The Tribune

By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas has the opportunity to “develop a truly extraordinary blueprint” that can make inroads into the global $600bn annual nature-based tourism market, an international advocate is arguing.

George A Miller, director of bird-based tourism at the Audubon Society, told the Andros Business Outlook conference that nature-based tourism gives The Bahamas a chance to diversify its product offering, create jobs and protect its natural resources.

He said: “We could develop a truly extraordinary blueprint for success for nature-based tourism in The Bahamas. You have globally significant land and marine natural assets, and these offer the excellent opportunity to develop sustainable, experience-based economic development.”

“When you aggregate and look at a more holistic approach to tourism that is based on nature, whether it’s fishing, outdoor recreation, diving or bird watching, globally nature-based tourism generates annual revenues of over $600bn annually and this supports millions of jobs, providing opportunities for countries like The Bahamas to grow and diversify the economy while protecting biodiversity and natural heritage.”

Mr Miller added: “The COVID-19 pandemic really exposed that there was an over-reliance of nature-based economies like The Bahamas, and very biodiversity rich countries, on relatively unsustainable mass tourism activities. And that had very significant impact as we saw from economic analyses globally from the pandemic.”

“It created this sense of urgency that we need to diversify product offerings, the operations and focus more on community livelihoods and conservation funding beyond just the dependence of the tourism business model.” Mr Miller added that government and public sector support is vital to achieving these ambitions.

He said: “Nature-based tourism presents you an unparalleled opportunity to build back better. To demonstrate The Bahamas has taken a bit of a timeout and said, you know, we’re really going to scale-up community-based sustainable tourism pathways to capitalise on our natural assets and their competitive and comparative advantages.

“It’s really critical to have the public sector commitment and political will to unlock the nature-based tourism sector to both transform the economy and create sustainable jobs based on the natural resource assets of the country.”

Mr Miller said The Bahamas hosts more than 340 species of birds, which provides an opportunity for it to participate in a global bird watching market that is projected to generate over $110bn per year by 2032.

He added: “The Bahamas is nature-based. The Bahamian population is blessed with tremendous resources. We have strong bird watching components, bone fishing and diving, but when you look at it from a bird watching tourism perspective, The Bahamas has over 340 species, half of which are known as neo-tropical migratory species.

“In 2022, a little bit post-COVID, the global birdwatching market generated almost $60bn, and estimates that by 2032, we’re going to see $110bn a year. In addition, birdwatching as an as an industry is augmented very much by the rapid growth of birds, wild and wildlife photography. And that’s a very specialised approach.”

Mr Miller maintained that investing in nature-based tourism will result in tourists extending their stay to engage in this range of activities, ensure sustainable economic development and have an array of other environmental, social and economic benefits.

He said: “Nature-based tourism and the experience-based economy actually spans many sectors, and offers multiple environmental social and economic benefits. Using a more nature-based tourism approach will, and this has been shown in many other places, actually create jobs, good jobs for the local community, and attract visitors to your parks and to public and private lands and waters, and will create funding or money for wildlife services.

“Using more a nature-based approach to tourism will improve the environment and engage key stakeholders, both in the local communities as well as business investments within the family of islands. And this will also increase the responsible tourism from both international and domestic sources, and this will improve accessibility for both domestic as well as international tourists.

“It will without question lengthen the stay of tourists in The Bahamas. It will also diversify tourism product offerings, and this will contribute to overall sustainable economic development in The Bahamas.”