Coastal rights lobby JABBEM presses Parliament for NARRA Bill safeguards

The Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (JABBEM) has formally handed legislators a comprehensive document spelling out revisions it seeks to the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NARRA) Bill.

The organisation maintains the bill’s architecture could expose large numbers of unregistered coastal occupiers, artisanal fishers, households recovering from hurricanes, and long-established seaside communities to grave harm.

Those people, JABBEM adds, could be stripped of their holdings indefinitely, without their tenure being acknowledged, without redress payments, and without a fair means to push back.

Dr. Devon Taylor, the movement’s president, noted that the NARRA text on its face does not wipe out adverse possession nor plainly sanction removals. Even so, he argued, the peril comes from the overall design of the statute.

A key plank of JABBEM’s pitch is that developers and agencies must carry out obligatory field work before ground is broken on any scheme, so informal residents along the littoral can be traced and formally noted.

Dr. Taylor explained that the package of edits is meant to force the state to pinpoint persons already on parcels targeted for works and to uphold their lawful interests.