Guyana’s former President Bharrat Jagdeo has urged tourism officials to whip some of the Caribbean governments out of their sleep in an effort to help promote a stronger global push to fight climate change. He also called for a revamp of immigration policies to designate a single visa for entry to the region as it would make travel easier for residents of large developing countries, which are crucial to sustaining tourism in the future.
Former President Bharrat Jagdeo
Jagdeo, who delivered the keynote address to the ongoing Caribbean Tourism Organisation conference via video conferencing from his hotel room in Congo, urged the delegates to focus on finding solutions to climate change, given its future impact on the tourism sector in the Caribbean. He warned delegates that the region must be aware of the threats climate change pose to this major sector.
Citing a previous World Bank study, Jagdeo revealed that the Caribbean has about 15 of the most climate vulnerable countries. The region has seen many disasters, including those caused by hurricanes and floods, creating massive economic unstableness and damage to infrastructure.
The former Guyanese head of state said there have been many failures in the climate change fight, citing the Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban conferences. “It’s a failure of the developed world, to come up with an agreement that would lead us on a path to sustainability,” he stressed during his keynote address.
Four-degree rise
Jagdeo said that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sustainable trajectory to limit global temperature could only be achieved by 2050, with countries cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 per cent on a 90-90 baseline. “Until now there is not such agreement and had we such an agreement we had a 50 per cent probability of avoiding catastrophic climate change,” he said.
The recipient of the United Nations 2010 Champion of the Earth award said that the world is currently on a path to a four-degree rise in global temperature. At this global temperature, the forests will die, the corals will die, the sea will rise, and most of the beaches in the Caribbean will become nonexistent, Jagdeo pointed out. He believes that there are many sleepwalking governments who do not understand the importance of having a global accord to limit greenhouse gases.
He urged the delegates to raise awareness of the threat climate change poses to the way of life in the Caribbean.
Another issue Jagdeo pointed to is the fact that by 2030 some three billion middle-class people will join the world, most of whom will emerge from the developing world. This will create the largest area of income growth, Jagdeo said.
He added: “We have to be much more aggressive in how we pursue those markets, because the only way we can be sustainable or economically viable is if we aggressively pursue those markets. Some countries have been doing this, but I think on the whole, our attitude and many of the things we have to do to secure the markets are lacking behind.”
Immigration
Jagdeo believes that too many immigration officials think that they have to keep people from China and Brazil and India out of the region’s markets, so the region’s immigration policies are discouraging. “Many of our tourism institutes and structures are not training people to deal with those tourists. Our language training, training on culture and food and customs practices are lagging way behind those touring markets,” he stated.
He advised that governments should examine specific plans as to how the entire Caribbean can develop a single visa policy to make it easier for people from those parts of the world to travel to the Caribbean.
Another issue he examined during his address was devising ways of how the Caribbean can remain attractive to tourists from all across the world.
He, therefore, urged governments to cash in on the opportunity to promote health services because of the high costs in North America and Europe. People, he said, tend to travel to destinations that can provide health tourism and the Caribbean can play a major role in this area.
Jagdeo also called on all of the 32 CTO member states to expand on their education industries, creating universities that will attract people into the region. “What I’m advocating for is using and combining our traditional tourism products, with new products. I think a combination of the two will ensure that we remain viable in the future and that we remain attractive, as well as very competitive,” Jagdeo stated.
Touching on another very important topic – finance tourism related activities, Jagdeo said that governments need to look for innovative forms of financing in order to sustain the regional tourism industry.
He said, “Climate financing, funds that are already there for adaptation and mitigation, can be used in the tourism sector and we have to be creative about putting together products…”
Regional travel
In concluding his address, the former Guyanese leader urged participants to discuss improving regional travel by making it cheaper and affordable.
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