YEARS AGO, Baxters Road in The City used to be the drawing card for lovers of fish and night-time recreation. These days Oistins Bay Gardens, Christ Church is unquestionably the place where fish, entertainment and liming are most coveted on weekend nights.
It’s not simply a local phenomenon. The south coast area is so popular, especially on Friday nights, that it is widely considered the islands number one tourist attraction.
Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy gushed about it in May last year when delivering the Democratic Labour Party’s weekly lunchtime lecture at its George Street, St Michael headquarters. “It is probably the finest example of community tourism to be found anywhere this part of the Caribbean,” he said.
Sealy was reiterating a point he made three years earlier at a Tourism Week event in Oistins.
At that time, he told his audience, “Tourism Week has come to Oistins on a Friday night because we think this is something to celebrate . . . It has developed into the community tourism capital of the Caribbean . . . [and] according to the exit surveys, our visitors say that this is the number one tourist attraction in Barbados.”
Barbados’ Tourism Master Plan has also highlighted Oistins’ importance and outlined a number of areas it could be improved.
However, the fact that the area is located on the coast raises other questions.
Like other areas on the coast, its vulnerability to climate change is something that has been attracting increased attention, and research, in recent years. In March 2012, The CARIBSAVE Partnership, with funding from UKaid, the Department for International Development and the Australian Agency for International Development, released a Climate Change Risk Profile for Barbados. The not-for-profit organisation has its regional office in Barbados.
It said, “Barbados is already experiencing some of the effects of climate variability and change through damages from severe weather systems and other extreme events, as well as more subtle changes in temperatures and rainfall patterns.
“Detailed climate modelling projections for Barbados predict: an increase in average atmospheric temperature; reduced average annual rainfall; increased sea surface temperatures; and the potential for an increase in the intensity of tropical storms. And the extent of such changes is expected to be worse than what is being experienced now.”
The organisation also warned that climate change was nothing to be scoffed at as its impact was potentially devastating for a country like Barbados. Oistins and Holetown were named as vulnerable areas.
“One hundred per cent of the ports in Barbados are projected to be inundated by storm surge associated witha one-metre [sea level rise], but turtle nesting sites (on beaches) are destroyed by erosion in minor storm surge events,” it found.
“If action is not taken to protect the coastline of Barbados, the current and projected vulnerabilities of the tourism sector to [sea level rise] will result in the very significant economic losses for the country and its people.”
At the International Society of City and Regional Planners’ 2009 congress research on the topic: Climate Change And Vulnerability: Responding To Climate Change Impacts On The Coastal Urban Corridor, Barbados was presented.
It stated: “The West and South coasts of Barbados typify the conditions which enhance vulnerability to climate change in Caribbean SIDS [small island developing states].
“Any attempt to predict the response of Barbados’ coasts to climate change and sea level rise is subject to uncertainty…that does not mean that no anticipatory adaptation can be undertaken towards planning for climate change in Caribbean SIDS. In those SIDS which are already operating at the limits of sustainability there is clear justification to begin taking adaptive responses to climate change.”
It added: “Thus, Barbados’s approach to coastal zone management signals a useful precedent for consideration by other Caribbean SIDS for addressing the myriad issues at play in adaptation to climate change.
If supporting legislation and regulations are in place and the organisational arrangements are resolved, broader networks can emerge to support more integrated institutional arrangements for climate change land use planning responses.”
The World Wide Fund for Nature, an international non-governmental organisation founded in 1961, has also said that “the beach-based tourism industry in Barbados and the marine diving based ecotourism industry in Bonaire are both negatively affected by climate change through beach erosion in Barbados and coral bleaching in Bonaire”.
