Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Tourism, Ed­mund Bartlett, has called on his Caribbean col­leagues to “cham­pi­on” the blue econ­o­my of the re­gion.

Bartlett made the call as de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress at the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank sum­mit at COP28.

The top­ic un­der con­sid­er­a­tion was; We are Caribbean: We are the So­lu­tion.

The Ja­maican out­lined a se­ries of threats re­gion­al eco-sys­tems face amid glob­al warm­ing.

He told the au­di­ence, “the im­pacts of cli­mate change, over­fish­ing and oth­er un­sus­tain­able prac­tices, and even some ma­rine tourism ac­tiv­i­ties dam­age ma­rine ecosys­tems such as coral reefs that are vi­tal for main­tain­ing eco­log­i­cal di­ver­si­ty and reg­u­lat­ing cli­mate.”

The Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) has es­ti­mat­ed the cost of re­duced tourism due to coral bleach­ing at $12 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

The Blue Econ­o­my seeks the sus­tain­able use of ocean re­sources for eco­nom­ic growth, im­proved liveli­hoods and jobs, and ocean ecosys­tem health.

Bartlett says “all in­dus­tries” have a moral re­spon­si­bil­i­ty “es­pe­cial­ly those that sig­nif­i­cant­ly har­ness or ex­ploit ocean and ma­rine re­sources in their val­ue chains” to make greater ef­forts to pro­tect grad­u­al­ly de­plet­ing oceans and ma­rine sys­tems.

He went fur­ther in say­ing Caribbean na­tions can take the lead in cham­pi­oning the blue econ­o­my, adding that the re­gion of­fers sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties for the de­vel­op­ment of po­ten­tial­ly lu­cra­tive niche tourism seg­ments that bal­ance en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and eco­log­i­cal con­ser­va­tion with eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. “These in­clude health and well­ness, med­ical, cul­ture and her­itage, eco-tourism, and wildlife or na­ture tourism,” the min­is­ter said.

He went fur­ther in say­ing there are al­so op­por­tu­ni­ties for Caribbean tourist en­ti­ties to in­cor­po­rate sus­tain­able en­er­gy sources that are nat­u­ral­ly avail­able in the re­gion such as so­lar pow­er, wind, ge­ot­her­mal or bio­mass in­to tourism in­fra­struc­ture to re­duce the sec­tor’s re­liance on fos­sil fu­els, con­tribut­ing to a more cli­mate-re­silient en­er­gy frame­work.