Dr. Margaret Jones Williams (centre), president of Jamaica Institute of Environmental Professionals (JIEP), speaking yesterday with Franklyn McDonald (left), chief executive officer, National Environment & Planning Agency (NEPA) and Dr. Cynthia Fridgen, president of the US National Association of Environmental Professionals, at the start of a two-day conference on sustainable development at the Jamaica Conference Centre, Kingston. - Norman Grindley /Staff Photographer TOURISM, THE region's main income earner, is at risk of being devastated by hurricanes and sea level rise linked to global warming and climate change, environmental scientist Marlene Attzs has warned.
She told scientists and environmentalists at yesterday's first national scientific conference on the environment hosted by the Jamaica Institute of Environmental Professional (JIEP) that far more proactive strategies were required in the region to protect the important income earner.
"We are naturally constrained in terms of ecology - we can't help that we are in the hurricane belt (but) we have to maintain the development of the tourism industry within that constraint. We also have to maintain it, in so far as we agree to the approach of sustainable development that requires a fusion of the environment, economics and socio-cultural aspects," said Ms. Attzs. She is a doctoral candidate attached to the Sustainable Economic Development Unit for Small Island Developing State (SIDS) at the University of the West Indies' St. Augustine campus in Trinidad and Tobago.
Climate change and sea level rise as a result of global warming affect the tourism industry through loss of beaches to erosion; inundation, degradation of the ecosystems (such as loss of coral reefs to bleaching and saline intrusion). Since the majority of the region's tourist facilities are close to the sea, they are also vulnerable to infrastructural damage by sea level rise and natural disasters.
"We are already seeing the impact of water intrusion in the Caribbean on some of our hotels. One of the things we sell to tourists is that they can just walk out of their hotel rooms and be on the beach. While that might be an attractive tourism product, it really is not the wisest course of action, and some of us have actually had the experience of being in countries during a hurricane or afterwards where we see the impact of water intrusion," Ms. Attzs said.
Within the last 100 years, she said that Jamaica had suffered the most in the region from the effects of natural disasters and had been allocated the largest chunk, nearly 50 per cent, of the total amount of funding to the region by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) within the last 25 years, for post-disaster rehabilitation. She said further that it was estimated that it could cost Jamaica as much as US$462 million to protect its coastline from a one metre rise in sea level.
Climate change, Ms. Attzs said, could also affect the demand side of the tourism sector - warmer climates could make the region less attractive.
"Tourists coming from a temperature climate feel more comfortable in an ideal temperature of about 21 degree Celsius, also if the temperate countries from which most of our visitors come, start to have warmer temperatures then it is a disincentive to come to the Caribbean," she said.
