While rights to coastline access are hotly contested just about anywhere there is a wave, things in Jamaica have become aggressively exclusive. According to Jamaica’s own National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), a meager 2.8 miles of the nation’s 494-mile coastline is open to the public. The rest? Corporations, ultra-luxury hotels, and private residences are at liberty to grant—or violently restrict—access to anyone they choose.

In a recent report for Airmail , travel correspondent Ben Ryder Howe traveled to Montego Bay and the north coast to document the grim reality for ordinary beachgoers. “The beaches seemed to exist in an enclosed world, barricaded behind thick, high walls,” Howe noted, pointing to the dwindling access points for local kids to cliff-jump and swim.

Ironies abound in the report. Howe’s copy was sandwiched between two massive Ralph Lauren ads—the very fashion mogul who owns the Round Hill Hotel and Villas, set on a 110-acre private peninsula outside Montego Bay.…