The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Coastal erosion could be “catastrophic” for the Bahamas if left unchecked, an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) executive yesterday saying innovative solutions were required.

Therese Turner-Jones, the IDB’s Bahamas country manager, said hurricanes could result in up to 20 per cent declines in visitor arrivals for tourism dependent countries such as this one.

Mrs Turner-Jones, a presenter at the IDB’s Caribbean Coastal Resilience Forum, which opened yesterday, told Tribune Business that its main focus is to bring the Caribbean region together with IDB experts to talk about coastal resilience and coastal management.

“Just about every single country in this region is coastal, which means that we are highly vulnerable to climate change with sea level rises. The idea behind the forum is to get policymakers, private sector and civil society to talk about our vulnerabilities, and what we can do to stem disasters in the future,” said Mrs Turner-Jones.

“The Bahamas did a great job evacuating people from the south-east ahead of Irma, but if you look at what happened with Dominica, Turks and Caicos, Puerto Rico and Barbuda, we basically got lucky, and I think we can’t rely on luck preventing something like this happening in the future. You want to have a plan. If you think about tourism in the Caribbean and the Bahamas, in particular, a lot of our tourism infrastructure is on the coast.”

Mrs Turner-Jones added: “In an average hurricane season, when a hurricane hits we have found that you could have as much as a 20 per cent decline in tourism arrivals. Some hotels have to close for a while and some actually get damaged.

“In the case of Barbuda and Turks and Caicos, there are going to be huge losses in the billions of US dollars. That recovery is not going to be short. You can’t build all of that infrastructure in a a short space of time.”

Mrs Turner-Jones stressed that coastal erosion cannot go unchecked. “We have seen coastal erosion over the past several decades. We have to come up with innovative solutions to address this problem,” she added. “Sea level rises will not only affect our tourism infrastructure but also housing and agriculture. It is going to be catastrophic if we don’t do something about it.”

She said the IDB has decided to double the volume of its climate-related financing in the region by 2020. This doubling, Mrs Turner-Jones said, will lead to a level of climate lending averaging between 25 and 30 per cent of the IDB’s total approvals by 2020.

“This move can be seen as a reflection of our understanding of the impact of climate variability on the region, and the urgency to not only recover from natural hazards but, more importantly, to adapt and build resilience,” she added.

Mrs Turner-Jones said the IDB was working with the Government to develop a ‘roadmap’ on how to deal with coastal management issues.

““We already have a programme with the Bahamas. We are just waiting to negotiate the details of that loan to help the Bahamas do a better job maintaining its coastal environment,” she added.

“I think that the Government is committed to doing it before the end of the year. We would like to do it whenever the Government is available to do it. This will really help the Government to develop the road map on how to deal with coastal management issues and building resilience in the future.”