Environmental Policy and Caribbean Tourism

Abstract

On a global scale, over the past two decades, there has been a general expansion in trade in services. Services or the ' invisibles' sector as it is also known, accounts for a large portion of CARICOM exports, and it is predicted that this will increase as the global economic arena is increasingly put under pressure for survival. These economies, which according to Chaitoo (2008), "are now facing declining competitiveness in their traditional products" and are undergoing the removal of preferential trade regimes, have focused largely on the growth of the tourism sector within this large services arena, perhaps even to the detriment of the development /growth in other services. "The passage from exclusive dependence on primary product extraction and agriculture to a strategy which emphasises tourism is a common story in the Caribbean. The impact of tourism on both humans and natural setting has led to diverse initiatives to establish global and regional regimes governing sustainable tourism and ecotourism." (Gordon 2007: 38)