As awareness of the climate and biodiversity crises grows, international, environmentally conscious visitors are increasingly valuing countries that invest in keeping their beaches clean and require their hotels to be less wasteful.
Many tourists don’t like to see pristine beaches fill up with plastic debris while hotels continue to use and dispose of single-use plastics, and waste food and water. Locals also suffer. Pollution and the continuous waste of natural resources are taking a toll on the daily lives of many islanders.
The Dominican Republic, one of the world’s top tourist destinations, has decided to act. To set the country’s tourism sector on a path of sustainability, the government has pledged to reduce marine and land-based pollution, cut the consumption of materials, and diminish waste arising from tourism.
The new tourism plan, developed in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme, includes ways to measure and reduce food waste, increase energy efficiency and promote the use of renewable energy in hotels and other accommodation options.
It builds on two years of research, data collection and analysis, which helped identify hotspots of greenhouse gas emissions and low efficiency in the use of natural resources in hotel value chains. International travel was not part of the analysis.
The resulting Roadmap for Low Carbon and Resource Efficient Accommodation in the Dominican Republic was launched by UN Environment.
The roadmap sets five targets for the accommodation sector in the Dominican Republic: to reduce by 25 per cent greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (from a 2020 baseline), reduce food waste by half, a 25 per cent of reduction in non-renewable energy use, the complete elimination of single-use plastics and the uptake of a sustainability certification for hotels.
By adopting the roadmap, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, together with the Ministry of Tourism, the Hotel Association of Playa Dorada, the National Council on Climate Change and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce confirm their commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing a sustainable and resilient tourism sector.
Original source: UN Environment
Published on 01 July 2019
