Desmond HenryTREASURE BEACH:
IT WAS way back in 1980 when, as outgoing Director of Tourism, I introduced and articulated the concept of Community Tourism as a way of defining and combining all the island's potential activities capable of attracting visitors in the future. In a way, its aim was to alert communities removed from the beaches that they should start exploring facts about their lives that were credible and unique, and which could be marketed to visitors. For easier understanding, I loosely described it as "off-the-beach tourism". It would involve ecology, heritage, lifestyle, buildings, churches, relics, caves, farms, schools and anything else that credibly portrays the past, present and future in Jamaican life.
Since then, the concept has ballooned worldwide, and as artificial barriers have come down, it has added a riveting sense of freshness and curiosity to travellers around the world. Indeed, the once common noun 'community' has now become a highly descriptive adjective, popping up everywhere as 'community this' and 'community that'. It has become a tremendous marketing peg on which to hang community development along lines of pride, economic expansion, social services and communal management.
The problem, however, is that almost all our communities in Jamaica are either unprepared or untrained in the methods of planned, sustained economic development. There is no 'big picture' understanding, or worse, no communal or institutional leadership structure designed to finish this. The Parish Councils and their functions have become like sick jokes, and they do no more than 'pile-on' in a continuing hand-to-mouth rural way of life.
Modern social planners have pointed out that there are at least eight basic conditions that individuals or businesses look for, when either choosing where to live or to set up business. They are
- low crime rate
- clean water supply
- clean air
- good medical facilities
- non-burdensome taxes
- good schools
- inexpensive living
- good transit and communication facilities.
Match these up against current community conditions in Jamaica today and see how we stand up. Go even further and compare them to what we've been told about future planning, and see where we are. Truth is, by most progressive yardsticks, we are fast becoming a run-down, dilapidated country with a negative mark against almost every objective condition required for modern development.
That's why I'm so hopeful about a recent one-day effort conducted here in Treasure Beach to examine how we may start preparing our community for the future. It was largely the work of Jason Henzell of Jakes Hotel, who brought down a bona fide community planner from Peterboro, Canada, to lead the discussion and help design a plan for our community of the future. Discussion areas centred on:
- Treasure Beach today
- present and future land use
- the environment
- national vs. rural planning
- political and private leadership
- current community facilities.
Discussion groups were specifically asked to look at:
- what they'd like to see the community looking like 20 years from now
- what should be preserved and protected
- timing and sequence of changes
- rules and regulations
- who will manage or guide the changes
- human training and development (vii) an overall community development plan.
The discussion leader took all the inputs away with him to compose an overall document to be presented soon. I'll have more about it, as a model for other communities to follow.
When you consider that the government has been sitting on a comprehensive south coast development plan (the Halcrow Study) for five years now, and has not moved a finger to having it implemented, you will understand why our rural communities are degenerating the way they are. Taken together with the real growth anticipated in south coast tourism, there is an alarming concern that, despite everything else, this coast could end up in as classic a mish-mash condition as has Negril and others.
We lack critical thinkers in this country and are paying a hell of a price for it. My strong advice to other communities across Jamaica is to stop fooling themselves about potential benefits from Local Government Reform. Nothing new or meaningful is going to happen.
Instead, they should get together among themselves, seek outside advisory assistance and plan their own destiny. Most had hoped that by now the UWI would have had a Centre for the study of rural development. Instead, its head is into patois.
THE BOTTOM LINE: One's direction is far more important than one's progress.
Desmond Henry is as marketing strategist based in Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth.
