Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter
An unreleased study commissioned by the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) has painted a grim picture of the current Tourism Expansion Project and its hotel development programmes.
The project that will provide Jamaica with some 11,000 hotel rooms by 2010, is intended to promote dramatic short-term growth in the tourism sector.
However, the study completed in July of last year, points to a number of nuances and environmental risks involved with specific projects being undertaken by Spanish investors, including the controversial Bahía Príncipe hotel, in Pear Tree Bottom, St. Ann, which was then in its pre-construction phase. The report makes several recommendations signalling how the developments could be more sustainable.
The team, led by Alison Kenning Massa, notes that while the expansion project may drive economic growth in the short term, it has "implications for spatial and resource planning and for sustainable and equitable improvements in Jamaica's quality of life."
Numerous failures
"Examination of the way that the projects have been proposed and reviewed shows numerous failures of communication, participation, execution and enforcement. Those failures have rendered the legal framework largely ineffective in decision making," the study noted, "As a result, there is risk of wasting natural, human, cultural and fiscal resources," it continued.
The study stated that the country would stand to lose significantly if it replicated the typical designs of Spanish resorts in the Dominican Republic and Mexico where the same developers applied conventional building designs and development ideas to environmentally-sensitive areas.
"Replication of this approach in Jamaica means a loss of unique identity, ill-treatment of the natural environment that reduces safety as well as biodiversity and beauty, and significantly increased loads on an already overburdened infrastructure, e.g, high demand for water, energy and engineered drainage," the team said in its executive summary.
The greatest concern, the authors concluded, was the rapid pace proposed for the doubling of hotel rooms. It concluded that at the proposed pace, the projects would bring major and insurmountable challenges in terms of capacity to meet requirements for trained labour, utilities and associated community facilities.
Researchers concluded that the industry was incapable of providing the approximately 14,515 permanent workers needed to fill the gap created by the excessive development in such a short time and this could, therefore, lead to the importation of cheap labour from other countries as well as managerial staff. They also concluded that utility companies might not be prepared, given the pace of the development, to adequately supply these large-scale hotels and their developmental spin-off with water, energy and enough solid waste and sewage treatment facilities.
The study also concluded that the country was not ready to deal with the demand for housing and roads that would be created as a result of the massive development in these areas.
Major cost burden
"Under current largely uncontrolled development trends, coastal areas in the general vicinity of the new projects could quickly be transformed by new formal and informal housing," the study said. "Increased sprawl will reduce the attractiveness of the region for tourists and Jamaicans alike and place a major cost burden on national and local governments," it continued.
The researchers also drew conclusions on the obvious risks to the environment posed by specific projects under the programme and made some recommendations while many of these hotels were still at the pre-construction phase of development. Many are now under construction and near completion.
The study also concluded that the country was not ready to deal with the demand for housing and roads that would be created as a result of the massive development in these areas.
