Lithium-ion batteries at Zemi Beach House in Anguilla. The resort says soon it will have enough … [+] capacity to supply its own electricity.
Christopher Elliott
Endless rows of solar panels. Hydroponic farms. A massive reverse osmosis plant.
Ask the people who run Anguilla’s resorts about the future of sustainability, and that’s their answer. At forward-looking properties such as Aurora Anguilla Resort & Golf Club and Zemi Beach House, owners are trying to build a greener future.
But there’s one more thing that this Caribbean island has that could keep it sustainable for generations to come. And it’s the last thing anyone would expect.
A weathered billboard promised a plastic- and styrofoam-free Anguilla by 2020. The island is still … [+] struggling to rid itself of single-use plastics.
Christopher Elliott
What’s going on in Anguilla?
Anguilla is a small Caribbean island known for its Technicolor reefs and serene beaches with sand the texture of powdered sugar. Part of its appeal is that it’s remote. Most visitors fly from North America to St. Martin and then take a half-hour ferry ride to Anguilla. U.S. airlines have recently added more direct service to the island.
Like many other Caribbean destinations, Anguilla has struggled with sustainability. The previous government promised to do away with plastic bags and styrofoam by 2020, but it’s been easier said than done. Today you can still get plastic bags at the island’s small grocery stores.
Anguilla is not alone. The entire region has charted an uneven path toward sustainability. The interests of commerce are often in conflict with conservation. And unless residents and visitors see a reason to transition to more sustainable energy and recycling, the struggle is likely to continue.
But there is hope. There are nonprofit organizations working quietly to save the fragile Caribbean environment. Many hotels have found that even when the destination is moving slowly, they don’t have to. There are financial reasons for accelerating the pace toward sustainability, but ultimately, it also motivates the destination as a whole — and perhaps even the people who come there to visit. No matter where you go in the Caribbean, tourists hold the key to sustainability.
This is the final article in an eight-part series about sustainable tourism in Central America and the Caribbean. Here’s part one about sustainability in Panama, part two about saving Bonaire’s number one tourist attraction, part three about Aruba’s struggles to stay sustainable, part four about Curaçao’s conservation efforts, part five about Grenada’s attempt to go green, part six about how Barbados is trying to save its environment, and part seven about sustainability in Antigua.
Paulo Paias, general manager of the Zemi Beach hotel, surveys the resort’s solar farm.
Christopher Elliott
Vast solar farms at Zemi Beach House
At the Zemi Beach House, a luxury hotel in the northeastern part of Anguilla, multiple sustainability efforts are underway.
On a recent tour of the property, maintenance workers were removing single-use soaps and lotions, and replacing them with refillable bottles. Paulo Paias, general manager of the resort, says it’s the most visible part of the hotel’s sustainability program. But there’s more happening behind the scenes.
The hotel just installed 2,750 solar panels, part of an ambitious plan to go energy independent. The solar farm, which seems to go on forever, is capable of taking the property off the grid during the day, and there are plans to continue upgrading it until the property no longer needs to buy power from Anguilla.
There’s a financial reason for this: Businesses pay about 40 cents per kilowatt hour for power, which is roughly four times as much as it costs in the U.S. Getting off the grid makes sense, not just for the environment but also for Zemi Beach’s bottom line. A solar plant like the one Zemi Beach has can pay for itself in about a year.
But the hotel didn’t leave well enough alone. It also started recycling water for its landscaping, collecting rainwater and groundwater in cisterns and redistributing it for irrigation.
“We wanted to do more in terms of sustainability,” says Paias. “We wanted to really be green.”
Paias said sustainability has been a struggle for Anguilla. It didn’t quite meet its goal of getting rid of plastic by 2020, but if people knew how destructive landfill-clogging plastics were, they might push for more sustainability initiatives.
“It really comes down to education,” he says.
Roberto Fernandez, the director of engineering at Aurora Anguilla,
Christopher Elliott
Hydroponic farms redefine the farm-to-table experience at Aurora Anguilla
Roberto Fernandez, the director of engineering at Aurora Anguilla, is proud of his hydroponic garden. When you talk about farm-to-table food in a place like Anguilla, there’s not much to discuss. Virtually all food is imported.
So why go through the expense of building several greenhouses and growing everything from heirloom tomatoes to mint? Fernandez says the cost of growing the vegetables is about the same as importing them.
“But you’re reducing all the transportation costs,” he says. “And all the carbon emissions that happened through the transportation of this produce,”
Aurora Anguilla is on the southern side of Anguilla. Its minimalist Mediterranean-style villas have a stunning view of a white sand beach and St. Martin in the distance. Fernandez says the resort offers tours of its sustainable hydroponic farm. But the most impressive part of its sustainability remains off-limits because it’s still under construction.
Across the road and behind the golf course, Aurora is building a high-capacity reverse osmosis plant, capable of supplying the entire resort with desalinated water. It may be one of the largest desalination plants on this island, if not in this part of the Caribbean. And Fernandez also has big plans for the solar array, which currently supplies about 10% of the resort’s electricity.
Aurora Anguilla will add new, more efficient solar panels and a variable frequency drive, a specialized electronic device that controls the speed and operation of a solar-powered water pump.
“I’m pretty sure that will take us completely off the grid most of the time,” he says.
Resorts like Aurora and Zemi have owners who are deeply committed to environmental conservation and are not afraid to invest in sustainability. But what about the rest of the island?
Vince Cate, manager of the .ai domain, in The Valley, Anguilla.
Christopher Elliott
Anguilla’s sustainability is online
Physical sustainability programs are important in Anguilla, as they are in the rest of the Caribbean. But only Anguilla has this: A top-level domain name that ends with .ai.
AI, as in Anguilla. As in artificial intelligence.
Vince Cate, the manager of the .ai domain name, says it’s an untapped resource that could solve many of Anguilla’s problems.
“It’s Anguilla’s golden goose,” he says.
That’s no exaggeration. Currently, Anguilla administers more than 400,000 .ai domains, which bring in more than $4 million. All of the money goes directly to the Anguillian government and currently makes up about one-third of the island’s budget.
Cate projects the number of .ai registries will double within the year and could double again in a year to 18 months, if historical patterns hold.
“Domains don’t run out,” says Cate. “It’s an unlimited resource.”
If Anguilla manages this resource correctly, it could become something like Norway’s sovereign wealth fund or Alaska’s Permanent Fund — money that ensures the sustainability of the entire island.
There are also exciting ways the money could be used to reverse some of the environmental problems in Anguilla. They could fund clean energy projects in the future, lessening the island’s dependence on fossil fuels. They could also be used to fund more ambitious recycling programs and to pay for environmental conservation efforts.
Farah Mukhida, executive director of the Anguilla National Trust, in her office in Anguilla. The … [+] trust is involved in educational efforts aimed at increasing the island’s sustainability.
Christopher Elliott
“You don’t have to make compromises on the environment”
It would be easy to take a closer look at the sustainability and tourism in the Caribbean and come away with the impression that the solution is in creating more programs that harness green energy or better recycling and conservation plans.
But that would not be accurate, says Farah Mukhida, executive director of the Anguilla National Trust, an organization that sustains the island’s natural and cultural heritage. The single biggest problem facing a place like Anguilla — and indeed, many other Caribbean destinations — is unchecked development.
Governments have a hard time saying no to new resorts, timeshares or airports. The economies of the islands are so dependent on tourism that there is no “off” switch. When there’s a conflict between commerce and conservation, commerce usually wins.
“But you don’t have to make compromises on the environment,” she says.
Her organization has been working on educational efforts in Anguilla — teaching schoolchildren about the importance of environmental stewardship. The National Trust sponsors beach cleanups and works with private landowners to remove rodents that threaten local wildlife.
For sustainability to have a chance, she says people have to change their mindset.
The environment doesn’t have to lose out when developers want to build a new resolrt. They can build with sustainability in mind — recycling water, growing vegetables, harvesting wind and solar power.
With some thoughtful planning, it can be a win-win.
But time is short. As we’ve seen in this series, the Caribbean is being threatened by overdevelopment and by the pressure of too many visitors. Coral reefs are being bleached. Tourists in ATVs are crushing the nests of endangered birds. Sea turtles are disappearing. The islands are being paved over with four-lane highways and are often indistinguishable from suburban strip malls in the United States.
And there is this undeniable fact: Travel itself destroys the environment. It leaves an oversize carbon footprint and devours finite natural resources. If you truly care about preserving natural resources and reversing climate change, you have to avoid travel, which ironically would destroy the livelihood of most Caribbean islands. Everyone wants to find middle ground.
What will bring about meaningful change? It is not governments, although they are responsible for executing an island-wide sustainability plan. It is not hotels, cruise lines or tour operators, although they can provide leadership and pay for some of the sustainability initiatives.
Ultimately, nothing will happen unless visitors want it. And the most effective way they can communicate that is by booking a sustainable destination, a sustainable hotel, a sustainable tour.
In other words, if you want the Caribbean to be sustainable, it’s up to you.
About this series
When I traveled to the Caribbean to research this series, I expected to discover a part of the world where people were deeply conscious of the environment and racing to repair the damage that too much tourism had done to the islands.
I did not.
Instead, I met a small collection of hotel owners, environmentalists and nonprofit workers trying to change a ruinous trajectory on which the Caribbean finds itself. They were surrounded by a tourism industry that cared mostly about attracting more visitors to their island.
The two were often in conflict.
Sustainability is an elusive subject. As I noted in the first part of this series, it’s hard to define it, let alone agree on how to make a destination more sustainable. Too often, destinations exploit that ambiguity — proclaiming their sustainability on the one hand but allowing unmonitored and unsustainable development on the other hand.
Many destinations were helpful and willing to discuss their sustainability efforts. They provided access to government officials and allowed me to tour their sustainability projects.
Others, not so much. Sometimes, tourism officials didn’t show up for interviews. Invitations to visit islands were abruptly withdrawn. One publicist said she would only cooperate if I promised to write a positive story about her client. I refused.
I’m grateful for the opportunity. It was an honor to write about the places that take sustainability seriously and to document their journey.
The islands that didn’t want me to cover them — well, they performed a valuable reader service, too. If you note the islands that I did not include in the series, you can easily create an alternative map of the Caribbean where sustainability is just an empty marketing slogan.
So what can you do about sustainability in a place like the Caribbean?
Over and over, I heard from hoteliers and tour operators that for all the talk about sustainability, no one was really asking for it. Instead, they said visitors just want a quiet beach and a cold drink in their hand, and they want it cheap.
That has to change. And until it does, the Caribbean will never become a sustainable destination for tourism. Instead, it will be a place that is being slowly depleted until everything you love about the islands — the beaches, the blue ocean, the friendly people — is gone.
I hope that day never comes. But at the rate we are going, we are probably closer to it than you think.
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Publish date : 2024-05-25 00:10:00
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