The Government of Jamaica has pledged to invest $31 billion into hard infrastructure that will make the country climate resilient. The disclosure was made on June 15 by minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Senator Matthew Samuda, at the ‘Zones: 2022 Your Partner for Resilience, Sustainability and Prosperity’ Tourism Ministerial Summit held at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, in Rose Hall, St James.

“We are going to ensure that our roads that connect us to our transport hubs are also roads that can withstand significant climatic and weather events. That will allow the sector to get back up much faster,” Samuda said. He made his presentation in a panel discussion on the topic ‘Building resilience for global sustainability: Accelerating recovery and prosperity’.

He continued that “We are also not ignoring the nature-based solutions that we know are critical to our survival; we have an assessment that is going on now for things like our mangrove population across the island to ensure that we do protect our coastline, not just for tourist but certainly for our residents”.

The round-table panel discussion is expected to provide global stakeholders with an awareness of industry resilience strategies, experiences, lessons learned, and best practices that can contribute to tourism sustainability, economic growth, and development.

Samuda made it clear that immediate action is needed to develop climate resilience, “The climate has changed, it is not some future concept that we have to think about in 30 years as evidenced by affected weather patterns. What we are now concerned about is the rate of continued change and how it will affect us, changing weather patterns, changing temperatures and rising sea levels will impact us and I think that is a very good place to start this discussion”.

The World Free Zones Organization (World FZO) announced the Global Alliance for Special Economic Zones Conference (GASEZ) at its eighth Annual International Conference (AICE). The conference is taking place from June 13 – 17 and features world-class speakers, senior policymakers, academics, multilateral organisations, and global business leaders from over 100 countries.