Jamaica in Butler's Model

Colegio Internacional de Caracas Jose Luis Yañez
Geography 12 IB HL

January, 22, 2009
Mr. Brad Little

Assignment: Through trajectories C, D, or E. The student will present a credible cause of the decline and then propose a solution.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES:

1. Blog post that links to findings from their presentation.
2. Inclusion of the Butler’s Model diagram in the blog post.
3. Identification of a possible cause to the decline of their destination
4. Provision of a plausible solution to the challenges now facing the destination

Jamaica is a mixed economy with public sectors as well as private sector businesses. Major sectors of the Jamaican economy include agriculture, mining, manufacturing, tourism and financial and insurance services. Tourism and mining are the leading foreign exchange earners.

Economic Evaluation


Jamaica has, since the early 1980s, has executed structural reform aimed at promoting private sector activity and increasing the role of market forces in resource allocation. “Since 1991, the Government has followed a program of economic
liberalization and stabilization by removing exchange controls, floating the exchange rate, cutting tariffs, stabilizing the Jamaican currency, reducing inflation and removing restrictions on foreign investment. Greater openness to trade and financial flows, market liberalization has been developed.” This caused foreign investors to take an interest in Jamaica’s tourist potential and attracted tourist to a more stable economy.
After a period of steady growth from 1985 to 1995, Jamaica fell into an economical stagnation with a decrease of 3% in their real GDP. The decrease continued in 1996 and 1997 by 4% due to problems in the financial sector, which were affected by natural disasters. Hurricane Irin in 1996 caused great damage in the countries infrastructure plus a severe island-wide drought in the same year which drastically reduced agricultural production. Donations solicited by international aid organizations joined national funds in clearing roads, rebuilding houses, and replanting destroyed crops. “The CPEC (Caribbean Programme for Economic Competitiveness) was set up to strengthen economic sectors in various countries of the Caribbean.

In 1996 this program was approved to allocate CDN $25 million to cover the Caribbean, from which CDN$5 million were allocated to Jamaica, due to their economical stagnation and the natural disasters. After this massive help, Jamaica’s economy recovered. In 1998, growth in tourist arrivals accelerated with an overall increase of 8.5% in tourism earnings in compared to the years before.

In 2006, eight years later the economy of Jamaica has again reached economical stagnation. Inflation has increased 6.0%, unemployment has reach 12% and the real GDP has decrease by 1.5%. This has not yet had a great impact on the countries economy, but with the recent Hurricane striking Jamaica, infrastructure and agricultural establishment have been damaged, and have severely affected the country again.

Hurricane Dean was the strongest tropical cyclone of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season. It was the most intense Atlantic hurricane since Hurricane Wilma of 2005. The hurricane's intense winds, waves, rains and storm rush were responsible for at least 100 deaths across ten countries and caused estimated damages of US $2.0 billion. Dean's path through the Caribbean devastated agricultural crops, particularly those of Martinique and Jamaica causing a damage of $ 0.8 billion only within these two countries. Through the affected regions, cleanup and repair took months to complete. In Jamaica, where the damage was worst, banana production did not return to normal levels for over a year.



As you can see above, Jamaica has strike a point in the Butler’s model of decline cause mainly by natural disasters destructing the resources that in first place attracted the tourist. People around the world get scare and don’t feel confident to travel to the Caribbean. In 1996 a lot of international organizations intervened to help the country recovered, neighboring countries help clear roads, rebuild houses, and even replant destroyed crops. The country did not recovered immediately right after but the help definitely helped speed up the process.
If Jamaica wants to recovered from the recent crisis and prevent an even worst decline they are going to have to start thinking of asking for help like they did 8 years ago. Since Jamaica has become a more open economy with a rise on trade an a increase in foreign investment, this creates good relations with neighboring countries or trading partners who could be more flexible with taxation of exports in order for Jamaica to redirect their expenses towards the affected areas. International organizations could be approach like in 1996 to raise money that could be invested in the most affected sectors, or in this case the tourism sector. Confidence most be reestablished for the tourist who feels scare of visiting Jamaica, time will be a necessary factor to forget but certainly more advertisement and promoting of the country will be needed to attract the tourist.

Bibliography:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/jm.html
Wikipedia. Hurricanes of the Caribbean. November 2008

Globalization

Colegio Internacional de Caracas
Jose Luis Yañez
Geography 12 IB

DISADVANTAGES OF GLOBALIZATION

The world we live now days is more dangerous and less neat than it was supposed to be. The truth is that in the world we have more international terrorism and more nuclear production today than what we had fifth teen years ago. The fears of deadly disease and climate change have grown. Religious and cultural confrontations are more often happening, and recently the global financial system has decay at a terrifying rate. It is important to understand that Globalization is not the only reason for all of these challenges the world is going through, globalization is the means from which we arrive at this world issues but it is certainly humanity who has not been able to control it or use it wisely. “Globalization is very similar to fire, because if we use fire wisely, we can heat our homes, heat food, even develop metallurgy, but if we use it foolishly, fire can destroy peoples live.”

Thomas Friedman stated; "Globalization can be incredibly empowering and incredibly coercive. It can democratize opportunity and democratize panic. It makes the whales bigger and the minnows stronger. It leaves you behind faster and faster, and it catches up to you faster and faster. While it is homogenizing cultures, it is also enabling people to share their unique individuality farther and wider."

Globalization comes with a huge cost that humanity needs to learn how to control and manage in order to prevent future concerns; for example now day’s Nuclear weapons have become a source of destruction every country needs to have. Nuclear weapons have the power to destroy everything that stands on their way, men, women, children, and cities. The United States of America was the first country to develop nuclear weapons and this transmitted a powerful message to the world which said "This is what we are capable of doing and willing to do with our devastating new weapons; don't cross us or we could use them on you." This strong message also created a motivation for other countries to build nuclear weapons because they felt insecure. As a consequence countries who now have developed nuclear weapons can justify their reasons completely base on nuclear deterrence, and by deterrence they mean, in protection of any nuclear threat.

The United States of America created nuclear weapons because they felt threatened by a possible Nazi nuclear bomb. The Soviet Union then created nuclear weapons because they felt threatened by United States. The United Kingdom and France created nuclear weapons because they felt threatened by the Soviet Union. China felt threatened by the Soviet Union and the United States. India then felt threatened by China and so on. The creation of nuclear weapons has spread all around the world and has become on what is called proliferation. “Means to cause to grow or increase rapidly.”