Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
By Damaris Hernández Marí/ CIMAC researcher and collaborator of Radio Cadena Agramonte.
Since 2022, the territorial project Resilient Blue Tourism in the context of climate change: Santa Lucía beach destination has been developed in the province of Camagüey. Researchers, specialists and professors from different institutions and ministries focus their work on six fundamental results that contribute, jointly, to the implementation of a package of technologies associated with the concept of resilient blue tourism in that important resort, located in the north of the territory.
The dialogue with the M.Sc. Rebeca González López del Castillo, project manager and assistant researcher at the Camagüey Environment Research Center (CIMAC), allowed us to get closer to the essence of Blue Tourism and learn about her experiences in conducting a project that proposes to strengthen the principles of sustainability in tourism management.
- Why is a project like Blue Tourism relevant in current scenarios?
- Tourism activity in the new climate change scenarios will be one of the economic activities that will suffer the most from the impacts of extreme events, the rise in sea level, and also from the increase in sea surface temperature. So, thinking that tourism can maintain its development on the same bases it has today is difficult. Tourism has to adapt to new conditions and, above all, from the perspective of activities that are sustainable and environmentally friendly.
"In that sense, the project interconnects several results that are related to tourism implementation strategies, specific adaptation solutions such as the creation of protected areas to reduce pressures on ecosystems and the implementation of restoration solutions in those ecosystems that thus require it, due to having been exposed to excessive and sometimes inappropriate human activity.
“Blue tourism aims to implement tourism with a view of environmental sustainability and also as a measure of adaptation to climate change. It is a project that has several results, because when we talk about blue tourism we are talking about developing an economic activity based on sustainably taking advantage of the potential of marine-coastal ecosystems, called coastal lagoons, beaches, mangroves, seagrasses and reefs.”
- One of the firsts that stands out in the Blue Tourism proposal is the conception of new tourist products and the design of a commercial brand. Could you expand on these results?
- The project also proposes new tourism products that allow us to obtain economic benefits based on the exploitation of ecosystems in a sustainable manner. We can comment that they are working on a new tourism product, which integrates important concepts and rescues the medicinal mud that we have in the coastal lagoons. They are sludge of excellent quality and the project incorporates them into a tourism product with a broad perspective, aimed at health and quality of life.
“The design of the tourist products is based on a client who comes to Santa Lucía, not only to enjoy the benefits of its beach, but also to receive cosmetic or health treatment with the use of these muds.
“In addition, you can take interesting tours of some places in the tourist area, enjoy bird watching points, among other attractions. This is a customer who will also receive a whole range of up-to-date information on the goods and services of those ecosystems by the time they arrive in Saint Lucia. This is important, because international tourists sometimes arrive from source markets that have very environmentalist positions and identify with environmental conservation.”
“Another highly impactful result is the blue Tourism brand, which would be under the umbrella of the Country brand, and which identifies this new conception of tourism. We already have a definition of the brand and we are in the process of patenting and registering it. It is a process that may take some time, but it will be very useful because it gives a very personal stamp to Saint Lucia in this challenge of looking at tourism in a different way, more environmental, sustainability and adaptation to climate change, something “which in tourism activity in current contexts is unavoidable.”
- How has the implementation of the Blue Tourism project been strengthened in its link with other projects that are developed in the Camagüey territory?
- There is a strong synergy with the project Development of capacities for the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol and the sustainable use of biodiversity for human health well-being in Cuba, known briefly as Thalassia, and with the project related to the strengthening of the resilience of marine-coastal ecosystems in two sites: the Guanahacabibes Peninsula, in Pinar del Río, and Santa Lucía, in Camagüey, a mirror project of the international Blue Resilience, financed by the French Fund for the Environment.
Also read: Camagüey participates in research project on Thalassia (+ Photos and Infographics)
“They all have Saint Lucia as a common point and the integration of knowledge in the same place enriches and strengthens the introduction of their results into practice. Thalassia is enriched because it is a very specific project aimed at the use and conservation of Thalassia testudinum meadows, which play a fundamental role in providing an extract for the manufacture of products for human health. And at the same time, there is the view that Blue Tourism could, at some point, use the extracts of this ecosystem itself, that is, of the Thalassia, to manufacture 100% natural cosmetic products.
“We dream that one day Blue Tourism will have in the hotel facilities manufactured with Thalassia testudinum extract from Saint Lucia itself the products that it makes available to clients for their hygiene and comfort. That would give it a relevant stamp, because the goods and services of marine-coastal ecosystems are still an insufficiently studied aspect.
“These ecosystems can provide us with a lot economically, but we have to be able to take care of them, protect them and conserve them, and to that same extent they will reward us with their goods and services. Our ecosystems are a gold mine in every sense, we just have to learn to look at them with the eyes of the heart, as The Little Prince said.
- Two years have already passed since the start of the project. What learnings and experiences has the Blue Tourism project brought you as leader of this team of multiple voices?
- I have been in the science activity for a few years, more than 40 years, and leading Blue Tourism has been quite an experience. We must think that the project manager is only a leader who coordinates the actions, who has the task of writing the project and updating the documentary evidence. It is a challenge to make the project work as a great team and as a great family, understanding that each result is interconnected with the others, which is why each one depends on the others for its implementation.
“Blue tourism is, above all, a large family, in which CIMAC is the main executing entity, but we have a very close collaboration with the Provincial Delegation of the Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR), the University of Camagüey, the Training Center of Tourism, the University of Guantánamo, the Flora and Fauna Company and the Territorial Delegation of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment.
"The Ministry of Public Health is now incorporating medicinal mud into a tourist product, and is guiding us in this process of how to introduce it coherently, respecting what the country's regulations establish for the use of this type of mud. product in health and cosmetology treatments.
“With that perspective, to date we have 34 members in the team, where we all communicate and work very well. One learns, because there is a great diversity of topics, for example, tourism products with leadership from MINTUR, or brands, from the University, which are totally new content.
“In a technical meeting, the project manager is one more to learn and one more to teach, and from that humility, when you work as a team, you learn something new every day. For me, Blue Tourism has been a school in every sense: for everything I have learned and continue to learn in topics that I once did not think I could delve into.” (Photo: Juan Mendoza Medina/ Radio Cadena Agramonte)
