This public participatory, comprehensive assessment approach for the Portland Parish bioregion of Jamaica will attempt to identify and integrate the various community resource assets, including important cultural heritage and ecological sites within the land-to-sea geographic continuum from the Blue Mountains to the coastal bays and offshore reefs, into a better understanding of how to proceed with SCD for the region that builds upon cultural assets and other resources the communities know about in terms of community-supported value-added strategies. This evaluation and follow-on community development analysis and strategy design, known as a “Jump-Team Assessment,” will initially draw attention to Blue Lagoon Restoration as an icon in rebuilding the surrounding area’s tourism industry while fully engaging all stakeholders in dialogue to record their collective wisdom about how to simultaneously enhance people’s lives, restore and protect ecological resources, and fuel the community’s capacity to sustain itself over the long-term with everyone experiencing an improved quality of life. Our engagement with all the diverse stakeholders is intended to empower them to take charge of their own destiny and achieve sustainability in ways that they, themselves identify, through action initiated, driven, and concluded by the community. Our assessment activities will include learning about and helping local, grassroots organizations feel inspired and empowered to take responsibility to act in ways that increase the well-being of all life by addressing the harmonious solution of economic, social, and ecological concerns.

With the assistance of JNHT we will attend scheduled meetings with relevant Government Ministries and we will seek discussions with people where they live, work, play, and pray. Through these meetings in Kingston and small group gatherings in locales including Port Antonio, Drapers, Fairy Hill, San San, we will introduce the concepts, tools, and practices of SCD while assisting community members to identify their core values and societal goals, advance their shared visions and desires, identify obstacles to improvement, empower stakeholders, and promote social learning to cooperatively advance sustainability. By diversifying our meetings with different sectors of the community from November 10th to 19th our Jump Team assessment intends to reach members of neighborhood associations, community development organizations, businesses, governmental agencies (local, regional, national, and international) such as the Ministry of Tourism, Tourism Product Development Co., NEPA, and PEPA, social justice advocates, planners and architects, environmentalists, hoteliers, representatives of local fisherman, informal tour operators & craft vendors as well as faith-based organizations to collectively brainstorm in evaluating present situations and potential remedial policy toward sustainable development that will contribute to the overall well-being of humans and ecosystems within a community-wide context of the Blue Lagoon area and greater Portland Parish bioregion.

At each gathering we will invite participants to apply for attending the “Blue Lagoon Restoration Summit 2010” meeting on Saturday, November 20, 2010. This Summit will represent a finale of the individual and small group’s community dialogue by offering a coming-together opportunity engaging all stakeholders for the purpose of developing a region-wide strategy for cultural heritage and eco-tourism based SCD, including key goals that address stakeholder collective core values, identifying next steps of action, and defining indicators for the community to measure progress toward its agreed upon goals for improvement.

The overall intent of this Summit will be to promote a regional economy that binds communities together and keeps people and place healthy while everyone has the opportunity for earning a family living wage and enjoying an acceptable quality of life. We believe the outcome of our assessment effort will be a catalyst for change to advance Blue Lagoon National Heritage Marine Site declaration and to enable pursuit of UNESCO World Heritage Site designation for this coastal area which is so important in enhancing the tourism economy. The assessment effort is also intended to serve as a public awareness stimulus, alerting all stakeholders to the need for creating regional volunteer-driven Community Ambassadorship Programs (CAP) for the purpose of keeping intellectual and material wealth at home in local communities, preserving and enriching the natural systems of water, air, and land, and practicing ways of living that foster sustainable socio-economic endeavors based upon the cultural heritage and ecological resources of the region. Project participants will quickly be able to appreciate that our work is directed toward meeting basic human needs by exploring how social equity can be the foundation for community-wide sustainability. If we all work together to fully embrace sustainability to the depth that includes the most basic and elemental aspects of what is needed to sustain life and communities, then we are clearly acting on the basic principle of interdependence – that we are all in this together.

To support the work of the Jump Team in our assessment of sustainability issues in north-eastern Jamaica, the Sobeys School of Business, Business Development Center of Saint Mary’s University (Halifax, NS) was retained to conduct research and report findings on a conceptual plan for Blue Lagoon regional economic development. These findings were presented in July 2010 to the Ontario International Development Agency at their “Summer Congress 2010” by our team member, Adrienne Duperly. The following URL links to the article we published about a Blue Lagoon Restoration Concept Plan from the conference presentation.