SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The Caribbean media should look at how changing European Union policy on climate change impacts the region’s principal growth sector, the tourism industry, urged a development advocate in Britain.
As Caribbean media and tourism stakeholders prepare for Counterpart International’s 10th Caribbean Media Exchange on Sustainable Tourism (CMEx) in San Juan next week, David Jessop, director of the Caribbean Council said the region’s major tourism markets are moving to tax and regulate carbon emissions from airlines and hotels.
David Jessop, director of the Caribbean Council
“Consumers are becoming daily more aware of the environmental impact of the industry on everything from long haul air travel to waste disposal and those who sell the industry’s product are placing increasing pressure on hoteliers to show their green credentials as a part of their market offering,” he reported.
The ability of the industry in the region to respond and remain competitive is being ignored, says Jessop, also a director of Britain’s Cuba Initiative, who will address the media symposium, May 17-20 at the Holiday Inn in Isla Verde, Puerto Rico.
The publisher of Caribbean Insight and a policy adviser to a number of major industries and institutions in the Caribbean and in Europe, Jessop hopes to encourage the regional media to better understand that although Europe’s relationship with the Caribbean has changed it is still able to exert substantial if indirect influence over the region’s future.
He believes that Europe – the “old world” – still exercises “enormous indirect power” in the Caribbean over issues ranging from environmental security, the future development of tourism to the future of traditional industries such as sugar.
“OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) initiatives, new regulations, changing consumer trends, and flows of development assistance continue to encourage the region towards externally led solutions,” said Jessop. Furthermore he asserted, “while media need to follow more closely trends and developments in Europe, there should be a greater willingness to question European officials.”
