of the Americas was hosted on October 9 and 10 at Regional Headquarters by the Ministry of Tourism, Jamaica with the objectives to examine and highlight the lessons learnt from tourism climatic resilience initiatives along with emerging issues surrounding tourism climatic resilience and sustainable development. Executive Director of The UWI Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre, which spearheaded the event, Professor Lloyd Waller, highlighted that “the Resilience Summit of the Americas will be a game changer in terms of the exchange of ideas on resilience and resilience building”. It is expected that the papers and report from the summit will help to shape policy and strategic frameworks globally, specifically as it relates to enhancing the resilience of worldwide destinations. Commenting, the Minister of Tourism, Hon. Edmund Bartlett said, “These presentations and other expected outcomes of the summit will contribute to policy formulation and the development of strategic frameworks, specifically as it relates to building resilience of tourism destinations worldwide. I look forward to the upcoming publication of the ‘Journal of Tourism Resilience’ which will include some of the papers from this meeting.”
Collecte Localisation Satellites in France. Discussions with the UN followed, which led to agreement to focus on improving monitoring to predict sargassum landing and development of a monitoring system available via a mobile app, which would allow the general public, including affected groups such as fisher folk, to be able to better prepare for any landings of this seaweed. The issue of sargassum was also featured during the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre’s Summit of the Americas from October 9 to 10, 2019, hosted at The UWI Regional Headquarters in Jamaica. The Summit examined and showcased the experience, best practices, and lessons learnt from tourism climatic resilience initiatives around the world. Global Resilience Network In October 2019, The UWI became the newest member of the Global Resilience Research Network (GRRN), a group of over 30 leading universities and institutes committed to resilience research. The GRRN falls within the ambit of the Global Resilience Institute (GRI), which informs on the development of new tools and applications to advance resilience best practices. The UWI contributes technical expertise in areas such as sustainability, resilience, and disaster risk reduction. The University is a key contributor to the GRRN’s Island Resilience Initiative (IRI), developing an action plan for a US-Caribbean Resilience Partnership. Building Tourism Resilience for Sustainable Development Under the theme, “Tourism Resilience for Sustainable Development”, the second Tourism Resilience Summit
THE’s Impact Rankings 2020 Reflect UWI’s Climate Advocacy and Action Following on the 2019 selection by the International Association of Universities (IAU), an affiliate body and higher education think tank for UNESCO as its global leader in the mobilisation of higher education and research for sustainable development, The UWI was ranked among the top 200 universities in Times Higher Education’s Impact Rankings 2020 for its research, outreach and stewardship of the SDGs, including its work on SDG13: Climate Action. Sargassum research For almost 10 years, the Caribbean region has been experiencing massive influxes of the sargassum seaweed which negatively impacts key social and economic sectors such as fisheries and tourism. The UWI in its strategic mission to develop a culture of resilience planning for the Caribbean, has invested significant resources over the years in tackling the sargassum challenge. Through its Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCM), the university led a forum to facilitate collaboration, knowledge sharing and best practices to tackle the threat with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It also held discussions with the United Nations (UN). Outcomes from the 2019 forum discussions identified gaps and initiatives to foster synergies towards a solution. Presentations were made by Professor Mona Webber, Director of The UWI’s Centre for Marine Sciences and Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory; Andres Bisono Leon and Luke Grey from MIT; Precision Engineering Research Group; and Marion Sutton, Oceanographer and Project Manager from
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