From Guyana to Ja­maica, trav­el and tourism have be­come crit­i­cal ar­eas for in­vest­ment, growth and de­vel­op­ment. No longer are these ac­tiv­i­ties main­stays of the economies of Bar­ba­dos and The Ba­hamas on­ly. All oth­er Caribbean coun­tries are look­ing se­ri­ous­ly at di­ver­si­fy­ing their re­spec­tive economies along the lines of ser­vices with trav­el and tourism be­ing the main ar­eas of fo­cus. The crit­i­cal chal­lenge for all our coun­tries in the Caribbean is that trav­el and tourism are de­mand-dri­ven ac­tiv­i­ties.

In­di­vid­u­als who make de­ci­sions to spend their va­ca­tions in par­tic­u­lar des­ti­na­tions do so on the ba­sis that their dreams and as­pi­ra­tions for a cer­tain kind of hol­i­day will be ful­filled in the des­ti­na­tion of choice. In to­day's world of trav­el and tourism, en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns are now key con­sid­er­a­tions in some vis­i­tors' de­ci­sion-mak­ing ma­tri­ces. Our coun­tries there­fore have one of two choic­es: We can ei­ther turn a blind eye to such de­vel­op­ments and chart an al­ter­na­tive eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment path or we can ac­cept the changes un­fold­ing be­fore our very own eyes and make the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments to cap­i­talise on any for­tunes to be de­rived there­from. Con­se­quent­ly, the idea of de­vel­op­ing "green economies" now seems to be tak­ing root in the Caribbean. But what is a green econ­o­my and does the idea mat­ter for in­di­vid­ual coun­tries here in the Caribbean? Should it mat­ter at all?

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions, "in its sim­plest ex­pres­sion, a green econ­o­my can be de­scribed as one that is low-car­bon, re­source-ef­fi­cient and so­cial­ly in­clu­sive. "A green econ­o­my can take ad­van­tage of new growth tra­jec­to­ries de­signed to be more so­cial­ly in­clu­sive, as well as re­spon­sive to pover­ty re­duc­tion and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ob­jec­tives." There­fore, with trav­el and tourism fast be­com­ing the lead­ing ar­eas of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty across the Caribbean, go­ing green is a must to cap­i­talise on the en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly as­pect of the in­dus­try. Hence, all ef­forts to­ward the de­vel­op­ment of green economies in the re­gion must be ap­plaud­ed and sup­port­ed by all and sundry.

Bar­ba­dos Na­tion