[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item and related links to our attention.] Jennifer Hough (The Irish Times) writes, “When Hurricane Irma devastated the region in 2017, it paved the way for the Antigua-based administration to make good on its intent to turn Barbuda into a millionaires’ playground.”
A lone paddleboarder glides across calm aquamarine water as “yachties” steer a tiny dinghy towards the shoreline’s pristine sands. It’s a picture-perfect Caribbean vista – but behind the idyllic scene lies a troubling reality. Barbuda, a tiny low-lying island 23km long and 12km wide, is in the grip of a modern-day version of a gold rush.
The treasure in question is its unspoilt, almost empty beaches and crystal-clear waters. The rush to exploit it is devastating: bulldozed sand dunes and dredged wetlands, private communities constructed on top of turtle-nesting beaches – a precarious ecosystem and culture under threat as luxury developments are constructed for the ultra-wealthy.
“They want the whole waterfront area,” says John Mussington, chairman of the island’s local government, the Barbuda Council, gesturing down the beach towards one of the most high-profile developments, part-owned by Robert De Niro. “Everything will be fenced off because the properties will be owned by the millionaires so they can enjoy their private lifestyle. That means they don’t want to see people like me.”
De Niro’s $250 million development is just one of a number of projects under construction on Barbuda, the smaller, more remote, island of a former British colony, Antigua and Barbuda. In an interview with the New York Times in January, De Niro and his partners said their project would respect the island’s ecosystem and protect it from hurricanes.
Katy Horne, Paradise Found’s managing director, said the design and construction adhered to Miami-Dade hurricane building code standards. She said the one-storey buildings would be set back from the flood plain and that dunes, mangroves and other vegetation would protect against winds and water surges.
De Niro and his business partner, Australian billionaire James Packer, are building on the site of the abandoned K Club resort, where Princess Diana once famously holidayed, naming it Paradise Found when they first set their sights on it.
Mussington smiles wryly at that. “Imagine a millionaire coming to find what they think is their paradise. We have been stewards over this island for years. Now that you’re realising what we have done to create this paradise, you’re coming back in the form of what you call luxury tourism and real estate speculation, to use up the resources, exhaust it, and just discard us again? We have to say no to that. It is colonisation 2.0.”
Barbudans are the descendants of enslaved Africans, who, after emancipation in 1834, were left to live on the island, primarily because it was wild and scrubby and seen as unsuitable for much else. Since then Barbudans have communally governed the island, a practice that was codified in national law in 2007. The system of customary land tenure is the reason Barbuda has remained an unspoilt Caribbean island, where people practise hunting, fishing, living from the land and, importantly, are not dependent on tourism for economic survival.
Now, all of this is under threat under the guise of “sustainable” tourism. [. . .]
When Hurricane Irma, a devastating category-five storm, hit the region in 2017, it provided a pathway for prime minister Gaston Browne’s administration to make good on its long-signalled intent to turn the island into a millionaires’ playground.
As Barbudans endured a forced evacuation from their island, the government overturned their customary land rights and moved heavy machinery on to the island, not to rebuild for locals but to carve out space in a pristine forest for a new airport runway.
Frustratingly for locals, this same government leads climate change advocacy on the international stage and is a prominent member of Small Island Developing States (Sids), which the Irish Government funds to assist small island nations to overcome climate issues. [. . .]
Jackie Frank, an elected member of the Barbuda Council, says Barbudans are a proud people who simply want to retain control of their island’s destiny. “All Barbudans are land defenders,” the soft-spoken retired teacher says. Being a land defender took Frank and Mussington to the highest court in the region in 2023. Their case began as a legal challenge to the airport construction, which took place without consultation, and ended up as an appeal in the UK’s Privy Council in London, the highest court for Antigua and Barbuda. Ironically, this colonial-era institution provided the justice their domestic courts had denied.
“What the privy court ruling means,” says Frank, “is that whether it’s me or Mussi or whoever, can stand up and say, I don’t agree with that. I want to see the documents. I want the information … We have the right just to complain, to have a voice. That’s what was confirmed [by the Privy Council].” [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.irishtimes.com/world/americas/2025/07/06/colonisation-20-inhabitants-of-unspoilt-caribbean-island-barbuda-push-back-against-robert-de-niro-linked-development
By the same author:
Barbuda: A case study in disaster capitalism and resistance
Jennifer Hough, Irish Centre for Human Rights, April 2, 2025
https://ichrgalway.org/2025/04/02/barbuda-a-case-study-in-disaster-capitalism-and-resistance
Of related interest:
Disaster Capitalism Comes to Barbuda
William Bruno, Current Affairs, June 16, 2025
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/disaster-capitalism-comes-to-barbuda