Environmental Consortium to Focus on Conservation in Caribbean

WHY IT RATES: This important partnership, which underscores JetBlue’s recognition of the direct connection between vibrant ecosystems and revenue, will be a tremendous benefit to the Caribbean and the protection of its natural environment.—Mia Taylor, TravelPulse Senior Writer.

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JetBlue, New York's Hometown Airline, has announced the development of a Caribbean consortium with the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG).

Aligned with other like-minded partners across multiple disciplines, this effort will address conservation and commerce in the Caribbean. The consortium will start with a “Spotlight on Cuba” and will focus on other Caribbean destinations in the future.

In 2016, JetBlue became the first U.S. airline to bring affordable and convenient commercial air travel to Cuba after more than 50 years.

During year one, this group will make recommendations on development and environmental issues, to help ensure that Cuba’s natural habitat is protected for future generations. With support from members including JetBlue, the New York Botanical Garden will build upon past findings regarding Cuba and the Caribbean at large through four key components of conservation action—capacity-building, influencing public policy, knowledge-sharing and increasing access to resources.

“One-third of our network is in the Caribbean and Latin America. Conserving the natural resources of Cuba, one of the most ecologically diverse islands, is important to maintaining its unique ecosystem,” said Sophia Mendelsohn, JetBlue’s head of sustainability. “JetBlue wants to protect the region’s natural beauty, which in turn protects progress and our business. This is particularly relevant as development in Cuba continues to grow.”

Under the direction of Dr. Brian Boom, vice president for conservation strategy, who leads NYBG’s Cuba initiative, the NYBG Caribbean Consortium will bring together a cross-section of key stakeholders from business, academia, and NGOs.

“It is very gratifying to see research results on the threatened plants in Cuba, conducted over many years by NYBG and its collaborators, being used to help inform sustainable visits to Cuba,” Dr. Boom said. “This partnership with JetBlue is going to help translate conservation research into conservation action.”

The partnership will also include opportunities for JetBlue customers and crewmembers, New York-area residents, and visitors to The New York Botanical Garden to learn more about the Caribbean including Cuba and its biodiversity. It is an extension of JetBlue’s conservation efforts in the Caribbean outlined in EcoEarnings: A Shore Thing, a report that highlights the connection between ecosystems and revenue.

Travel to the Caribbean is a key pillar of JetBlue’s business model. Large-scale environmental degradation in the Caribbean is a risk to demand for air travel to the area, impacting airlines and tourism companies like JetBlue.

This study starts to link the importance of clean, intact, and healthy beaches and shorelines to tourism’s profitability in the Caribbean, with a focus on JetBlue and industry revenue per available seat mile (RASM).

The New York Botanical Garden’s Scientific Research in Cuba
NYBG has a long history of research and scientific/conservation capacity-building in Cuba, dating back to 1903.

Since then, in partnership with Cuban institutions, NYBG scientists have conducted more than two dozen expeditions to Cuba, resulting in the collection of more than 45,000 plant and fungal specimens from the island.

Over the past two decades, NYBG has maintained a robust exchange program with Cuban scientific institutions, through which more than two dozen Cuban scientists have visited NYBG for training and to use its scientific resources.

NYBG scientists, along with their Cuban counterparts, have been charting Cuba’s most vulnerable plant species for the past decade. Data gleaned from field expeditions, databases, and laboratory analyses are revealing the probable level of endangerment of plant species on the island presently and further into the 21st century.

Preliminary results, based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses of approximately 1,800 plant species, have confirmed that the flora of the Caribbean’s largest and most diverse island is indeed threatened by a changing climate in the long term and destruction of natural habitats and other threats in the shorter term.

SOURCE: JetBlue press release