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 Mohammed
• Why Can’t Jamaicans Access Their Own Beaches? Al Jazeera (2023)
• Privatisation of beaches: When access to nature is reserved for the rich (2024) Mariarcangela Augello
• Private beaches are symbolic of Lebanon's economic crisis (2022) Laure Stephan
• Lebanon loses its beaches to privatisation (2015) International Collective in support of Fishworkers
• Rich 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 Caros
• Damion Coombs (2022) Beach Access and Racism in America, (2021) The Exclusion of the Citizen from Jamaica's Beaches
• Pugh, Jonathan (2013) Speaking Without Voice: Participatory Planning, Acknowledgment, and Latent Subjectivity in Barbados
• Carla 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 Green
• Public Access Beach (2010) Anna Lee Davis

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