KINGSTON, Jamaica — Against the backdrop of smoke-filled Canadian skies and a global economy in flux, Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett, recently declared that the world has entered “the Age of Resilience” – and said the survival of tourism now depends on financing people, not just properties.

Addressing the Canadian-Caribbean Tourism Resilience Symposium in Toronto, Canada against the backdrop of huge climate change induced forest fires raging in that country, Bartlett said climate disasters, geopolitical conflict, cyber threats and artificial intelligence are no longer arriving one at a time, they are converging.

“The fires in Canada are not only a Canadian story. They are a mirror held up to the world,” Bartlett told diplomats, industry leaders and diaspora representatives. “They tell us that the world has changed. Not temporarily, not superficially, fundamentally.”

Bartlett argued that each age rewards a different virtue. The Industrial Age rewarded production. The Information Age rewarded connectivity.

“The Age of Resilience will reward adaptive capacity: the ability to anticipate disruption, absorb shocks, reorganise intelligently and transform before vulnerability becomes collapse,” he said.

He pointed to Canada’s 2024 Jasper wildfire, which forced 20,000 evacuations and crippled the regional visitor economy, as evidence that resilience is about livelihoods, not just landmarks.

“A destination is not resilient merely because its iconic assets survive. A destination is resilient when its people can continue to live, work, create and hope,” he argued.

“For policy, that means land management, emergency communications, insurance, workforce protection and tourism planning can no longer sit in separate government silos”.

Bartlett further observed that “peace is productive infrastructure.” Citing UN Tourism data showing a sharp drop in Middle East arrivals in the first quarter of 2026, he said war wounds tourism even when missiles don’t land. Airspace closures, travel advisories, higher insurance premiums and cancelled conventions all send “economic echoes” through the sector.

“Tourism is one of humanity’s quietest peace institutions. It turns strangers into guests,” Bartlett said. “A peaceful tourism corridor is not merely a route for aircraft and visitors. It is a corridor through which empathy, commerce and mutual dependence can travel.”

Bartlett noted that AI can shift tourism from reactive to anticipatory resilience – forecasting wildfires, mapping vulnerable assets, and warning when small businesses are about to fail. Canada is already using AI, satellites and drones in wildfire response. But he issued a warning: “technology must not deepen inequality”.

“Will AI strengthen only the largest corporations, or empower the small entrepreneur? Will it widen the distance between data-rich destinations and data-poor communities?”, he asked.

“AI should amplify human capability, not erase human dignity,” Bartlett declared. He called for “AI sovereignty” for small states, shared data standards, and public-interest digital infrastructure so that communities are not reduced to data suppliers.

Drawing from Jamaica’s own experience with Hurricane Melissa in October 2025, Bartlett said the true measure of recovery is not when hotels reopen, but when the wider tourism ecosystem survives.

“The craft vendor whose inventory was destroyed. The taxi operator whose vehicle was damaged. The farmer whose crops had been contracted into the tourism value chain… These are not peripheral actors. They are the living infrastructure of tourism.”

“MSMEs are frequently called the backbone of tourism. I believe they are its soul,” he said. “Financing MSMEs is therefore not charity. It is productive investment, social protection and regional development combined.”

At the centerpiece of Bartlett’s address was a renewed call for a permanent, professionally governed “Global Tourism Resilience Fund”.

He said the fund must finance the full cycle: preparedness, protection during crisis, recovery, and transformation. Critically, it must include a dedicated “MSME Resilience Window” that accepts employment, community trust and recovery plans as forms of collateral. “Not another temporary relief facility. Not another declaration whose ambition exceeds its financing,” Bartlett said.

He proposed that Canada and Jamaica co-lead the effort through:

• A Canada-Caribbean Working Group on Resilience Finance
• New insurance and blended-finance instruments for MSMEs
• An AI and Tourism Resilience Innovation Lab linked to the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre, GTRCMC

The GTRCMC, headquartered in Jamaica and co-chaired by Bartlett, will be expanded into a “global resilience intelligence platform” connecting climate science, economics, AI and crisis management. Jamaica’s leadership also helped secure the UN’s designation of February 17 as Global Tourism Resilience Day.

Bartlett closed with a metaphor of renewal: “A forest teaches that destruction is not the final word. Beneath the ash, seeds wait, roots endure and renewal begins before it becomes visible. So it is with nations. So it is with communities. So it is with tourism.”

“Let this symposium mark the moment when peace was recognised as tourism infrastructure; when AI was directed toward human flourishing; and when MSMEs were placed at the centre of global tourism policy,” he said.