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The Year 2000 in Review and the Challenges Ahead...
With the dawn of a new century, the insular Caribbean–island resources foundation's primary geographic focus for almost three decades–is confronting new globalization uncertainties and complex, interrelated, economic and social problems that challenge the region as never before.
According to a recent issue of The Economist traditional "sun, sand and sea" tourism in the Caribbean is steadily losing market share to other low cost global destinations with similar virtues. The region has yet to develop its natural and cultural heritage tourism products.
Amid assertions of small-nation sovereignty, Caribbean islands fear that international tightening of offshore banking regulations will destroy their prospering financial service sector.
The environmental effects of closing the financial services sector could be devastating for some of the smallest and most vulnerable islands. For example, foreign corporate registrations earn the BVI government $69,000,000 a year. Replacing that revenue with tourism would requires tens of millions of visitor-days, with massive negative effects on the BVI social and natural environment.
Access to traditionally protected European markets is being eroded by globalization and the World Trade Organization.
The underground "narco-economy" threatens political, social, and economic stability. According to our Program Associates Dr. Jerome McElroy and the late Dr. Klaus de Albuquerque, roughly a third of all cocaine and heroin consumed in the United States passes through the Caribbean islands.
Insular vulnerability and dependency are reflected in the prolonged and multiple economic effects of hurricanes that have afflicted the region, since 1989, including "wrong way Lenny" in November, 1999.
Buffeted by external forces and facing an increasingly competitive global market, the islands of the Caribbean struggle to achieve social stability and economic growth while having to make ever more critical and restricted choices about the use of their limited natural resource base.
Since 1972, the central mission of island resources foundation has been to assist small island states, especially those in the Caribbean, to meet the challenges of social, economic and institutional growth while protecting and enhancing the environment. In the year 2000, the Foundation added to its already considerable body of island-specific development assistance programs that recognize the uniqueness of island conditions, the vulnerabilities of island environments, and the special qualities of island life. This report highlights some of our recent work.
News Briefs –
sandy cay, bvi. Island Resources Foundation moved to the British Virgin Islands in 1999. Our first major project in the British Virgin Islands since then is a special evaluation of one of the BVI's most unique small islands, Sandy Cay. On behalf of the island's owner and long-time Foundation benefactor, Laurance S. Rockefeller, Foundation scientists have been looking at Sandy Cay's natural carrying capacity in the face of increasing touristic use. This management planning effort is being carried out in collaboration with the BVI National Parks Trust and the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College.
As with many other small cays in the Caribbean, Sandy Cay combines features of a recreation area and an important biosphere reserve. With no structures or built attractions, no brochure or signs of any kind, no fees, and no visible management structure, for 30 years Sandy Cay has functioned as a small park open to visitors who arrive by boat. Mr Rockefeller has also maintained it as a botanic garden and natural reserve.
Concerned about escalating user pressures, particularly in the absence of an updated management strategy, the island's owner asked Island Resources to help develop,
- an environmental profile of the Sandy Cay ecosystem, to be followed by
- a working resource management plan for the island.
The ecosystem characterization was completed at the end of 2000, and the new management plan will be ready in early 2001. Ed Towle leads this project.
vi flood hazard mitigation plan. In mid-May of 2000, Virgin Islands Emergency Management Agency (VITEMA) asked Island Resources to prepare a new Territorial Flood Hazard Mitigation Plan. The deadline: to deliver the Plan by the end of July! Bruce Potter, assisted by a team including David Brower and Anna Schwab of the University of North Carolina, and Werner Wernicke of the USVI, and with extensive use of the Internet to coordinate input from a large local advisory group, the task was completed on schedule.
That working group is now an open membership list for people in the Virgin Islands interested in flood mitigation and watershed planning issues. To join the group, see page 4 of this report for subscription instructions to the VI Watershed and Flood Hazard Mitigation discussion list.
global environment outlook (geo-3). Island Resources Foundation and the Caribbean Conservation Association (CCA) have been asked to partner with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the production of the Caribbean element of the third Global Environment Outlook (GEO-3) report. Both the Foundation and CCA have been designated as GEO Collaborating Centers, not only for preparation of the GEO-3 report but as part of a longer-term strategy leading to the institutionalization of GEO-related roles and activities by the Collaborating Centers. The Foundation's president Bruce Potter attended the first GEO-3 production planning meeting at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand in April, as well as the Expert Consultation for Latin America and the Caribbean on the GEO-3 Outlook, held in November in Santiago, Chile. Information on the previous Caribbean Environment Outlook report published in 1999 can be obtained from Kaveh Zahedi at UNEP's Regional Office in Mexico City; e-mail: kzahedi@rolac.unep.mx.
small island issues. Small island issues took center stage at two meetings in 2000, one regional and one global, both attended by Island Resources Foundation's president. In October the "Islands VI" conference, sponsored by the International Small Islands Studies Association (ISISA), was held on Skye, Scotland. The 6-day conference brought together academicians and practitioners from island areas throughout the world for discussions on the theme "Small Islands in the Third Millennium: Sharing Solutions to Common Problems". In October, the World Bank convened a consultation in Costa Rica of representatives from the insular Caribbean and Central America to review the Bank's Environmental Strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean and its implications for the Caribbean sub-region. Following the Costa Rica meeting, and based on the Foundation's nearly three decades of experience, Bruce Potter provided comments to the Bank on specific issues related to the insular Caribbean and the Bank's environmental framework. If you would like a copy of his comments, write bpotter@irf.org or contact the Foundation's Washington, DC office.
Updates – Congratulations to coralina, environmental management agency in the San Andrés Archipelago and a collaborating institution with Island Resources Foundation and the Center for Marine Conservation. In May, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) approved a $1 million grant to support a system of marine protected areas in the Archipelago. Then, in November, UNESCO officially declared the Archipelago "the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve", the newest member of a Worldwide Network of Biosphere Reserves.
Congratulations also to david robinson, recently retired director of the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society and recipient of the 2000 euan mc farlane environmental leadership award. Since 1988, this $1,000 cash prize has been presented annually by Island Resources to individuals who demonstrate conservation leadership in the Caribbean.
kevel lindsay, coordinator of the Foundation's Biodiversity Conservation Program, reports from New York City where he has been on study leave at Columbia University since 1998. Kevel is pursuing a degree at Columbia's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation. He writes that while he continues to wage battles against the likes of chemistry, calculus and statistics, there have also been moments of "absolute bliss" in New York, where he spends hours at the American Museum of Natural History pouring over its specimens of invertebrates. He hopes to complete his course work by the end of 2001 and return home to Antigua, where new 'battles" and challenges await him.
Appreciation to Mr. cephas miningou, from Burkina-Faso, West Africa, a summer intern at the Foundation's BVI office. Cephas is a graduate student in Third World Development at the University of Iowa. His tenure with the Foundation was shared with the BVI Town and Country Planning Department, with whom we have cooperated on student internships in the past. Cephas was the Foundation's 45th intern, and our first from Africa.
