For the consultation, we did that at different level.
We used expert consultation at the national level.
Then we moved on at the local level to consult with the people, the stakeholders,
such as people working in the hotels, in the tourist industry.
We also go the community level in a place called Whitehall and
Little Bay, which are fisherman villager and
suburban area to really have the best of the local community on
why this beach was eroding and what was the understanding of the processes.
On the scientific aspect, we used aerial photography from 1968,
as well as very high resolution satellites imagery 65 centimeters
resolution from QuickBird to look at the beach erosion, as well as classifying
the ecosystems such as the mangroves, the seagrass, the coral.
And we found out that there was up to 40 meters of beach erosion in 40 years.
That's between 0.5 and 1 meter per year for there were a tremendous erosion.
We tested the global factors.
We had a lot of data on those factors.
But we were limited data on decline of ecosystem.
So we have to generate this study.
So to look at the decline of ecosystem, we take this satellite imagery.
We've classified the coastal and
marine ecosystems such as the dense and seagrass, the coral.
We measured the width of these ecosystems in front of 72 sites where
we had the profile underneath the water, the slope on the beach.
And we extracted those parameters to build a table.
And then we also looked at the parameters in terms of erosion for those 72 sites.
So you see this patterns of large erosion to small erosion,
it varies along the coastline.
And we wanted to understand why it was different in some places
versus in other places.
The statistical regression gave us results.
That's the main factors where the decline of ecosystems.
So the seagrass was the main factors and along with slopes and waves.
And it corresponds to 47% of the model.
So we saw that the seagrass was tremendously important.
The coral was even more so important, in fact,
23 times more important than seagrass for blocking the wave energy.
So the fact that the coral declined was a major influence for
this decline that we see on the beach eroding.
The sea line was a status in 1968.
Then it's eroded to the status in 2008.
This is the current status.
And now with the model, we can erase all the ecosystems artificially in our model.
And this red line,
this gives you the possible shoreline if all the ecosystems are removed.
So you see it was very closed to all the hotel infrastructure.
If we move to another place, it's a rather same set-up.
We have now, we can place a graph where we can move and place an isle.
So what would happen to this red line if we remove all the seagrass for example?
And that gives you the next shoreline beach.
And we can also add 1 kilometer of sea grass and
see that the beach would recover.
So the result of RiVAMP was that climate change was only accountable for
9% of beach erosion.
The rest was locally induced by the destruction of coral
through lack of sewage, lack of sediments, more sediment into the water, through
the conversion of the wetland, could be called the Morass into a crop land, and
the daily removal of the seagrass.
The people that come to Negril,
the tourists, they don't like to swim into the seagrass.
They don't like the seagrass.
But the seagrass is essential for the beach.
The beach like the seagrass.
And the tourists, they do like the beach.
So we have to find a way to reconcile how does ecosystems and
the tourist industry can coincide.
So we talked to the other people.
If you want to remove the seagrass and create a pool where people can swim,
that's okay.
But you have to replant seagrass all around and protect the seagrass,
otherwise, which is what they did.
They also rebuild a sewage power plant to reduce the sediments into the water.