Tourists prepare to board boats run by reef operators at Tobago's Store Bay beach, to take a trip to the world famous Buccoo Reef. Credit: Jewel Fraser/IPS

By Jewel Fraser
SCARBOROUGH, Jun 5 2014 (IPS)

An initiative to reduce the carbon footprint of Tobago’s tourism sector may be stymied by “bread-and-butter issues” and the failure of government authorities to vigorously pursue the initiative.

In 2012, the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) completed a pilot project for the Caribbean Carbon Neutral Tourism Programme (CCNTP) in four Caribbean countries, including Tobago, with the aim of enhancing the tourism sector’s resilience to climate change,

However, the initiative in Tobago has borne little fruit, with some who work in the sector saying they learned about the programme only from media reports.

Tourism is a vital part of Tobago’s life and economy, with reports stating that tourism provides more than 40 percent of Tobago’s employment and 90 percent of its export earnings.As it is now, everybody is going about business as usual. [Reducing carbon emissions] is not much of a concern. The greater concern is bread and butter issues." -- Dexter Black, president of the Reef Tour Operators

As such, tourism plays an important role in the island’s viability.

The tourism sector was the focus of the carbon neutral programme by the CCCCC “because of its economic importance to many of the Caribbean countries. The methodologies and lessons learnt under the program would be able to be applied not only to the tourism sectors of other countries but also to the other economic sectors,” the CCNTP project manager Earl Green told IPS.

“The specific objectives [of the carbon neutral programme] were to devise ways of attracting new sources of financing for (1) the scaling-up of low carbon investments in the tourism sector; and (2) reducing the sector’s vulnerability to climate change,” according to Green.

The initial phase of the CCNTP focused on assessing the carbon footprint of the tourism sector in four islands — the Bahamas, Belize, Barbados and Tobago. With that in mind, an online carbon footprint assessment tool was created that would allow persons working in the tourism sector in those islands to analyse how much carbon emissions their business was producing.

The Bahamas and Belize have since chosen to move forward to the next stage of the carbon neutral tourism programme. Green said that the Bahamas and Belize wish to make its tourism destinations, Harbour Island and Caye Caulker, “carbon neutral islands.”

On the other hand, according to an e-mailed response to IPS by Patricia Turpin, Honorary Director – Environment, for the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association, “The Tobago House of Assembly – Division of Tourism has not shown any commitment to a low carbon footprint.”

Turpin added that it would be left up to the private sector and NGOs to move forward with any carbon neutral tourism programme in Tobago.

Alvin Benjamin, a taxi driver operating in Tobago’s tourism industry, told IPS that he heard about the carbon neutral programme “only on the radio.” “I think it was a good idea, but I still was waiting to see what would be the outcome.”

He and Victor Emily, who founded the Royal Taxi service, said that some of the recommendations from the CCNTP were not feasible in Tobago.

One of the recommendations coming out of the CCNTP was the “structuring of operations in land based tours, whereby operators collaborate to share vehicles and associated costs [which] allows for a reduced number of trips of vehicles and also helps to reduce the environmental impact on the local destinations [which may be protected areas, eco-sensitive areas etc.].”

The report added, “This mode of operations is being piloted in islands like Tobago, and is currently in use in more established destinations like Miami.”

Emily told IPS that many taxi drivers work for themselves. “It’s not a case where taxi drivers are working for a company and they get a salary. You have to make your money so that pooling in the transporting of tourists would be a no-no.”

Echoing similar concerns, Dexter Black, president of the Reef Tour Operators, told IPS: “People want to work by themselves.”

Black said he believes that “if everyone works together in a rotational system they could be allocated passengers,” instead of boats going out to Buccoo Reef without a full complement of passengers. “You could allocate passengers on a rotation basis where you have less boats going out. Instead of 10 boats you have three or four going and you will still have operators making more money because they have more passengers per trip.”

“As it is now, everybody is going about business as usual. [Reducing carbon emissions] is not much of a concern. The greater concern is bread and butter issues. But if people are sensitised and educated, they will respond. People are always willing to learn.”

Black said retrofitting of the boats used by operators for greater fuel efficiency, another recommendation of the CCNTP report, is indeed an option. He said he downsized the engine on his boat from a 75 hp to a 55 hp engine, “which burns half the amount of fuel” and takes just about two minutes longer to get from Store Bay to Buccoo Reef.

Black said that protecting Tobago’s environment “is very important, because Tobago promotes itself as an eco-friendly destination. We should strive to preserve what we have by producing fewer emissions.” However, he said, it was up to the island authorities to take the initiative on the matter, “so that everyone will fall in place.”

Gerard Alleng, an official of the IDB, which funded the pilot project of the CCNTP, told IPS that the programme would be helpful to islands when it came to branding their product.

“We are in a competitive environment and there is a lot of interest now by clients of tourism to be more conscious of the environment. If islands are able to transform their sector to a low-carbon sector, they would be able to attract those clients who are concerned about the carbon footprint, about climate change, about their impact on the environment.”

He said the carbon footprint assessment tool “was a way of giving these islands a tool they could use to move in that direction.”

There is also the issue of energy security, Alleng said. Since energy prices are high in the Caribbean, a low-carbon, more energy efficient tourism sector would bring “significant economic benefits.”

St. Kitts (pictured here) and its northern neighbour Jamaica are increasing their energy efficiency with solar streetlights. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Peter Richards
BELMOPAN, Belize, Aug 23 2013 (IPS)

Every year, the Caribbean’s electric sector burns through approximately 30 million barrels of fuel. Overall, the region imports in excess of 170 million barrels of petroleum products annually.

Dr. Al Binger, technical coordinator for the recently launched multi-million-dollar Energy for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Caribbean Buildings Project, said that the region must now focus on ways to reduce the amount of fuel used to generate electricity, and in the process save millions of dollars.

He told IPS that building modifications, such as replacing windows and doors, installing solar water heaters and other retrofitting activities, are among the major components of the EDS project, which he hopes will eventually be embraced by all 15 members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

“Improving the efficiency of energy use in the building sector is a project priority. We’re looking for a 10 to 15-percent improvement across the whole electricity sector in this pilot project, which means we could save the equivalent of about 400,000 dollars per year for the pilot project [in five countries]. So you see, energy efficiency pays back quickly. It’s a good investment,” he told IPS.

Belize will be the first to begin implementation of the ESD project, which seeks to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent in the near term and increase the use of renewable energy.

Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago are next in line to participate in the four-year, 12.4-million-dollar project that was launched by the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) this week.

“The participating countries expressed interest in collaborating, which is exceptional as countries usually do these activities individually,” said the CCCCC in a release, noting that each country will establish a national steering committee, a project manager and an executing agency.

The centre says the EDS project will do a range of things to support the Implementation Plan, the landmark policy document that guides the Caribbean’s climate change response. This includes boosting capacity to perform audits, introducing new building codes, labelling appliances as energy-savers, and creating best practices for how the private sector can reduce its energy consumption.

A major focus is resilience, and helping economies adapt to new weather conditions.

Binger noted that Jamaica, for example, had to give up its banana industry after 100 years because it became unsustainable due in part to climatic changes.

“Jamaica built an entire railroad just to grow banana… So the Implementation Plan is about the economy of tomorrow, what will it look like, and that starts with the energy sector,” he said.

Earlier this month, the architect Brian Bernal, addressing a workshop hosted by the Jamaica Institute of Architects in association with the Caribbean Architecture Students Association of the University of Technology (UTECH), said that overhauling the island’s energy use profile would not be enough to protect it from rising sea levels, increased air temperature and more intense storms and hurricanes.

He argued that the effort has to be coupled with a deliberate move to ensure that buildings can withstand the anticipated shocks.

“We need to change the way we use energy resources to reduce our CO2 emissions, while simultaneously increasing our ability to resist the effects of climate change,” Bernal said.

“Robust and enforced building codes are highly effective in ensuring a better quality of building and when employed in conjunction with green building standards or practices will significantly increase the functional resilience of our buildings,” said Bernal, whose company serves as the lead consultant of the multi-disciplinary team for the “Build Better Jamaica — Developing Design Concepts for Climate Change Resilient Buildings project”.

That project is sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Institute of Sustainable Development and is aimed at helping Caribbean countries prepare for climate change, particularly in the design and construction of buildings that are more resilient to disasters, but which do not compromise the natural environment.

The CCCCC said that the main aims of the ESD project, the “first regional project of its kind in CARICOM”, are to increase the number of successful commercial applications of energy efficiency and conservation in buildings as well as expand the market for renewable energy technology applications for power generation.

“We will be primarily using photovoltaics, [and] some wind energy to a lesser extent,” said Binger.

At a 2010 Caribbean conference, the Climate Studies Group at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica, noted that small-scale wind for domestic use offers an advantage over total reliance on grid-supplied electricity if net metering is allowed and also for standalone systems where the wind is fairly consistent.