WESTERN BUREAU — A foreign environmentalist has challenged Jamaican hoteliers to reinvest in the environment to facilitate tourism’s continued growth and sustainable development.

According to Karen Fletcher, director of the International Hotels Environment Initiative (IHEI), sustainable development has huge implications for businesses and people everywhere on Earth.

“From now on, however, we cannot expect government to furnish the imagination, incentive and resolve it will take to establish sustainable development as the modus operandi for our world,” she told the annual environmental awards luncheon put on by the Environmental Audits for Sustainable Tourism (EAST) project and the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) in Montego Bay last Saturday afternoon.

“That responsibility falls on each and every one of us and how we choose to put sustainable development into practise as producers, consumers, private citizens and public advocates,” Fletcher said.

She said that the key to successfully attacking this issue is the business community and the engine that will drive it is the market.

The awards luncheon followed two days of talks between 170 local and foreign hoteliers and other industry players from over 18 countries at the Green Hotels Conference at the Half Moon Hotel.

The IHEI is a programme of the London-based The Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum that works to promote responsible business practices to benefit hotels and society.

It is a non-profit programme that was founded by the chief executives of 11 of the world’s leading hotel groups.

Fletcher said hoteliers needed also to incorporate policy and action on environmental and social responsibility into their mainstream hotel and tourism operations so that they will become the norm and not the exception.

In addition, she said they needed to develop responsible business practices in collaboration with their partners, even as they strive to ensure that their efforts have a “real multiplier effect”.

“The tourism industry has an incredible opportunity to make a significant contribution to sustainable development because of its worldwide scale, scope and influence on people,” she said. “But sustainable policy and practice in the industry must become the norm and not the exception in management strategies and action.”

Added Fletcher: “Ultimately, sustainable tourism means conducting our business with an awareness of our larger impact on Earth. This is something that everyone will need to remember — from governments promoting tourism to tourism businesses and tourists themselves. Together, these groups will need to balance the ultimate goal of satisfying tourist demand with the requirements of the environment and social stability.”