Ep.19: Sustainable tourist destination becomes a Sargassum innovation hub with Jake Kheel

Jake Kheel is an environmental innovator whose efforts in the Dominican Republic with the Grupo Punta Cana Foundation have won numerous awards and made the country’s tourism more competitive and environmentally sustainable. Jake directs the Center for Sustainability, a think tank partnering with renowned universities to conduct environmental research. He helped pioneer one of the Caribbean’s largest coral reef restoration projects as well as research and development on ways to tackle the Sargassum crisis. To him Sargassum is both an incredible ecosystem and an immense challenge for the tourism industry.

Listen to the episode to hear about:

- Sargassum as an incredible ecosystem (3:50)

- Sargassum as major challenge for the tourism industry and local community and environment (4:45)

- Impact of Sargassum on tourism: image, guest experience, smell, cost of removal, sand erosion due to removal (5:30)

- The Sargassum inundations started in Punta Cana in2011 but were a problem of a few months, then in 2012 and 2015 it became a much larger problem and the resort started coming up with long term strategies to manage it (10:00)

- Using their companies talents and resources to constructing barriers to keep Sargassum away from the beaches (12:20)

- Punta Cana became an innovation hub for Sargassum solutions (19:15)

- How the resorts history and commitment to sustainability gave them unique skills to tackle the Sargassum challenge (22:32)

- Ability to innovate and adapt to new challenges is needed now and in the future as we are facing rapid changes (23:20)

- Algaenova piloting composting, biogas and compostable single use plates in Punta Cana (24:25)

- Creating alternative job opportunities for fishermen to prevent overfishing of the coral reefs (31:40)

- Hiring local fishermen to maintain floating Sargassum barriers turned these fishermen into Sargassum entrepreneurs (34:10)

- The Groupo Punta Cana foundation has been establish in 1994 and works on sustainable solutions for challenges the local community and their resort faces. As part of that they invested in local education and health and found solutions for solid waste management at the resort. The manage the marine habitat and the resort into a wildlife refuge for wild hawks (37:10)

- Instead of looking at companies as the cause of environmental problems or the funding source for solutions, we should consider then think tanks of innovation (42:45)

- Jake’s new book “waking the sleeping giant” is a book for anyone but especially the implementers, solution folks and problem solvers in companies (45:25)

- Recommendations for a company that wants to become more sustainable (48:50)

Transcript

Learn more about Jake and the topics we talked about:

֍ Jake’s book waking the sleeping giant

֍ Grupo Punta Cana Foundation website

֍ Jake’s LinkedIn

֍ Jake’s Instagram

Listen:

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW4vMX6b_Sc

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