On Bonaire, protecting nature is not a fashionable extra. It is a practical necessity. We live on a small island surrounded by coral reefs and delicate marine life. Environmental problems have nowhere else to go. Waste, sewage and careless development eventually return to the same people who created them.
This makes tourism complicated. Visitors bring income that helps pay for rubbish collection, street cleaning and campaigns encouraging everyone to keep the island clean.
But tourists also bring more waste, including plastic and batteries that are difficult to process on a small island. Many visitors come specifically to dive and enjoy the sea, adding pressure to the reef that attracted them in the first place.
I do not blame tourism for every environmental problem. Pollution can arrive from elsewhere, overfishing causes its own damage, and climate change and rising sea levels threaten Bonaire regardless of hotel occupancy.
Still, visitors make daily choices that matter more here than they may realise.
Water is one example. Our sewage is not properly treated before reaching the sea. Using less water therefore also reduces pressure on the marine environment.
Some hotels use a simple towel system. A towel left hanging is used again; one placed on the floor is replaced. Across thousands of hotel nights, this saves water, detergent and energy.
Please do not leave the air-conditioning running all day while nobody is in the room.
Cooling an empty room is wasteful anywhere, but on an island with limited resources the waste becomes even more important.
Batteries are another example. Bonaire has no easy way to process used batteries. My solution is uncomplicated: if you brought a battery to the island, take it home again.
The issue that frustrates me most is sand. Some visitors arrive with a fixed image of the Caribbean: every hotel should have a long, soft beach outside. Bonaire is not that kind of island. Much of our coast is rocky or edged by coral.
Some hotels have considered creating artificial sandy beaches to satisfy this expectation. Moving sand around the coast could damage coral and alter the ecosystem only to make Bonaire resemble a picture visitors already had in their minds.
There is a strange contradiction in travelling here because our marine environment is extraordinary and then asking us to change that environment into something more conventional.
I would rather visitors adjust their expectations than ask Bonaire to reshape its coastline.
I do not want tourists to feel guilty for enjoying themselves. Dive, swim and stay in our hotels. Just recognise that a small island has physical limits and that small actions become important when thousands of visitors repeat them.
The reef does not know what a holiday brochure promised. It only feels what enters the water and what changes along the coast. Tourism can help protect Bonaire, but only when visitors accept the island we actually are.