Earlier this year we had a conversation with John, Jackie and Gulliver from Barbuda about their island's unique relationship with land and how their centuries-old communal system was being threatened. Before getting to the interview we wanted to provide some important context on Barbuda.  

In 1685 The British Crown leased most of the island of Barbuda to the Codrington family who organized it as a plantation logistics hub; growing crops, herding cattle, and providing most of the supplies for the Codrington sugar estates in Antigua and Barbados. The Codringtons’ repeated attempts to establish plantations for cotton and other crops failed, in part due to the shallow soils, low rainfall, and a lack of surface water. For centuries through emancipation and independence, much of Barbuda’s distinctiveness came from the communal land-tenure system, itself rooted in three centuries of open-range cattle herding. (Potter & Sluyter, 2010)
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This enduring legacy differentiates Barbuda from other Caribbean islands, including Antigua. In fact, Barbudans resisted independence from Britain in 1981 to avoid being forced to adapt their land system to Antigua’s freehold system and its commitment to large-scale, coastal tourism. Unlike Antigua, Barbuda’s coastline is preserved. Food is grown in small agroecological provision grounds or backyards, and people hunt and fish, selling food to the community. There are no fences. A typical plot for a private house is no larger than 0.5 acres. The built environment is limited to the roughly 600 homes in the island’s only town, Codrington, and a few small-scale tourist resorts.

And yet, it is the island’s immaculateness that has also attracted the rich and powerful to it. Princess Diana vacationed at (and made famous) the K-Club, which had a lease on the southern beach, Coco Point. In 2015, the American actor Robert De Niro announced his plans to redevelop the then-abandoned resort into a 391-acre luxury, “Nobu-branded” residential community, which he and his billionaire partner James Packer have called “Paradise Found.” The resort is anticipated to include a Nobu Hotel of fifty separate villas with private pools and Nobu residences for sale. The annual lease for the land is $62,000 USD, a small sum compared to the millions the proposed residences will cost. (Line Algoed & Antonio Carmona Báez, 2023)

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‍Barbudans’ communal land tenure system is unlike anything else in the Caribbean, how did this come to be?

In 1834, when the emancipation proclamation was read in Antigua, Barbudans would not have heard it directly. But with the mailboats that travelled between Antigua and Barbuda carrying charcoal, salt, provisions, the word would have come back to our ancestors that people were free. So essentially, when they heard that, they say, okay, people [over there are] free, that means we are free as well. Freedom for us meant that we basically continued to use the land as we have used it which was in the African [communal] tradition.  

When slavery was abolished, Codrington, who owned most of the land on the island, got compensated for the loss of his ‘assets.’ So, he packed up his Georgie bungle and he left Barbuda. But do you know what happened to the assets? The assets were us; we were left there on Barbuda and that solidified our hold on the land. For us, the land was our life; that's how we fish, we hunt, we survive.

For quite a long period after emancipation, nobody wanted to take responsibility for Barbuda. It was only in 1904, that an arrangement was made for Barbuda to be annexed by Antigua, which was where the Governor of the Leeward Islands sat (The Leeward Islands was a semi-federal English Colony including Anguilla, Antigua, Barbuda, Dominica, Montserrat, Nevis, Sait Christopher and the Virgin Islands). For convenience, we were latched on to Antigua because nobody wanted to take the responsibility to maintain a deputy governor on the island nor the expenses of the church and whatnot. The 1904 ordinance made provision for that arrangement.  
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Barbuda was an outpost with a warden that implemented the 1904 ordinance, dealing with provision grounds¹ and how they ought to be allocated under the communal ownership structure. In 1976, we got the Local Government Act, which established the Barbuda Council as our local government, replacing the functions of the warden.

1 - Provision grounds is the term used to describe areas of land often of poor quality, mountainous or stony, which plantation owners set aside for the enslaved Africans to grow their own food, such as sweet potatoes, yams and plantains – Liverpool Museum.

‍We got independence in 1981, but the Barbudan delegation went to those talks with the mandate that we were not going into independence with Antigua. We always feared that going into independence with a larger country would put us at risk where they would take our land and do as they please. In any event, we were forced into independence, becoming unwilling participants in the newly independent nation of  Antigua and Barbuda. [Barbuda is the largest but least populated parish in the nation-state of Antigua and Barbuda].  

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Was there any autonomy within this unwilling marriage?

2007 was when the Barbuda Land Act passed which essentially said, lands in Barbuda are owned in common by the people of Barbuda, and land shall not be sold. That was the first time that our communal land system was formalized into legislation.  

They [the government] cannot change that unilaterally because it's entrenched in the constitution. That is our only protection right now in terms of maintaining our system. Under the common ownership system, everybody is the owner of the land.  

1. Once you reach the age of 18, you're entitled to a plot of land on which you can build your family residence. And that can be inherited forever to your family down the line.  

2. You're also entitled to land for agriculture/grazing, and that remains yours as long as it's in production. Once you stop producing or you no longer use it, it goes back into the pool.  

3. And there's a third commercial lands where you can lease a piece of land for your commercial business, and that's a lease arrangement that you can enter.

‍Antigua, like most Caribbean islands, has a private property rights system. Are there differences in the quality of life between Barbuda and Antigua?

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In 2012, the government brought in consultants to examine the levels of poverty across the nation. You know what they found? Barbuda was the only parish where there was literally no poverty. With the resources that we have access to; hunting, lobster fishing, nobody can essentially be hungry. The lobster export business brings more money into every single pocket in Barbuda overall. The overall economic figures will tell you that tourism is the largest sector of the economy in Barbuda but it's not, it is fishing. And it's also the foundation of food security; because everyone has access to fish, to hunt, to gather crab, land turtles, to use their provision grounds for farming and whatnot. That's a wealth that we have - so you will not see poverty around the place.  
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Also, the quality of the housing stock is far superior in Barbuda than it is anywhere in Antigua. Over there you have to be able to afford or rent land and that is difficult, so you end up with these shacks on blocks for housing. You don't find that in Barbuda, once you build your house, it's a solid concrete cinder block house. For example, in 1995, when Hurricane Luis hit both islands, the damage in Barbuda was minimal compared to what was in Antigua; again because of the housing quality.
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‍You mentioned Hurricane Luis in the 90s, but more recently Hurricane Irma did significant damage. How was Barbuda impacted?

Hurricane Irma in 2017 hit us and the government in Antigua decided that Barbuda was uninhabitable. Everybody was forced to evacuate, but their intention was to redevelop Barbuda as a private island for the sale of luxury real estate. They government almost immediately repealed a lot of laws including the Barbuda Land Act. So we are fighting now to maintain our communal land tenure system despite the government's actions. They may be able to repeal the 2007 Barbuda Land Act, but what they cannot do is to repeal the 1976 Local Government Act, which brought the Barbuda Council into being, which has primary responsibility for administering the island of Barbuda. So they cannot change that unilaterally because it's entrenched in the constitution.  
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After the hurricane did the entire population return to Barbuda?

Yeah, the majority of the population has come back but there is a change in demographics across the island because of the developments that are happening. The scale and pace of development is ridiculous, so too is their disregard for our environment. The construction laborers are from Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, Belize, Colombia and Mexico. And I think that Belize and Mexico are probably the largest share. Now when we say migrant workers, you have to understand that Barbuda has a small population of about 2000 people. They outnumber us.
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They're looking to create real estate market bubbles, which do not include us indigenous people. When they say that people with CARICOM or Antigua and Barbuda passports are coming, you have to understand that we are talking about neo-colonialists buying citizenship through investments. They're not indigenous people, they are not even indigenous people from our neighbouring islands. These are people from Russia, Dubai, China; they buy the passports so that they can come in. It is a decimation of a people whose land and culture we are talking about. We're literally fighting for our existence and there is no over-exaggeration. I mean, you're watching it happen in real time now.
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What does reclamation of the island look like?

Well, listen, there are diametrically opposed views of the future of Barbuda. At this very moment, lands cannot be sold in Barbuda (the current legislation only allows leasing of the land, barring individual ownership of any of the communal lands ). But if the central government has their way, they will sell the lands in Barbuda in a very short space of time. This weekend the cadastral mapping via airplane and so on has been happening. So in order to thwart the intentions of the central government, the disaster capitalists, the colonialists, the imperialists and the modern day buccaneers; my personal thinking is that we need to design, build and invite the Barbudan diaspora to return home and occupy the lands over ten strategic points over the island with communities of ten to 30 properties.

Barbuda has a very small population of about 2000. I would expect that the diaspora is probably, I'm guessing, but probably 10,000 - 15,000. That's basically the states, New York predominantly, but throughout the states, Canada, Toronto and UK. I think the diaspora plays a very important part in the protection of Barbuda and have done so historically. With such a small population and having such a unique history, you have to imagine if we go back a couple hundred years here in Barbuda, when you talk about an island of 500 persons. That is literally probably about 15 original families.

The planning of these communities is a continuation of centuries of not only communal land tenure but also communal thinking, communal actions, communal fishing, communal export, and communal everything. This return of Barbudans living in this way would be a demonstrable example for other Caribbean islands.

In addition to strategic development planning, are there any other political strategies that you are pursuing?

The reality is that governments come and go in terms of politicians and their philosophy. But I make no bones between either party - we are aiming for secession right now! It may seem ridiculous because we would be the smallest country in the world. And one may ask if that is possible but we believe from the resources we have and from the strength of our diaspora that we are in a very good position for secession.

We are looking at a five to seven-year plan leading us toward secession. We will work within the system to allow us to become autonomous and join our bigger brothers and sisters of the Caribbean. We need security against the opposition, which is coming from Antigua, who is entertaining neo-colonialism. This is real and we are at a pivotal moment where we are either going to get it together and set up these communities now and make that happen, or we're going to lose the island. I think that if we can pull it off successfully here, it may not be that the other islands can replicate what we're doing as a whole but emulate some of the things that we are trying to do.  

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We know that there have been numerous legal cases brought against private developers as well as the Government, what does the legal battle look like?

I think for us to continue, whether it's in court or out of court, data is important. We need to be able to prove and document how we are being treated as a population because it is verging on inhumane. This documentation would support us in advancing our drive toward secession. So that's what is important to me; fighting them in any way we can. But if we've got research and data that backs up what we're saying, then that will make our case for secession even stronger.

And the other thing is that research will help guide our development of housing, infrastructure education, healthcare and protection of our environment. A lot of the problems [on an island this small] is that we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the land. With no thought as to what the land can actually sustain in terms of population and how we should be using our resources.  

Since chatting with Jackie, John and Gulliver there have been some critical litigation wins relevant for the entire English-speaking Caribbean.

On 27^th of February 2024, in a landmark decision, the UK Privy Council ruled in favour of Barbudan residents John Mussington and Jacklyn Frank against the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal, granting them the legal right to challenge the controversial airport development on the island. This case is a pivotal moment for land defenders throughout the Caribbean, affirming that ordinary citizens, not just experts, can legally and successfully challenge development projects that endanger the land they steward.

It highlights the importance of comprehensive environmental impact assessments to safeguard critical resources like aquifers. The ruling exposes failures in due process, including illegal construction and lack of public consultation, and reinforces the principle that communities must be involved in environmental decisions. Importantly, it dismisses the idea that only experts can raise environmental concerns, affirming that anyone with a stake in the land and environment has the right to participate in legal proceedings. By championing community participation and transparency, the case marked a powerful victory for environmental justice, setting a precedent for future battles under the Escazú Agreement across the Caribbean.
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The people of Barbuda are deeply connected to the communal relationship they have with their island and continue to fight local and global forces.  Stay up to date with their fights by following SaveBarbuda.org, regional partners Stronger Caribbean Together and their legal partners the Global Legal Action Network.

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