Climate change will impact tourism industry

Tourism and Climate Change – two things we wouldn’t ordinarily talk about in the same sentence. But today personnel from the tourism industry and the Climate Change Centre are finding reasons why the two are more closely related than we may think. It is with this in mind that the groups sat down today to discuss how global warming may affect Belize’s biggest industry.

Marion Ali, Reporting
Doctor Robert Richardson is professor in Natural Resource Economics at Michigan State University and Galen University in Belize. He did a vulnerability assessment of Belize’s tourism industry to the effects of climate change. The findings are not encouraging.

Dr. Robert Richardson, Ecologist, Galen University
“The results of the study have basically concluded that since more than 70 % of tourists come to Belize to visit Coastal areas and the Cayes, because of sea level rise those areas are very vulnerable to the effects of climate change because of erosion, land loss, flooding, inundation, and salt water intrusion, so these affect the tourism industry and their ability to provide housing, clean water, and this sort of thing.”

Experts say climate change is the direct result of environmentally unfriendly lifestyle and practices.

Carlos Fuller, Nat’l Focal Point for Climate Change
“The warming that we’re seeing now is unprecedented in over 100,000 years of data. It shows that we have not seen this kind of warming ever before. The warming that we’re seeing is increasing. It is not steady. The past ten years were the ten warmest years on record. We’re seeing impacts on various sectors.”

“We were threatened two times this year by two category five hurricanes. That is something we have never seen before and that is a manifestation of climate change. When I talk about sea level rise, people say it’s only two centimetres, you know, it’s something I can live with. I tell them yes, but if you have a piece of land on reclaimed land that you just built, and you have a mortgage in twenty years time two centimetres will be forty centimetres. By the time you own your house it’s going to be under water. Do you want to be paying for a house that’s going to be under water in twenty years time?”

National Focal Point for Climate Change, Carlos Fuller says while we may not be able to control Mother Nature’s wrath, we can control the things that trigger it.

Carlos Fuller, National Focal Point for Climate Change
“Recognise that you need to be more efficient in the use of your energy because you are contributing to climate change and economically it’s good for you. So if you’re putting in light bulbs consider putting in the compact fluorescent bulbs. Yes, It’s gonna cost you a bit more in the short term but it’s gonna last seven years and you’re gonna burn 50 % less electricity. These are the sort of things you need to do in your own life. When you buy a vehicle you want to buy a 4-cylinder vehicle as opposed to an S.U.V with an 8-cylinder and how many of us use an S.U.V. to go into the bush. Do we really need to have a vehicle that is that high off the ground?”

Since we all share the same atmosphere, Fuller says smaller economies that don’t emit a lot of greenhouse gases can appeal to the bigger countries to do the right thing.

Carlos Fuller
“With all treaties there is no international police that will inflict any penalties on them, whether it’s the W.T.O., whether there are trade sanctions, those are the basic measures you’d have at the end to be able to impose it on them, but for small countries to impose a trade sanction on a large country you know won’t work; so we then need to try to address the moral fortitude of these countries. I believe we have opportunities in the tourism industry for example, where some countries have taught their tour operators about climate change. So when you get a boatload of tourists and you take them to the reef you say ‘Look you see the emissions that you’re causing to your reef?’ ”

Marion Ali for News Five.

Some of the ways the coastal tourism industry—and ordinary citizens—can mitigate rising sea levels is to locate buildings further back from the water’s edge, build higher off the ground and plant trees and shrubs in front of beachfront construction.