Coastal Tourism, Sustainability, and Climate Change in the Caribbean, Volume II

Martha Honey, Samantha Hogenson

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781631574733
• eBook ISBN: 9781631574849
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

This second volume on coastal tourism and climate change in the Caribbean examines three key supporting sectors: golf, local agriculture and cuisine, and aviation. Today, climate change is propelling accelerated reforms in these three sectors. Initiatives to link local agriculture to tourism are enriching visitor experiences and revitalizing local crops and cuisine, while reducing the carbon impact-the food print-from agricultural imports. Similarly, golf certification programs are providing templates for constructing and operating courses with smaller carbon footprints. In aviation, as well, virtually all international airlines are testing non-fossil fuel alternatives, and a nascent but growing green airport movement is reducing aviation's carbon footprint and improving its resilience. As the volume concludes, coastal tourism in the Caribbean is today addressing two intertwined concerns and opportunities: Òthe impacts of climate change and imperative of responsible tourism.Ó

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Martha Honey

This, the second volume on coastal tourism and climate change, focuses on three important sectors that are closely linked to the tourism industry and experience in the Caribbean: golf, local agriculture and cuisine, and airlines and airports. While beach hotels and resorts are the centerpiece and anchor of the tourism industry, here we examine three auxiliary sectors, which, like accommodations, both contribute to and are impacted by climate change. This volume, like the first, is framed around a central question: How tourism must be sustainably planned, built, and operated in this era of climate change. While focused on the Caribbean, we have included, for comparison purposes, a few case studies from other destinations because they hold innovative and transferable applications for this region.

In broad terms, we look at four key questions surrounding tourism and climate change in the Caribbean:

• How do various sectors of coastal tourism contribute to climate change?
• How are the various sectors experiencing the impacts of climate change?
• What measures have tourism businesses (and governments) taken to date to address climate change?
• Given what climate scientists are predicting for the future, what are the main gaps between current best practices by tourism businesses and the changes required to effectively address climate change?

Like in its companion volume, there are two truths that run through these chapters. The first is that many of the problems facing the Caribbean’s natural environment predate but are exacerbated by climate change. For instance, before climate change was recognized, the Caribbean was heavily dependent on food imports, golf courses were consuming large quantities of water and chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and airlines were striving, for economic reasons, to cut their costly consumption of GHG emitting fossil fuels. A second truth is that many of the techniques for mitigating and adapting to climate change are part of the tool kit of sustainable tourism that has been honed over recent decades by innovative companies and entrepreneurs, often backed by NGOs, researchers, scientists, governments, and international development agencies.

The following are brief synopses of each of the volume’s chapters.

Chapter 2: Golf Courses

In the overview chapter, authors John Nauright, Martha Honey, and Anand Rampersad note that the Caribbean has some 120 golf courses on 24 islands, including, most importantly, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, and Jamaica. Despite this relatively modest number of courses, the amount of land used for golf is substantial relative to land available in the Caribbean. In addition, the Caribbean’s golf market is heavily dependent on U.S. tourists, while U.S. consumer interest in golf has been declining for more than a decade. Despite this downward trend, golf courses remain a standard component of tourism development, largely because vacation homes built on golf greens command premium prices. Therefore, real estate speculation, not consumer demand, is a main driver behind new golf course development. The authors note further that standard golf course construction and operations—including their overuse of scarce water, application of harsh chemicals, and introduction of nonnative grasses, sands, and soils—are environmentally unsustainable in the Caribbean, and in many ways contribute to climate change. In recent decades, this range of concerns has spawned both anti-golf initiatives as well as certification programs to develop greener golf courses. One example is the Puntacana Resort & Club in the Dominican Republic, which has incorporated a wide range of environmentally friendly and cost-saving features into the construction and operations of its two golf courses.

The first case study looks at the Caribbean’s most innovative and environmentally sustainable golf course: the recently completed Irie Fields golf course in St. Kitts. This course has earned GEO certification for reducing its water consumption; using locally sourced materials and native plants and grasses, as well as renewable energy; and incorporating organically grown fruit trees and other crops into the landscape. Another case study highlights creative alternatives, including open space preserves and organic farms that can add more value and be more sustainable than constructing golf courses. The final case study looks at the two golf certification programs, Audubon International and Golf Environmental Organization (GEO), that are being used by some dozen Caribbean courses to bring environmental and social improvements, financial savings, and climate change resilience.

Chapter 3: Sustainable Food Sourcing

In their overview essay, Todd Comen and Eva Maria Naeher note that while tourism and agriculture are the two leading local industries in most of the Caribbean, there has been little integration of local food production with the tourism sector. Food imports to the Caribbean have been growing, reaching US$5 billion in 2015, with a large segment going directly into tourism and fast food businesses. The ecological impact of agricultural imports—or food print— is also growing as long distance transport, storage, and waste all contribute to GHG emissions. The authors argue that the cost and climate food print of imports, combined with growing tourist interest in local cuisine (slow and organic foods), makes local and regional farming and food “ripe for support.” While there are challenges and constraints to local food production—some exacerbated by climate change—on many islands there are innovative farm-to-table initiatives. Examples include Belmont Estate in Grenada, Island Outpost Resorts’ Pantrepant farmstead in Jamaica, Belcampo Lodge in Belize, and Belle Mont Farm in St. Kitts. The authors conclude that the “numerous efforts underway to rekindle small-scale sustainable agricultural production and forge links between farmers, residents, and the hospitality sector” hold the potential “to increase food security at the local level and decrease the carbon footprint” of food imports.

The case study of the Juniper Restaurant in Burlington, Vermont, showcases how the multilayered linkages between local restaurants and chefs, area farmers, food distribution organizations, and compost and food waste haulers have forged a new model for sourcing and delivering food. The next case study examines the early but mixed results of a Jamaican government initiative to use greenhouses to scale up domestic food production for the tourism sector and improve its resilience to climate change. A more successful alternative, the authors argue, may be to scale down production, exemplified by slow tourism found in Jamaica’s Treasure Beach, where visitors stay in community-based accommodations and learn about and can help prepare local dishes. This provides unique and authentic vacation experiences for travelers, directly benefits small farmers, and breaks down social barriers. A third case study features the annual Restaurant Week in St. Kitts and Nevis, held with the aims of (1) strengthening linkages between local food producers and the tourism sector, (2) engaging the local population in their own culture, and (3) promoting inclusion of traditionally marginalized microenterprises.

Chapter 4: Airports and Airlines

The final chapter is, perhaps most fittingly or prophetically, on aviation – airlines and airports – as the key sector of the tourism industry that ties the Caribbean to the rest of the world. Airlines, along with cruise ships and yachts, have made it possible for tourism to become the dominant industry in the Caribbean. Yet, as Milan Janić essay demonstrates, the Caribbean accounts for only a tiny fraction of global air passengers, with its 70 mostly small airports and domination of foreign carriers over domestic and regional airlines. Globally, the aviation sector produces 2 percent of total CO₂ emissions, meaning GHG emissions from air traffic in the Caribbean is relatively small. Yet for both environmental and economic reasons, the international airline industry is actively involved in efforts to reduce use of GHG emitting fossil fuels. Janić reviews the effort by airlines and a range of national and international organizations to reduce GHG emissions through, in the short term, improved fuel efficiency; in the medium term, through carbon neutral growth by setting a cap on the net annual emissions of GHGs; and, in the long term—by 2050—reducing net annual CO₂ emissions to 50 percent of 2005 levels. These goals are to be achieved, Janić writes, through applying a four pillar strategy of improved technology, improved efficiency of operations, improved infrastructure, and implementing the Global Market-Based Measures (GMM) to fill the remaining emissions gap. As the Caribbean, like other regions, works to meet these goals, its airplanes and airports face some particular challenges. One of the most important is that the region’s airports are concentrated along coastlines, making them particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. There is, therefore, a need for a comprehensive, Caribbean-specific strategy for the aviation sector.

The four case studies provide concrete examples of sustainability initiatives by airports and airlines that hold models and lessons relevant to the Caribbean. The Punta Cana International Airport case study traces its origins from a small, privately owned airport that was deep green and innovative by economic necessity into a leading Latin American airport, handling 66 percent of passengers arriving in the Dominican Republic. While retaining its climate-sensitive architectural design and impressive waste recycling facility, with its expansion, the airport has had to compromise on other key features such as air conditioning and more enclosed spaces to fit U.S. government regulations and traveler preferences. The next case study describes the Portland (Maine) International Jetport, which is a LEED gold certified airport (the second in the United States) committed to sustainable and climate-resilient design, construction, and operations. Its green features include high content of recycled materials in flooring and roofing, large reductions in energy and water consumption, renewable certified wood ceilings, reclaiming and recycling of up to 70 percent of its deicing fluids, and geothermal heating and cooling systems that significantly reduce GHG emissions. The third case study examines Virgin Atlantic Airways’ Change is in the Air sustainability strategy with targets for CO₂ emission reductions and a wide range of environmental and social projects, including upgrades to more fuel and carbon efficient planes, reduction of on-board weight, new methods for aircraft cleaning and maintenance, passenger purchased carbon offset programs, and major investments in sustainable biofuel experiments, including conversion of ethanol to jet fuel. The final case study looks at JetBlue’s BluePledge that is investing in new technology to decrease GHG emissions and develop biofuels, as well as its project to try to create a new economic model that correlates ecosystem health (in this instance, pristine Caribbean beaches) to airlines’ main economic measure, RASM, or revenue per available seat mile. While ultimately the eco-factor data was not consistent enough to prove a statistically significant relationship between healthy beaches and higher RASM, the project did demonstrate that, for instance, tourists highly value clean, litter-free beaches—and that this is one problem that is relatively easy to address.

Conclusion: Challenges and Opportunities for the Caribbean

In the final essay, which serves as a conclusion for both coastal tourism volumes, Roger-Mark De Souza writes that “two key issues top the list of concerns and opportunities” for the Caribbean: “the impacts of climate change and imperative of responsible tourism.” While the Caribbean is one of the regions most affected by climate change, responsible tourism principles and practices contain many of the tools and strategies for successful resilience, mitigation, and adaptation. De Souza argues that despite the Caribbean’s vulnerability to climate change, the region contributes less than 1 percent to global GHG emissions and it is therefore often overlooked in international climate change deliberations. However, De Souza posits, the Caribbean, with it is many island states, “also holds promise for experimentation and resilience, incubating new ideas and approaches that could be replicated elsewhere.”

The way forward for Caribbean tourism in the era of climate change includes, he writes, five key principles. They are to: (1) celebrate innovation but move beyond incubation, (2) tackle the known challenges, (3) implement adaptive management, (4) link to other key sectors, and (5) build a consumer-facing communications strategy. While the Caribbean’s vulnerabilities to climate change are increasing, the innovations identified in these two volumes on coastal tourism will help to forge the region’s tourism future. As De Souza concludes, “These initiatives can inform other parts of the world and demonstrate that small islands (with big oceans) can lead the way in finding groundbreaking solutions to emerging climate change challenges, while ensuring the well-being of its peoples and preserving the natural environment for generations to come.”

CHAPTER 2

Golf Courses

Overview-The Greening of Golf? Impacts of Climate Change on Caribbean Golf Course Development

John Nauright, Martha Honey, and Anand Rampersad

With origins tracing back to fifteenth century Scotland, the modern sport of golf is now played in virtually every country in the world. The growth of golf during the twentieth century was massive, with the United States alone going from a handful of pioneer courses to a peak of 16,052 courses in 2008, before a downturn to 15,372 in 2015. In April 2015, there were 34,011 golf facilities worldwide, with many countries promoting golf as an important tourism activity.¹

There are an estimated 59 million golfers worldwide, with 58 percent in North America (the United States and Canada). Of the North American golfers, 5 to 10 percent, or between 2.9 and 5.9 million, travel overseas each year for the purpose of playing golf.² The International Association of Golfing Tour Operators estimates that the global golf tourism market is worth over $20 billion per year and that golf tourists spend considerably more than the average tourist. However, as Simon Hudson notes, “It is difficult to isolate the full extent and impact of golf tourism, since trips which include golfing or watching tournaments may very well encompass other activities, such as conventions, corporate meetings, incentives, or other leisure activities.”³

The number of golf courses in the Caribbean is comparatively small, accounting for less than 1 percent of the global total. As can be seen in Table 2.1, in 2014 there were 121 courses on 24 islands, including the Dominican Republic with 28, Puerto Rico with 20, The Bahamas with 11, Jamaica with 10, and Trinidad and Tobago with 8.⁴ These five countries account for 64 percent of the total courses in the Caribbean.

Table 2.1 Location and Number of Golf Courses in the Caribbean region in 2009 and 2014⁵

Location	2009	2014
Anguilla	1	1
Antigua and Barbuda	3	2
Aruba	2	3
The Bahamas	10	11
Barbados	5	7
Bermuda	8	7
Bonaire	1	1
Cayman Islands	3	3
Cuba	2	1
Curaçao	2	3
Dominican Republic	34	28
Grenada	1	1
Guadeloupe	1	1
Haiti	1	1
Jamaica	11	10
Martinique	1	1
Puerto Rico	23	20
St. Kitts and Nevis	3	3
St. Lucia	2	2
St. Maarten	1	1
St. Vincent and the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword and Acknowledgments
• Key Definitions
• List of Acronyms
• Map of the Caribbean
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Golf Courses
• Chapter 3 Sustainable Food Sourcing
• Chapter 4 Airports and Airlines
• Chapter 5 Conclusion
• Contribution Authors
• Index