Peter Espeut
There is a new hotel built at Whitehouse-Auchindown in Westmoreland. A hotel is being built at Pear Tree Bottom, St. Ann. Announcements have been made of hotels to be built at Point in Hanover, Rocky Point in Clarendon and Holland Bay in St. Thomas.
Is the entire Jamaican coastline up for grabs?
If we are going to give up the Jamaican coastline for tourism, then we need to do an analysis of what we are gaining versus what we are giving up.
What are the pluses of the tourist industry? There will be direct jobs - in the hotels, at the airport, in transport, in "escort services". There will be indirect jobs - in agriculture, banking, and shopkeeping.
There will be foreign exchange earnings. There will be lots of concrete structures to make us feel important in the world. There will be lots of white people around.
What are the obvious minuses? The industry alienates most Jamaicans. They are not welcome in hotels and contact with visitors is to be limited because ordinary Jamaicans have been judged to wish to harass them. Our people will have access to fewer and fewer Jamaican beaches for ourselves.
Land values
The tourism industry distorts the local economy. Land values around these new hotel sites will soar to the extent that it is no longer profitable to do agriculture there. Wages and prices are also affected so that poverty is often increased despite increased employment.
And about those jobs. These are almost all at the low end. Despite the fact that we have tourism and hospitality schools at universities here and in the region, the top jobs in the industry have traditionally gone to foreigners. Even low-level chefs are not Jamaican.
And what about the social facilities needed to support people working in the industry? Ocho Rios, Montego Bay and Negril are now ringed by squatter settlements. I doubt that the bartender or the hotel maid will ever be able to afford their own home in proximity to the hotel. They either commute from long distances, or squat. As for schools, roads and water - well!!
And that foreign exchange. How much of it reaches Jamaica in the first place? And of that which comes in - how much stays here? Don't forget, we import all our oil so almost all the energy used by the sector has to be paid for in foreign currency. This is further exacerbated by the distortion mentioned above.
Health, morals and lifestyles - values and attitudes. Let us not make joke. Tourists come here for sun, sand, sea, sex and sensimelia - and maybe nude weddings. And then large numbers of us go to our churches on Saturdays and Sundays to ask the eternal Father to bless our land.
Tourism ties us to the policies of certain large countries whose sensibilities we do not wish to offend because we wish their nationals to come here in droves. Some of those policies to which we must become tied are, of late, quite frightening. But, of course, we are a sovereign, independent country and member of the United Nations.
And tourism puts enormous - often fatal - pressure on the physical and natural environment. In this regard, tourism is its own worst enemy as it slowly destroys the very resources many tourists come here to experience. And since this is not rocket science, we must presume that the investors have made their calculations: they will get the return on their investment in a (known) specific time, and then they will quit the joint!
Dependence
So you can do your own calculations and see where this dependence on unsustainable tourism leaves us.
When we are developed, our people themselves should feel better-off - more content with their circumstances, less likely to want to deal drugs, turn to crime, or migrate. People will want to migrate here because of the opportunities!
It is important for us to do the tourism mathematics. If we are going to give up our Jamaican coastline for tourism, then we need to do an analysis of what we are gaining versus what we are giving up, and decide whether we really wish to go ahead with it.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
