Community organisers resisting environmental colonisation in Jamaica are fighting for legal beach access and environmental personhood for beaches. Co-hosts Zoe and Larissa explore the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement and similar campaigns in Barbados, Mexico and beyond, that have sought to reclaim beaches. This episode is a love letter to all those resisting the commodification of beaches, challenging neocolonial tourism, fighting for workers’ rights and environmental protections on beaches. Have a listen to get inspired by community-led campaigns that connect the dots between beach access, colonialism, race and class!
References:
What’s the Caribbean without its beaches? But the people are losing access to them (2023)
Kenneth MohammedWhy Can’t Jamaicans Access Their Own Beaches? Al Jazeera (2023)
Privatisation of beaches: When access to nature is reserved for the rich (2024)
Mariarcangela AugelloPrivate beaches are symbolic of Lebanon’s economic crisis (2022)
Laure StephanLebanon loses its beaches to privatisation (2015)
International Collective in support of FishworkersRich investors exposed for trying to get Lahaina wildfire victims to sell land amid disaster (2023)
Ariana Baio‘The beaches belong to the people’: inside Puerto Rico’s anti-gentrification protests (2022)
Coral Murphy CarosDamion Coombs (2022)
Beach Access and Racism in America, (2021)
The Exclusion of the Citizen from Jamaica’s BeachesPugh, Jonathan (2013)
Speaking Without Voice: Participatory Planning, Acknowledgment, and Latent Subjectivity in BarbadosCarla Guerrón-Montero (2006)
“Can’t Beat Me Own Drum in Me Own Native Land”Christine Toppin-Allahar (2015)
“De Beach Belong to We!” Jamaica’s Apartheid-like Beaches (2022) Andrea Williams GreenPublic Access Beach (2010) Anna Lee Davis
