's 1,022 kilometers of coastline, has begun the replanting of sea grass beds and mangrove forests in Negril as well as Montego Bay and Portland Bight. The agency said these areas have been severely impacted by the large-scale removal of coastal vegetation.

The replanting is one of several activities in an "integrated" multi- sector, multi-donor effort to halt the decline of the ecosystems that are crucial to the preservation of Negril's prized beaches, project manager Mary Gooden said.

Partially funded by a 4.13 million-euro grant from the European Union, the project is expected to provide alternative livelihoods for those whose activities negatively impact the environment and to enhance the resilience of Negril and other vulnerable coastal areas to the impacts of natural hazards.

Gooden, who works with the Planning Institute of Jamaica, which coordinates climate change mitigation actions on the island, noted that the restoration of Negril's marine wetlands is expected to boost the ability of the ecosystem to protect of one of Jamaica's most valuable coastal areas from impacts of severe weather. Healthy wetlands dissipate wave actions and minimize their impacts on the shoreline.

The world famous white sand beaches "have been experiencing severe and irreversible shoreline and retreat" for more than four decades, a 2010 report from the Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Methodology Development Project (RIVAMP) warned.

The problems have been exacerbated by inland activities that continue to impact the reefs: unsustainable fishing practices, and the removal of mangroves to increase the number of hotel rooms and to provide material for charcoal and fish pot production.

Jamaica's State of the Environment (SOE) report 2010 stated that between 2007 and 2010, 2,560 hotel rooms were added, with Montego Bay and Negril accounting for most of the new development at 29 percent and 12.8 percent, respectively.

In recent decades, Negril has recorded some of the highest rates of coastal erosion in the Caribbean. Studies by the University of the West Indies (UWI) and Smith Warner International for the Negril Coral Reef Protection Society indicate that Negril's coastline eroded at an average rate of between .5 and one meter a year between 1968 and 2006.

The rapid sand loss, environmentalists say, is a combination of adverse weather conditions, the loss of mangroves, coral bleaching and a proliferation of infrastructure development that ignored coastline setback requirements. The widespread destruction of sea grass beds - believed to be a major source of sea sand supply - is said to be one reason for the rapid sand loss.