The annual Caribbean Tourism Organisation conference heard on Monday of the threat that sea-level rise poses to port-dependent countries like Guyana and the rest of the region.
In introducing the session, Head of the Office of Climate Change at the Office of the President Shyam Nokta told the gathering at the Guyana International Convention Centre that “Most of our countries are subject to intense weather events such as hurricanes and floods… and these along with the longer term effects of sea level rise will continue to threaten the region’s tourism infrastructure”. He added that this is not only limited to accommodation facilities but also the physical structures such as the network of roads and the social services that are categorized under the tourism infrastructure package of the region.
He said that it is estimated that climate change will cost the Carib-bean 5% of its annual gross domestic product between 2011-2050 if affirmative actions are not taken on mitigation as well as adaptation.
In addition to this, Nokta stated that the additional cost of making new infrastructure and buildings resilient to climate change in the OECD countries alone is estimated at US$50 billion to US$150 billion each year.
“That’s very significant between 0.05 to 0.5 GDP. Clearly, the infrastructure of our region is under threat of climate change and in order to make sure that this vital tourism infrastructure can withstand the short, medium and long-term threat to climate change, we need to adapt urgently,” he posited.
Dr. Leonard Nurse, Senior Lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, spoke mainly about the threat of climate change to poor infrastructure.
“Ports are critical to the entire region and are vital in many ways. We have open economies so we import everything practically and we also are very dependent on our ports by exportation. We also import petroleum products and countries like Trinidad also export petroleum so ports are very critical,” he said.
This aspect, he continued, is equally important for tourism, particularly cruise shipping and coastal activities like yachting, as well as berthing and airport landing fees which make a very significant contribution to foreign exchange into the Caribbean territories.
Nurse noted that many climate models project a consistent increase in surface temperature, similar to the level that has been experienced globally and this is based not only on the model projection but observations over a period.
“From that, we’ve been able to combine a number of hydrodynamic models and we recognize the very high possibility of an increase in wave energy due to stronger surface winds, for example, as a result,” he said. He further stated that Caribbean ports are vulnerable primarily because of projections of a sea level rise of about 0.13 to 0.56 metres by 2019 and many studies which suggest that there has been some acceleration of this rise.
He pointed out that coastal infrastructure is very sensitive to water level changes with the key components being astronomical tides, wave set up, sea level rise and sea level anomaly.
Additional risk factors for ports in the region that increase vulnerability include land subsidence, wind damage and coastal inundation.
“One of the major threats is the increase of intensity of hurricanes in the Caribbean and this has been occurring in the last several decades. Estimated 5-10% increased intensity of hurricanes… More worrying is the trend of hurricanes beginning to develop at lower latitudes in the Atlantic and the Caribbean,” he added.
Ravi Rambarran, Chief Executive Officer of Sagicor Life Insurance International, called for a greater collaboration between academia, the insurance industry, the tourism industry and government in order to move forward.
The acting Deputy Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, Elizabeth Riley, stated that greater measures must be taken to attempt to treat exposure of locations and the reduction of vulnerability.
“Our approach has to be multi-dimensional in nature because it touches not only the tourism sector but sectors across the national level, inclusive of the private sector,” she said. Also, she stated that there should be community level interventions with a more aggressive approach on environmental security.
David Randle, Managing Director for Waves of Change International Ocean Institute Campaign, spoke about the oceans which are now facing mass extinction of species if a number of issues are not mitigated very soon.
“A serious one is that of ocean acidification. We’ve already passed the healthy level and we are increasing rapidly to a very dangerous level, he said, adding that climate change has an impact on sea life and sea level rise among other things”.
