Published on : Tuesday, April 2, 2019
His made this comment during a loyal visitors reception organized on Friday night at the Cricket Legends Museum.
He highlighted that Barbados as a country remains at the forefront of its ambitions, a developmental trajectory which sees sustainable livelihood and sustainable tourism.
“I am very keen on making sure as we go forward, to speak to you and to all the countries that you come from in a language that expresses our own concerns about climate change, our own concerns about sustainable development.”
Minister Symmonds made sure that Barbados learns as well as stands shoulder to shoulder with other countries of the world in what must be a constant struggle to make sure that sustainable development remains the prime topic of the global agenda.
“We in small societies like ours perhaps have the most to lose, perhaps because we are small islands and can be destroyed by one hurricane. I want to say to you that the type of tourism that we need to practice must also include those people who want to come here voluntarily to help us clean the ocean floor, clean the beaches, re-vegetate the coastline, rebuild the coastal infrastructure.”
At the time of thanking the visitors for making Barbados their “home away from home”, he also observed that in a study conducted by the University of North Carolina, it was discovered that almost half of the people who come to the Caribbean would not go back, if the quality of the environment was to deteriorate significantly.
“Imagine, if you will, a Barbados if where you scuba dive you would find single-use plastics and straws and Styrofoam containers littering the ocean floor as we have seen them unfortunately litter the streets of the country. You would not keep coming back here, but that is happening in other parts of the world today. Imagine if you will, a Barbados in which the beaches were so severely eroded that there was nothing between the sea water and the shore.”