JHTA plans major environment summit, invites Al Gore
THE Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) is to host an international environment summit next year, which it hopes will attract the participation of former US vice-president Al Gore.
The tourist body is moving to have the regulatory authorities take stock of the island’s environment now under threat from compromised developments and unsustainable livelihoods that threaten local flora and fauna.
“We are looking to bring a high-level international advocate (to the conference) and the person I am looking for is Al Gore, because he has been a consistent advocate of the environment and has taken the time to do very comprehensive research on the topic,” JHTA president, Horace Peterkin told environmentalists and government officials at a lunch hosted by the Observer last week.
“His (Gore’s) recent movie has actually documented evidence of how the planet is being destroyed and gave some frightening projections as to what can happen if we do nothing,” added Peterkin, alluding to Gore’s documentary titled An Inconvenient Truth.
“There are many parallels to us here in Jamaica. He was looking at a global picture. I am looking at a local picture that is equally frightening,” said Peterkin.
It is early days yet in the planning for the summit, but Peterkin said the organisers have already held two high-level meetings, with a third now in the pipeline. This third meeting, he said, should see the association’s members sitting with government representatives with responsibility for various aspects of the environment.
“The third meeting will be with the ministers of government and the top people,” said Peterkin.
He said he and his team had met Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and she gave a commitment that she would support the summit and participate. “She said that she would get all the ministers with portfolio responsibilities that affect the environment [to participate],” Peterkin told the Observer.
The first two meetings were held in Kingston. The first, held in early July, was between the JHTA and environment lobby groups, among them the Dolphin Head Trust, the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) and the Northern Jamaica Conservation Association (NJCA). The second, held in August, saw the hotel association in consultation with some of Jamaica’s regulatory authorities, including the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA).
It is estimated that the summit, a date for which has yet to be set, will cost about US$150,000 to host. Already, industry partners have promised their support and the JHTA is talking with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for funding support, said Peterkin.
He said that discussions at the summit would result in a communiqué, with an individual or team of persons hired to ensure that the recommendations were implemented in line with stipulated deadlines.
The JHTA, for its part, has been seeking in recent years to take a more wholesome approach to managing the island’s tourism product. One of its first decision, Peterkin said, was to rename the JHTA’s Product Committee that he headed for many years, the Environment, Health and Safety Committee to adequately reflect the association’s areas of concern.
“We want to have a comprehensive review of the current status of the environment, particularly as it affects tourism or as tourism affects the environment,” he said. “We want to look at all the areas (of the island), categorise them into areas that are in serious crisis and areas that have probably not gone very far and areas with the potential to have a future.
“The summit is designed to create a development order which would prescribe where you can do what, where you can’t mine, where you can’t build hotels, and wherever you have a zone for development, certain kinds of development cannot take place. It would make more sense in terms of sustainability,” he said.
For the time being, Peterkin has urged the island’s power brokers and those with influence to do the responsible thing for the environment, which, he insisted, is in their own best interest.
“If we really take the time to slow down and probably even stop and properly plan future steps, we can end up with the best of all worlds, which would be sensible development in harmony with the environment,” he said.