ROADTOWN Tortola BVI,  February 22nd, 2012  --   My Government has entered office at a time of great political and economic upheaval around the world and at a time when we understand more than we ever did before about the fragility of our environment and the threats posed to our wonderful world by our actions. From the time of our earliest ancestors, we have become accustomed to taking the Earth and its rich bounty for granted.

Centuries ago, slash and burn agricultural practices eradicated huge swathes of forest land and converted them into crop lands. When industrialization came, it made work easier but it also accelerated the growth of environmentally destructive practices. Factories spewed waste into the air and over the land. Mining and other interests eradicated hundreds of thousands of acres of virgin forests and created huge scars on the earth.

We have probably done more harm to the earth in the last two hundred years than in all the previous eras combined.
Here in the Virgin Islands we have not been immune. Our first settlers the Arawaks and other Amerindians came to these islands and met verdant hills and rich fishing grounds. For hundreds of years, they lived here more or less in harmony with nature but then they moved on and the islands were left in peace until the arrival of European settlers in the 1500s.

As the early indigo and cotton plantations turned to growing sugar, more and more of the forested hills were tamed and subdued and the population climbed when African slaves were brought over to create the wealth the planters and their investors craved. Then, with the abolition of slavery, and the setbacks caused by poor harvests, labour migration, and powerful hurricanes, the Europeans left, leaving the islands to the descendants of the slaves they had brought over. The islanders settled down to subsistence farming and agriculture, their impact on the environment not much greater than that of the Arawaks.

Virgin Islanders lived simple lives of simple pleasures but also of hardship. While nobody went hungry, it was also true that few had access to a good education, medical care was almost non-existent and those who wanted greater professional options had no choice but to migrate. For those who remained, life was hard and it was a time of making-do with less. What we did not realise then but are realising now was that, for the most part, our impact on our environment was minimal.

Belongings were treasured and looked after so that they would last for years, decades even. We re-used and recycled. The bags in which we bought our flour became our clothing. The pages of old catalogues were used to decorate our homes. Hardly anything went to waste and we made do with what we had.

Then in the 1950s, we embraced the tourism industry and leapt to take advantage of the opportunities it could bring to our people. And make no mistake about it; the tourism industry has brought unprecedented change and unprecedented benefits to a wide cross-section of our society.

It has also brought many challenges. Between 1980 and 1991, for example, our population grew by almost fifty percent severely impacting our physical and social infrastructure and dramatically raising the vulnerability of our ecologically sensitive areas.

Since then, it has become clear that government’s policies and programmes must find ways to stimulate continued economic growth while remaining environmentally sensitive. We have to balance the needs of present-day Virgin Islanders with those of future generations who must not be allowed to inherit a Territory so environmentally troubled that its ability to sustain itself is in doubt.

In the late 1990s the BVI formulated a Tourism Development Plan which we are now in the process of reviewing but one of things my Government has always been conscious of is the need for a sustainable approach to the economy and particularly to tourism. Tortola is only 21 square miles but it is the largest of our islands. Our sister islands are tiny.

To maintain the quality of our attractions we cannot afford to over-burden any one site and must be mindful that the carrying capacity of our beaches, our historical sites, and our national parks are not overwhelmed. As we embark on our review of this Plan, all stakeholders including our environmental organisations will be brought to the table to discuss our agenda going forward.

Even as we seek new approaches to improve our accessibility to our visitors we are committed to doing so in a sustainable way. We are very conscious of our need to protect the golden goose that makes the BVI so attractive to visitors, and that is our environment.

A 2002 study indicated that 84 percent of tourists would prefer to stay at an accommodation that had received green accreditation and 68 percent would pay more to stay there. The more we learn about global warming and climate change and the more organizations such as Tourism Concern and Mother Nature Network make information about eco-friendly travel easy to access, the higher those figures will go. We ignore them at our peril.

My government is determined to seize the day and to do all that we can to become a destination where thirty percent of our tourism industry partners meet the criteria established by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council within the next five years. It is our desire that in the next twenty years, 100 percent of our tourism properties are meeting the criteria. Broadly, these criteria are as follows:

• Demonstrating effective sustainable management while minimising all negative impacts.
• Maximising social and economic benefits to the local community.
• Maximising benefits to cultural heritage.
• Maximising benefits to the environment.

Businesses and tourism properties will be encouraged and assisted to raise the environmental awareness of their staff so that everyone who works in the BVI knows how important the environment is to the existence of their job. It is our beautiful clear waters, our pristine beaches, our colourful reefs and lush hills that attract tourists to our islands and it is the income we earn from tourism that makes our quality of life possible.

Every single person in the BVI is affected by our tourism industry regardless of whether they work directly in it or not. Tourism revenues allow us to maintain our roads, modernise our medical clinics, and pay civil servants. The tourism industry employs thousands of people but it does much more than that – it underpins our very society.

As we work through our Tourist Board and partner with our environmental organisations we will prioritise the conservation of our natural heritage and the biodiversity of plant, animal and bird life. The Anegada Rock Iguana, our humming-birds and chicken hawks, our century plants, our Land Crabs and our coral reefs, our flamingos, our guinep and tamarind trees – these have all contributed in one way or another to the uniqueness of our Territory, its landscapes and seascapes. We will work at protecting them and at finding ways to help our enviropreneurs find new techniques for making opportunities from them. As we begin to look at alternative energy sources, for example, the potential for enviropreneurs is huge.

Decades ago, our ancestors found a way to make a drink from the barrel cactus which was known as Miss Blyden but that drink is ever more rare because the cactus itself is disappearing from our environment. Yet the Miss Blyden is a drink to match any imported to our shores. And that is the crux of the matter – the environmental crisis faced by the world must be met by a reassessment of our history and culture and of our values.

The foods, drinks and other products which we import at great expense from other countries also exact an environmental cost which will, arguably, be felt most deeply by small island nations such as the BVI and our Caribbean neighbours.

Improving our sustainability must therefore also mean improving the sustainability of our supply and ensuring that the products we import reach our shores with the smallest carbon footprint possible. Where possible we will facilitate our businesses and our tourism properties to source their food and other requirements locally. Where that is not possible our next best option is sourcing our needs from our closest regional neighbours. To that end, governments of the Caribbean must begin to work together to enable this heightened cooperation and turn the challenges posed by economies of scale to our advantage.

My Government is also committed to facilitating the growth of a diversified economy where our entrepreneurs are encouraged and assisted to become enviropreneurs. The protection of our environment and of our biodiversity offers us some stiff challenges but it also offers opportunities for innovators to become involved in the rapidly growing eco-sector of our economy.

Five years ago, Green VI did not exist but now it collects used glass products and makes beautiful jewellery and art from items that we used to throw away. Twenty years before that our national hero, Noel Lloyd, began using discarded metals to make sculptures of found art.

My Government is extremely optimistic about the future and about what can be achieved with the help of international resources like those made available under the auspices of initiatives such as BizClim where the public and private sectors are assisted to partner more effectively around environmental and other initiatives. We know that both the United Kingdom and the European Commission will work with us to help us to achieve our goals for sustainability and I welcome the opportunities presented by this workshop.

The protection of our environment is one of our highest and noblest responsibilities which is why you will find it enshrined in our constitution. Yet our survival as a Territory and as a people depends on our finding ways to balance all of our responsibilities including those owed to our people whose growth and advancement, individually and collectively, depends both on how well we manage our resources and on how well we tread the middle way between protection and over-development. This is a challenge that has stumped many of the most powerful countries in the world and which has proved the stumbling block to global agreements aimed at lowering the threat posed by global warming.

As Premier, I am keenly aware of how far we have come as a people within my own lifetime; in one generation we moved from an agrarian-based economy to one with global significance. Our foreparents dreamed of the day when education would be available to all and of the day when the aspirations of their children depended less on where they grew up and more on their own aptitudes and abilities.

That day arrived with the advent of the prosperity brought about by tourism and the diversification of the economy. Now, as we face the challenge of climate change, my government must strike a balance between the protection of our natural heritage, the desire of our people for jobs, and the interests of future generations. My Government will find that middle way and we will strike that balance. There is too much at stake for us to falter at this point in time.

I wish you all very fruitful discussions and I look forward to the results from this workshop.

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