Boost for tourism, but trees suffer in Jamaica

Some of Jamaica’s resort towns like Negril are being re-developed as part of the country’s post-Covid-19 recovery efforts. — VIOLA/Pixabay

As a child, Sophie Grizzle Roumel remembers swimming in the warm turquoise waters near a beach surrounded by mangroves outside her small village on Jamaica’s west end.

Today, the white sand beach is crowded with heavy trucks and around it the land is denuded of trees as diggers level part of the mangrove forest to make way for a new US$550mil (RM2.3bil) resort project.