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JFS Documentary Individual Usage $30.00 JFS Doc & Chapters $50.00 JFS Institutinal Usage $200.00 JFS Chapters $30.00 JFS Documentary Pal $35.00

Though the Caribbean receives only about five percent of the global tourist trade, it is the region most economically dependent on tourism. This narrow dependence on the highly volatile tourist industry increases as the region’s traditional agricultural exports such as sugar and bananas fail, and as the small scale economies of the Caribbean get further mired down in debt, at the same time being unable to compete with the massive engines of globalization such as North America, the European Union, China, India and Brazil.

Jamaica is rapidly undergoing large-scale, mass market, all-inclusive hotel development, as well as the construction of luxury gated residential schemes and luxury condominiums for non-residents. Major tourist attractions, another international airport and many more hotels and luxury resorts are in the pipeline. There is a construction boom in both tourist related infrastructure (primarily highways and water delivery systems) and mega-sized hotels built on ecologically sensitive shorelines, often in socially impoverished rural communities which are without such basic amenities as proper schools, health care, housing, sewage, reliable utilities and security.

Jamaica for Sale is a feature length documentary (84 minutes) that questions the widely accepted assertion that tourism is the saviour of the Jamaican people, a dominant position held by Jamaican governments since 1891.

Jamaica for Sale takes a sharp look at the environmental, economic, and social impacts of tourism, including:

• the cumulative impacts of poorly regulated large-scale development on water quality, depleted marine species, and degraded shoreline habitats
• the social impacts of the privatization of the public sphere with the removal of access by Jamaicans to beaches and shoreline
• the social and environmental impacts of uncontrolled development in areas with little or no social and economic infrastructure
• the economic impacts of relying on low-wage, unskilled labour and remittances as the model for economic development, while promoting an industry that leads to inflation in land and housing prices, and requires the consumption of large amounts of natural resources
• the political, environmental and social impacts of a weak regulatory framework where environmental laws are many but often outdated and almost never enforced.

Jamaica for Sale is hard hitting and lively, with arresting visuals and iconic music. It is filled with wit, wisdom and penetrating observations from the street wise to highly acclaimed academics. Jamaica for Sale engages with a cross section of Jamaicans: workers who labour for low wages in the tourist industry; small hoteliers and providers of tourism services concerned about the future of the industry; fishermen affected by the increasing development of the coast; citizens alarmed at their exclusion from the beaches and decision making processes that allow for development in their communities; and environmentalists fighting to have the value of the Jamaica’s natural resources recognized.

At the very moment Jamaica is being irreversibly transformed, Jamaica for Sale is both documenting this transformation and trying to turn the tide.