Tourism is known to be an important source of income for Cuba; however, its oversized growth could cause increasing damage to the environment, a main attraction for its visitors and why sustainable tourism is gaining importance.
In this context, the project of integrating biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation in the development of the sustainable leisure industry provides the necessary incentives for the sector to change its usual functioning and improve sustainability in the long term.
Over six years, 2023-2029, the programme will contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and climate change mitigation in vulnerable marine-coastal areas, through the design and implementation of innovative models with strengthened financial capacities and mechanisms.
The actions will be developed in the Coco and Guillermo keys, in Ciego de Ávila province, and in Varadero, in Matanzas, and will implement strategies to integrate biodiversity into tourism activities and adopt practices with low greenhouse gas emissions in hotel facilities.
In order to meet the planned objectives, the work is divided into five key results that, linked together, will successfully achieve the final goal: strengthening the institutional, regulatory and economicfinancial framework for the environmental sustainability of tourism in Cuba.
The project promotes new paradigms in tourism management in the country: a legal and juridical framework that will favour integrating sustainability in plans and programmes in this sector, the strengthening of local alliances through participatory processes, so that all actors in the value chain can influence how the activity is developed and executed at destination level. It also includes the development of sustainable products and services that promote the respectful use of the natural and cultural heritage and the implementation of management systems to certify hotel facilities as the focus of the project, in line with the State plan to tackle climate change, known as Task Life.
To accomplish this, the Agency of Ecology and Systematics of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, are working together with the Ministry of Tourism as the main beneficiary of the project, with support from the United Nations Development Programme and funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
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