The Sunday Sun of November 8, 2026 put into pictures what many Bajans have felt for years. John Walmark, a Canadian who has been visiting Barbados since 1998, walked the paper’s team northward from the Paynes Bay Fish Market, St James, to show how rock armour has steadily cut off a shoreline walk that, only five years ago, ran all the way to Sandy Beach.
Walmark says it got worse after Hurricane Beryl in July 2024, when damaged sea walls were rebuilt with fresh boulders along the foreshore.
The director of the Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU), Dr Leo Brewster, replied that the boulders are a response to climate change, were placed legally with planning permission, and cannot now be removed.
Both men can be right at the same time. Dr Brewster is explaining how each boulder got there. Mr Walmark is describing what all of them together have done. Approvals granted one property at a time have added up to something no planner ever set out to approve: a coastline the public can no longer walk. It is worthy to note that the beach was removed because of Hurricane Beryl and not as a result of the addition of boulders.
Earlier this year CrossRoads Barbados published a very interesting article, Dah Beach Ain’t Mine: The Quiet & Persistent Enclosure of the Barbados Horizon. It recalls 1982, when the Mighty Gabby’s calypso Jack captured a nation’s determination to defend public access to our most sacred resource, the beach. The article argues that in 2026, we are no longer fighting to keep Jack off the sand; we are struggling to remember what the beach looked like. In 44 years, the anthem has flipped to “Dah beach ain’t mine!”
Let me be clear: this is not an argument against tourism. Tourism, and the hotels and fine homes along the West and South Coasts, have brought important resources to Barbados and to many Bajans. It is where we hold a genuine competitive advantage, and it will remain our driving force. But we do not win on price, the way a China wins on production efficiency. We win the way Apple does, on distinctiveness and loyalty.
Rather than diversifying for its own sake, a strategy that has distracted many a corporate board until it had to sell off the new ventures and return to its core business, Barbados may do better by diversifying within the many facets of tourism.
Errol Barrow, the father of our Independence and a National Hero, hoped to see the day when Barbados would no longer depend on cutting sugar cane. His vision of a broader economy gave tourism a central role. Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur, in turn, pressed for land to be put to its highest economic return while balancing social, agricultural and environmental needs. That balance is exactly what is now at stake.
And it matters to tourism itself. Our visitors do not come only for a hotel room; they come for Barbados, including the Bajan beach life they can share in. It is telling that this alarm this week was raised by a man who has chosen to return to our shores for nearly three decades.
Progress
The American humourist Ogden Nash once quipped, “Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.” We may have reached that point with the continuous building on the beach side of the West and South Coasts, which leaves very few open spaces where the public can see and enjoy the sea. That beach access is protected by law becomes irrelevant when there is nowhere to park and few places to get through. Our “windows to the sea” are tiny and few and far between.
In Barbados and across the Caribbean, it is taken as a given that a hotel must sit on the beachside of the road to be viable. The rest of the world does not bear this out, as the Mediterranean and Brazil show. From 1974 to 1987, I lived in Rio de Janeiro, a metropolitan area now home to more than 12 million people, where tourism is a pillar of the economy.
Rio’s example
Along Leme, Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon stands an almost unbroken “oceanfront wall” of ten-to 15- storey apartment towers, hotels and shops. But they stand on the land side of the coastal avenue. In Brazil, beaches are public property, protected by strict environmental law, and permanent private or commercial buildings sit across the road. The sand and promenade remain open to everyone, and a buffer between ocean and infrastructure guards against high waves and erosion. On the ocean side, instead of private walls, you find the world-renowned wave-patterned promenade of landscape artist Roberto Burle Marx.
Much of the Barbados beachfront now owned by foreigners was once owned by Bajans who chose to sell, and I expect many of them did well. There is nothing wrong with that. Those owners pay property taxes, employ staff, and buy goods and services that support our economy. Ownership is not the issue. What is fundamental is that Bajans can see the sea and get to the beach, on an ongoing basis.
With this in mind, Government should act on three fronts. First, it must review development along the West and South Coasts and secure permanent public beach facilities, with parking, access points and shade. Where that means acquiring beachfront land, owners will be unhappy so Government must pay a fair price and pay it promptly. Second, any future permission for rock armour should carry a condition that the public can still pass along the shore.
Third, where boulders already block the way, Government should extend lateral walkways. Mr Walmark rightly points to our excellent South Coast boardwalk as proof that coastal protection and pedestrian access can coexist. The cost should be shared between the owners whose properties the boulders protect and Government, which may be able to tap special climate adaptation funding.
We can no longer afford our Bajan “wait-and-see” culture. Every new wall of boulders makes the next one easier to approve. Government must address this challenge, and we the people must organise and keep reminding our politicians, as Gabby reminded us in 1982, that “dah beach is ours”.
John Beale is a former diplomat and banker.