Prime Minister of The Bahamas Perry Christie says special consideration needs to be given by international financial institutions to the unique circumstances of his country. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ROSEAU, Dominica, Mar 1 2017 (IPS)

When Tropical Storm Erika hit the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica on Aug. 27, 2015, it killed more than two dozen people, left nearly 600 homeless and wreaked damages totaling more than a billion dollars.

The storm dumped 15 inches of rain on the mountainous island, caused floods and mudslides and set the country back 20 years, according Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit. The island was inadequately prepared for a storm such as Erika. Many roads and bridges were simply not robust enough to withstand such high volumes of water.“It is critical that there must be relatively quick access to this Fund by those it is intended to assist." --Dominica's Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit

In a national address shortly following the storm, Skerrit said that hundreds of homes, bridges and roads had been destroyed and millions of dollars in financial aid were needed to help the country bounce back.

“In order to get back to where we were before Tropical Storm Erika struck, we have to source at least 88.2 million dollars for the productive sector, 334.55 million for infrastructure and 60.09 million for the social sectors,” Skerrit said.

Dominica’s neighbours in the Caribbean were the first to deliver aid in the form of medical assistance, telecommunications engineers, and financial aid, and were followed by essential supplies and manpower from Venezuela and doctors and nurses from Cuba.

Now, 18 months later, Skerrit said the island is still in the initial recovery stages of the devastation wrought by the storm, and he is pleading for swift action from international funding agencies for his country and its Caribbean neighbours which have been impacted by severe storms in recent years.

“Of particular importance to us is the Green Climate Fund (GCF) which has been established to assist in adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change,” Skerrit told IPS.

“It is critical that there must be relatively quick access to this Fund by those it is intended to assist. As laudable as it is, it will be of minimal impact if disbursement is as sluggish as has been the experience with other institutions and agencies.

“The increasing intensity and frequency of these climatic events force us to face the reality of climate change. Hardly any of us in the region has been untouched in some form by the effects of the phenomenon and this emphasizes the need for the implementation of the measures contained in the Paris Agreement,” Skerrit added.

The GCF was established with a mission to advance the goal of keeping earth’s temperature increase below 2 degrees C.

The Fund is a unique global initiative to respond to climate change by investing in low emissions and climate-resilient development.

The GCF was established by 194 governments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries, and to help adapt vulnerable societies to the unavoidable impacts of climate change. Given the urgency and seriousness of the challenge, the Fund is mandated to make an ambitious contribution to the united global response to climate change.

The Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) was accredited as a regional implementing entity by the Board of the GCF in 2015.

CCCCC Executive Director Dr. Kenrick Leslie said it speaks to the high caliber of work being done in the region and the strength of the centre’s internal systems.

“We will now move forward with a set of ambitious and bankable projects that we have been developing under a directive from CARICOM Heads,” he said.

As the first regionally accredited organization, the CCCCC is now the interface and conduit for GCF funding to the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of the Caribbean.

Skerrit, who wrapped up his tenure as chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in February, said he visited Haiti and The Bahamas during his chairmanship of the 15-member regional grouping to see first-hand the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew.

Last year, Hurricane Matthew rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to hurricane status as it moved over the Caribbean Sea. Matthew continued to intensify to a Category 5 storm and into one of the strongest in Atlantic basin history, which made landfall and devastated portions of The Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, and the eastern United States.

“In both countries, the extent of the damage was severe,” said Skerrit, who was accompanied by the CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador Ambassador Irwin LaRocque and the Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Ronald Jackson.

He noted that the Government of Haiti reported more than 500 deaths along with 1.5 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, including 120,000 families whose homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

The worst of the devastation occurred in the agricultural belt, which affected the food supply of the country.

“Agriculture and fishing were also badly affected in The Bahamas along with homes and infrastructure on the three islands which were hardest hit,” Skerrit described.

“The damage was estimated at more than 500 million dollars. It is my hope that the recovery process is well underway to reconstructing the lives and livelihoods of all those affected.”

Prime Minister of The Bahamas Perry Christie described how his country also faced a 600-million-dollar assessed impact from a Category 4 hurricane (Joaquin) in 2015 and encroachment by the sea with Hurricane Matthew a year later.

The Bahamian leader said special consideration needs to be given by the international financial institutions to the unique circumstances of the country.

“Our people are spread over a hundred thousand square miles of ocean [and] as we modernize we began to feel the effects of having rich people in our countries drive our economy and the measure of our economy on the basis of per capita income. And we were being graduated to the point where we are not qualified for concessionary loans,” he explained.

“There is this paradigm that lumps the country together and does not take into consideration the unequal development that exists in our country. The people who live on the island of New Providence are entirely different to those on the remote islands.

“We are judged harshly. When there is a 600-million-dollar assessed impact from a hurricane, and an encroachment by the sea as happened with Hurricane Matthew, the country has to withstand the impacts and then you are downgraded because they say there is no assurance you are going to be able to have the revenue. These are the challenges that the countries in our region face,” Christie added.

Sea walls, like this one in the Bahamas, serve to protect areas of human habitation, conservation and leisure activities from the action of tides and waves. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
NASSAU, May 29 2015 (IPS)

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have championed the phrase “1.5 to stay alive” in demanding that global temperature increases be kept as far below 1.5 degrees C as possible to limit the anticipated devastating effects of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable countries.

But for the countries of the Caribbean, the challenge associated with the ongoing climate change negotiations is that even if the goal to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees C is achieved, they will still experience severe adverse impacts for which stronger programmes of adaptation would necessarily have to be implemented.“For the region, climate change magnifies the growing concerns regarding food security, water scarcity, energy security and the resource requirements for protection from natural disaster." -- Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie

In The Bahamas, if the sea level rises some five feet, 80 percent of the country would disappear.

To assist with ways to build resilience against this bleak possibility, the Inter-American Development Bank Multi-Lateral Investment Fund (IDB- MIF) and CARIBSAVE have given The Bahamas a grant of 100,000 dollars.

It’s part of the Climate Change, Coastal Community Enterprises: Adaption, Resilience and Knowledge (C-ARK) project that has a total budget of 2.5 million dollars.

Regional Director of CARIBSAVE Judi Clarke said The Bahamas was an easy pick for the grant because it is one of the most low-lying countries in the world.

“We’ve been working with the Bahamian government for nearly 10 years on climate change resilience and trying to strengthen the resilience of The Bahamas and the Bahamian people,” Clarke told IPS.

“We want to get through the tough times that have been happening in terms of climate change and the impacts of sea level rise, increased temperatures and degradation of the environment so that we can try to reduce the vulnerability of the tourism product.”

With a regional headquarters in Barbados, an office in Jamaica, and registered entities in Saint Lucia, Grenada and soon Guyana, CARIBSAVE’s work spans the wider Caribbean. They bring together specialist knowledge, project management expertise, convening power and innovation with the goal of achieving a sustainable future for all.

The Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie said the situation for his country and others in the region is rendered especially urgent in the face of information that ocean acidification, sea surface temperatures and sea levels are already rising.

“The region is not fully able to adapt or to mitigate the loss and damages associated with climate change induced upon us,” Christie told IPS.

“These, particularly sea level rise, will irreversibly change the geography and ecology of many coastal states and territories. It has been projected that responding to these factors can have particularly disastrous consequences causing a perpetual recession on each of the CARICOM member states for a significant period as our infrastructure-built environment, settlements and economic wellbeing are concentrated in coastal areas prone to flooding and inundation.

“For the region, climate change magnifies the growing concerns regarding food security, water scarcity, energy security and the resource requirements for protection from natural disaster,” he added.

The Bahamas’ grant will be used in micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs) and community-based organisations (CBOs) in New Providence, Abaco and Andros.

The grant is expected to impact more than 3,000 local direct and indirect beneficiaries.

“The Bahamas is gaining the reputation of being at the forefront of environmental issues and looking at sustainable ways that we can protect this environment,” Director General of the Ministry of Tourism Joy Jibrilu said.

“We know that tourism is the cornerstone of our economy and so it is incumbent upon us to ensure that we protect the environment not just for our current use but for future generations. It is grants such as this that ensures that in fact takes place.”

The islands of the Bahamas are already experiencing some of the effects of climate variability and change through damage from severe weather systems and other extreme events, as well as more subtle changes in temperature and rainfall patterns.

Detailed climate modelling projections for the Bahamas predict an increase in average atmospheric temperature; reduced average annual rainfall; increased Sea Surface Temperatures (SST); and the potential for an increase in the intensity of tropical storms.

The CARIBSAVE regional director stressed that climate change isn’t just something to worry about in the future.

“It’s already happening and more and more, scientists are attributing some climate-related events to global climate change – because the science supports this conclusion,” she said.

“Even though small island and low-lying coastal states like those in the Caribbean are not historically responsible for the causes of climate change, we are some of the most vulnerable to the adverse impacts.

“Therefore we need to adapt (find long term solutions to present and future climate challenges). However, we must also play our part in the mitigation of climate change – hence do our utmost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This makes economic sense anyway. In a region with so much sunshine, why aren’t we using it more?”

Serious adverse impacts are already being felt by island states at the current 0.8 degrees C of warming, including coastal erosion, flooding, coral bleaching and more frequent and intense extreme weather events.

The U.N.’s lead agency on refugees has already warned that some particularly low-lying island states are “very likely to become entirely uninhabitable”.

For the Caribbean, Clarke said the primary challenges as a result of climate change result from the physical and economic damage from extreme events such as tropical storms and hurricanes, which are expected to increase in severity and frequency as a result of climate change; and drought conditions which have been occurring more frequently throughout the region.

She said this trend is expected to continue and is of concern for the management of water resources and agricultural productivity.

Clarke also cited sea level rise, noting, even though this may appear to be mere increments per year, low-lying coastal areas are vulnerable from storm surge – which is magnified by sea level rise.

“Since much of the region’s population and critical infrastructure is located in coastal areas, this is of great concern. Storm surges associated with hurricanes can cause loss of life and much physical damage in coastal areas,” she added.

CARIBSAVE also plans to spread micro grants across other countries in the region including Barbados, Belize and Jamaica.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A wildfire in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana, United States. Credit: John McColgan/U.S. Forest Service

By Joseph Chamie
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 12 2015 (IPS)

World leaders from government, finance, business, science and civil society are attempting to negotiate a legally binding and universal agreement on climate change at the upcoming 21^st United Nations Climate Change Conference being convened in Paris in December.

If achieved, which appears uncertain at present, the agreement aimed at addressing global warming would begin to take effect some time in the future. In the meantime, local communities are being forced to deal with the consequences of global warming, such as the increasing incidence of wildfires.The challenges of catastrophic wildfires are certainly daunting and can be overwhelming as recently witnessed in California, South Australia and Indonesia.

As a result of the world’s warming the frequency and duration of large wildfires and the area burned have been increasing. Longer fire seasons, warmer temperatures, which are conducive to widespread insect infestations killing more trees, and drier conditions, including more droughts, are contributing to more severe wildfire risks and growing worries for local communities.

Worldwide it is estimated that somewhere between 75 million and 820 million hectares of land burn each year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that “climate variability is often the dominant factor affecting large wildfires” despite widespread management practices aimed at reducing flammable materials in forests.

Various climate models are forecasting higher temperatures and longer droughts, which in turn are expected to increase wildfire frequency. While more rainfall in some areas might reduce fire frequency, it may also foster more forest vegetation that provides more fuel for wildfires. Lightning strikes, often an ignition source for wildfires, are also expected to increase with global warming.

The challenges of catastrophic wildfires are certainly daunting and can be overwhelming as recently witnessed in California, South Australia and Indonesia. The costs of wildfires in terms of risks to human life and property damage are enormous and are expected to increase substantially in the coming years.

Wildfires also have serious environmental and health consequences. In addition to threats to humans and wildlife, wildfires contribute to local air pollution, which exacerbate lung diseases, and cause breathing problems even in healthy individuals.

Most wealthy industrialised nations have developed mechanisms and organisations and allocated human and financial resources to combat wildfires and mitigate their devastating consequences. Less developed countries, in contrast, often lack the resources and governmental organisations to tackle wildfires and handle their effects.

As might be expected, people’s vulnerability to global warming varies greatly by region, wealth and access to alternatives. Some less developed nations, in particular small island nations and low-lying territories, are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. These nations are seeking mitigation monies from the wealthy, industrialised countries to help them adapt to the impending catastrophes from climate change.

Based on the available statistical evidence, the overwhelming majority of scientists have concluded that climate change is due to greenhouse-gas emissions. Some powerful voices, however, are in denial, disputing the causes of global warming often because of self-interest, resistance to change and fear of governmental and outside interventions and regulations.

Local communities, however, do not have the luxury of debating the causes and consequences of climate change. Communities are forced to deal with the consequences of global warming, such as increasing wildfires, rising sea levels, droughts, etc.

With a possible global agreement on climate change now being debated and negotiated by major world powers, one small community in the Bahamas decided that they needed to do something about the increased threat of large wildfires to life and property due to global warming.

On a plot of land leased from the Bahamian government, the community of Bahama Palm Shores consisting of some 100 households located in the Abacos Island financed and built their own firehouse.

The homeowners -men and women and young and old- donated their time, labour and limited financial resources to build their local firehouse. They were also able to collect 12,000 dollars in donations to purchase a used 1985 fire truck from Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.

In addition to an occasional bingo night, the community has organised a 30-mile Bike-a-Thon on Valentine’s Weekend of about three dozen riders to raise funds to maintain the firehouse and fire truck as well as support volunteer fire services.

Many communities recognise the need to organise and work together to ensure that local climate change adaptation measures are effective. Non-governmental organisations, especially environmental groups, are also encouraging and supporting citizens at various levels to due their part to reduce the impact of climate change.

However, the only long-term solution to global warming is a legally binding and international agreement on climate among all nations of the world, which is the overall objective of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December.

As witnessed at the recent U.N. Summit on Climate Change held in New York City, heads of state and government officials often announce impressive actions and ambitious goals intended to avert the worst consequences of global warming as well as address the vocal concerns of activist environmental groups. When it comes to adopting coordinated action at the global level for nearly 200 countries, things become enormously more complex and difficult.

Some observers consider the chances of achieving an international, binding climate agreement by the year’s end to be slim. They see powerful factors, including the industrial complexes reliance on fossil fuels, economic and business interests, and short-term, parochial nation-state interests, undermining the chances for an agreement.

In addition, even if an international climate convention were to be reached, they contend that it would be almost impossible to enforce.

Others, however, believe that a global climate convention is not only possible, but that it may lead to payoffs that will have meaningful impacts on confronting climate change. Not only will an international agreement buttress the abilities of individual nations to address climate change, it will also send a clear message to businesses and guide investments toward low carbon emission outcomes.

While communities around the world wait hopefully for the outcome of the U.N. Climate Change Conference to kick in, they have little choice but to do the best they can to deal with the consequences of global warming, including more bike-a-thons, bingo games and other fund raising events.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

The Bahamas is focusing on renewable energy as it tries to preserve gains in tourism. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
ABU DHABI, Jan 21 2015 (IPS)

When it comes to tourism in the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM), The Bahamas — 700 islands sprinkled over 100,000 square miles of ocean starting just 50 miles off Florida — is a heavyweight.

With a gross domestic product of eight billion dollars, the Bahamian economy is almost twice the size of Barbados, another of CARICOM’s leading tourism destinations."Reducing our various countries’ dependence on fossil fuels, ramping up renewable energy, building more climate change resilience is incredibly important for us." -- Environment Minister Kenred M.A. Dorsett

Visitors are invited to “imagine a world where you can’t tell where dreams begin and reality ends.”

However, in the country’s Ministry of the Environment, officials have woken up to a reality that could seriously undermine the gains made in tourism and elsewhere: renewable energy development.

In 2014, in a clear indication of its intention to address its poor renewable energy situation, The Bahamas joined the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

The Abu Dhabi-based intergovernmental organisation supports countries in their transition to a sustainable energy future. IRENA also serves as the principal platform for international cooperation, a centre of excellence, and a repository of policy, technology, resource and financial knowledge on renewable energy.

The Bahamas has also advanced its first energy policy, launched in 2013, and has committed to ramping up to a minimum of 30 per cent by 2033 the amount of energy it generates from renewable sources.

“Currently, we are debating in Parliament an amendment to the Electricity Act to make provision for grid tie connection, therefore making net metering a reality using solar and wind technology,” Minister of Environment and Housing Kenred M.A. Dorsett told IPS on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW).

ADSW is a global forum that unites thought leaders, policy makers and investors to address the challenges of renewable energy and sustainable development. The week includes IRENA’s Fifth Assembly, the World Future Energy Summit, and the International Water Summit.

But Dorsett was especially interested in the IRENA assembly, which took place on Jan. 17 and 18.

At the assembly, ministers and senior officials from more than 150 countries met to discuss what IRENA has described as the urgent need and increased business case for rapid renewable energy expansion.

Dorsett came to Abu Dhabi with a rather short shopping list for both his country and the CARICOM region, and says he did not leave empty-handed.

“Our involvement in IRENA is important because the world over is concerned with standardisation of technology to ensure that our citizens are not taken advantage of in terms of the technology we import as we advance the renewable energy sector,” he told IPS.

“We certainly were able to engage IRENA in discussions with respect to what the Bahamas is doing, and our next steps and they have indicated to us that they will be able to assist us on the issue of standardisation,” Dorsett tells IPS.

Minister of the Environment and Housing in The Bahamas, Kenred Dorsett. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

He says IRENA has developed a programme that looks at practical consideration for the implementation or ramping up of renewable energy, including assistance in developing regulations for ensuring that standards are maintained.

“So, I think from our perspective, it is clear to us that IRENA would be prepared to assist us on that particular issue, and I think that generally speaking, what I certainly found was that the meeting was very innovative, particularly in light of the fact that there was a lot of technical support for countries looking to implement or deploy renewable energy technologies,” he said of Bahamas-IRENA talks on the sidelines of the assembly.

Dorsett also wanted IRENA to devote some special attention to CARICOM, a group of 15 nations, mostly Caribbean islands, in addition to Belize, Guyana and Suriname.

At a side event — “Renewables in Latin America: Challenges and Opportunities” — ahead of the Assembly, there was no distinction between Caribbean and Latin American nations.

“… I think that’s very, very important for us as region, as we move to ensure that CARICOM itself is a region of focus for IRENA, that we are not consumed in the entire Latin America region and there is sufficient focus on us,” he told IPS ahead of the assembly.

Dorsett is now convinced that CARICOM positions will be represented as Trinidad and Tobago, another CARICOM member, and the Bahamas, have been elected to serve on IRENA Council in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

“We do know that deployment of renewable energy in our region is important, we are small island development states, we live in [low-lying areas] and sea level rise is a major issue for us in the Caribbean region.

“Therefore, reducing our various countries’ dependence on fossil fuels, ramping up renewable energy, building more climate change resilience is incredibly important for us,” he told IPS.

Meanwhile, Director-General of IRENA, Adnan Amin, said that his agency is “trying to develop a new type of institution for a new time”.

“We know that the islands’ challenges are very particular. We have developed a lot of expertise in doing that, and we know in a general sense the challenge they face is quite different from mainland Latin America,” Amin told IPS. “So we see them as logically separate entities in what kinds of strategies we will have.”

He says IRENA has been working in the Pacific islands — early members of the agency — and is moving into the Caribbean.

Adnan Amin, Director-General of the International Energy Agency, says the Caribbean has “particular” renewable energy considerations that are distinct from Latin America. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

IRENA is already working in the Caribbean nations of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, and Jamaica, and this year agreed to lend St. Vincent and the Grenadines 15 million dollars to help fund its 10-15 megawatt geothermal power plant, expected to come on stream by 2018.

Dorsett is also pleased that at the assembly the Bahamian delegation was able to get a briefing on the advances of technology that stores electricity generated from renewable sources.

“That also can prove to be very important for us as many Caribbean counties are faced with addressing the issue of grid stability,” he told IPS, adding that the ability to have storage that is “appropriately priced and that works efficiently” can help the Bahamas to exceed the average of 20 to 40 per cent of electricity generated by renewable sources by many countries.

The Bahamas woke up to the realities of its poor renewable energy situation in 2013 when Guilden Gilbert, head the country’s Renewable Energy Association, decried the nation for not doing enough to advance renewable energy generation.

The call came after the release of a report by Castalia-CREF Renewable Energy Islands Index for the Caribbean, which ranked the Bahamas 26 out of 27 countries in the region for its progress and prospects in relation to renewable energy investments.

The 2012 edition of the same report had ranked The Bahamas 21 out of the 22 countries on the list.

In the two years leading up to the announcement of the “National Energy Policy & Grid Tie In Framework”, The Bahamas established an Energy Task Force responsible for advising on solutions to reducing the high cost of electricity in the country.

The government also eliminated tariffs on inverters for solar panels and LED appliances to ensure that more citizens would be able to afford these energy saving devices.

The government also advanced two pilot projects to collect data on renewable energy technologies. The first project provided for the installation of solar water heaters and the second project for the installation of photovoltaic systems in Bahamian homes.

Dorsett tells IPS that he thinks that it is “incredibly important” that CARICOM focuses on renewable energy generation.

“I think CARICOM, as a region, has to look at renewable energy sources to build a sustainable energy future for our region as well as to ensure that we build resilience as we address the issues of climate change,” he tells IPS.

However, in some CARICOM nations, there is a major hurdle that policy makers, such as Dorsett, will have to overcome before the bloc realises its full renewable energy potential.

“There are very special challenges in the Caribbean. For example, many of the utilities are foreign-owned and they negotiated 75-year-long, cast-iron guarantees on their existence,” Amin tells IPS.

“They were making money off diesel. They have no incentive to move to renewables, but we are moving ahead,” the IRENA chief says.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at Kentonxtchance@gmail.com

Follow him on Twitter @KentonXChance

Handling lionfish requires special care: some of their fins are tipped with venom that make even the slightest puncture extremely painful, though not fatal. Credit: Christopher Pala/IPS

By Christopher Pala
NASSAU, The Bahamas, Feb 28 2014 (IPS)

The lionfish, with its striking russet and white stripes and huge venomous outrigger fins, wasn’t hard to spot under a coral reef in 15 feet of clear water. Nor was it a challenge to spear it.

As I approached and brought the point of my Hawaiian sling to within a foot of it, it simply looked back, utterly fearless until I pierced it and brought it back to the surface.“They’re everywhere now. It’s a doomsday scenario.” -- Pericles Maillis

Within a half-hour, we had caught four of these gorgeous one-pound fish, and the fillets made excellent eating that night.

But the arrival of a tasty, abundant and easy-to-shoot fish on the Caribbean’s much-depleted coral reefs is anything but good news. A recent scientific paper brought new detail to previous studies, showing that a year after colonising a reef, lionfish reduced the number of native fish by about half.

“They’ll eat just about anything they can swallow and almost nothing eats them,” said principal author Stephanie Green of Oregon State University. That’s why they’re so easy to catch, she explained.

However tasty they may be, only a miniscule fraction of the invaders has been removed, while their numbers continue to grow exponentially, reaching densities never seen in the Pacific, their native habitat.

This suggests the lionfish, believed to have been introduced to the Atlantic coast by aquarium lovers in the 1980s, will likely wipe out most Caribbean reef fish in a decade or two, scientists agree. As a result, many corals that depend on herbivore fish will die and eventually turn to rubble, making shorelines more vulnerable to waves just as global warming is lifting sea levels.

As he steered his boat back to shore, my host, a Bahamian lawyer of Greek descent named Pericles Maillis, balefully contemplated our catch and said, “They’re everywhere now. It’s a doomsday scenario.”

Maillis, a lifelong fisherman, conservationist and a former president of the Bahamas National Trust, has been trying to promote a commercial fishery in The Bahamas, but the fish, first spotted here in 2004, has become nearly ubiquitous since 2010. And shooting it while scuba diving is still banned.

His pessimism is not unwarranted. Scientists from the southern Caribbean are reporting seeing densities of lionfish that until a couple of years ago were only documented in The Bahamas, the fish’s jumping off point from Florida into the Caribbean.

In the Atlantic, their range now covers 3.3 million square kilometres. They can reach densities hundreds of times higher than in their native range, for reasons that remain a mystery. “Something is controlling their abundance,” says Mark Hixon of the University of Hawaii. “We’re guessing a small predator that’s absent in the Atlantic is targeting baby lions, but we have no idea what it is.”

In addition to adult little reef fish, the lionfish swallow virtually all species of bigger fish when they appear on the reef as bite-sized juveniles.

Isabelle Côté of Simon Fraser University said that today, when she surveys reefs in the Bahamas, where she does most of her research, “you can see there are a lot fewer little fish than there used to be just four years ago.”

No so for the larger predators like snappers and groupers that are the mainstay of the local fishermen’s reef catch. A stroll along Nassau’s fishing docks confirms what scientists have observed: despite the explosion in the number of lionfish, the decades-old slow decline in the numbers of large predators has not accelerated – yet.

Because they take years to mature, it will take a while for the generation of juveniles that’s being gobbled up now to fail to replace the current adults, who are too large to be lionfish prey.

At Nassau’s waterside fish market, where a “Me? Worry?” mood prevailed, fisherman Carson Colmar, 45, said he’s not seen any significant drop in his catch of reef fish and lobsters. He started spearing lionfish simply because they’re so easy and abundant. “I sell 50 a week,” he said. “I’d catch more if I could sell them.” The fillets sell for eight dollars a pound, compared to twelve dollars for grouper or snapper.

One problem is that handling lionfish requires special care: some of their fins are tipped with venom that make even the slightest puncture extremely painful, though not fatal. So local people, already taken aback by their unusual appearance, often believe that the flesh may be poisonous too, which it is not. That, fishermen complain, limits demand.

In the United States, the notion that this lethal predator could be controlled by becoming dinner for the ultimate predator, homo sapiens, has received wide coverage. Lad Akins, the founder of REEF, the Reef Environmental Education Foundation, who has been working on lionfish control for nearly a decade, noted that the commercial take of lionfish in Florida, where REEF is based, quintupled in just a year to 6.1 tonnes in 2012.

“It’s growing fast, but we don’t know yet if it’s putting a dent in the lionfish population,” says Akins, who is based in Key Largo. Scientists said the strategy of “eat them to beat them” has failed to have any overall effect and is unlikely to do so because spearing lionfish is too time-consuming to be profitable.

So far the only documented successes have come from recreational diving companies, which are literally defending their turf. Seeing how the colourful reef fish that underpin the businesses could soon be gone, they have started methodically exterminating the invaders from their regular dive sites.

In Bonaire, a diving mecca the Dutch West Indies, the first lionfish was caught in 2009, and within two years they were proliferating, according to Fadilah Ali of the University of Southampton. But some 300 volunteers were given special spears, more than 10,000 lionfish were killed and soon their density dropped in the areas favoured by divers. “Today, on a typical dive, you’ll see very few or no lionfish,” she said.

Green of Oregon State said some reefs might survive if the recreational divers go beyond the reefs favoured by their clients, which tend to have many different species but few juveniles. To protect the young fish, they would have to eliminate lionfish from shallow areas around mangroves, which serve as nurseries, she said.

A sailboat passing through the southern Bahamas islands with about 150 Haitian migrants on board capsized after running aground, killing up to 30 people and leaving the rest clinging to the vessel for hours, authorities said Tuesday.

The exact death toll remained uncertain. Authorities on the scene confirmed at least 20 dead and determined the number could reach 30 based on accounts from survivors, said Lt. Origin Deleveaux, a Royal Bahamas Defence Force spokesman.

The remains of five victims had been recovered and the Bahamas military and police were working with the U.S. Coast Guard to recover additional bodies as they pulled survivors from the stranded sailboat.

“Right now, we are just trying to recover as many bodies as we possibly can,” Deleveaux said.

Authorities believe the migrants had been at sea for eight to nine days with limited food and water and no life jackets, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Gabe Somma said. Many were severely dehydrated when the first rescue crews reached them. The boat, in addition to being overloaded, likely encountered rough weather, Deleveaux said.

“It was obviously just grossly overloaded, unbalanced, unseaworthy,” Somma said. “An incredibly dangerous voyage.”

The capsizing of overloaded vessels occurs with disturbing frequency in the area, most recently in mid-October when four Haitian women died off Miami. There have also been fatal incidents near the Turks and Caicos Islands, between Haiti and the Bahamas, and in the rough Mona Passage that divides the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

“Unfortunately, we see these types of tragedies occur on a monthly basis,” Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss said. “Every year we see hundreds of migrants needlessly lose their lives at sea taking part in these dangerous and illegal voyages.”

It’s common enough that the Coast Guard recently developed a public service announcement that will run on TV and radio in Florida, Haiti, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic urging people not to risk the deadly ocean voyages.

This latest incident occurred late Monday near Harvey Cays, about 80 miles southeast of New Providence, the island that includes the capital of Nassau, and 260 miles southeast of Miami.

Fishermen spotted the dangerously overloaded sailboat and alerted the Bahamian military, which asked the Coast Guard for assistance in locating the vessel, Somma said. By the time it was spotted, the 40-foot boat had run aground in an area dotted with tiny outcroppings and reefs and then capsized.

Photos taken by the Coast Guard showed people clinging to every available space on the overturned vessel. Some were taken to a clinic on nearby Staniel Cay for treatment for dehydration.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the Coast Guard and Bahamian authorities had rescued about 110 people, including 19 women. Deleveaux said there were no children on board. Smugglers will often seek to blend in with the migrants when they are captured and authorities did not announce any arrests.

Migrants have long traversed the Bahamian archipelago to reach the United States. Thousands have also settled in the Bahamas in recent years. Deleveaux said those rescued from the boat near Harvey Cays would be taken to a military base on New Providence, processed and then repatriated to Haiti.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

In the 1980’s, Caribbean countries wanted to shore up their prospects of social and economic development in the coming decades, so they looked to the financial services sector to spur employment and development. They managed to develop a robust industry, particularly in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.

Today, however, the region has been struggling to keep up with evolving international regulations. These challenges come at a high cost, even as proponents of the regulations argue that they are critical in dealing with the global financial and economic crisis.

For at least two years, the international community has pressured the Caribbean, where several countries are well known as tax havens, to shut down its financial centres and implement a number of measures in order to qualify for bilateral aid. Since then, little has changed, delegates at the second meeting of the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM) Conference on the International Financial Services Sector in the Caribbean Region, held Oct. 30-31 in Antigua, learned.

Baldwin Spencer, the Antiguan prime minister, said the international community continues to issue “repeated demands that the region should be treated on a level playing field with financial centres in the industrialised economies using the principles of natural justice”.

He said that while the Caribbean has been committed to developing financial services in a “responsible manner and investing in their good supervision and regulation”, developed countries are the ones that have dropped the “regulatory ball”, to devastating effect on the rest of the world.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has pushed for restricting, and in some cases, outlawing financial services in the Caribbean, threatening on occasions to blacklist countries that have failed to comply with some of its policies.

Regulations with a purpose

Those who support such regulations say that they are necessary given the current financial climate. The newly appointed head of the delegation of the European Union to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Mikael Barfod, has defended the OECD position, insisting that it is aimed at tackling tax fraud and harmful tax practises.

“In today’s environment with the international financial crisis, the international taxation cooperation between governments and between tax administrations has gained in importance,” he said, noting that since 2009, there has been “major progress” in these areas.

He acknowledged that while Caribbean countries have made an effort to sign a “sufficient amount” of Tax Information Exchange Agreements in order to be fully accepted by the OECD, “there is more to be done in many states and the governance standards defined internationally by G20 and OECD are changing”.

Avinash Persaud, an international expert on the financial services sector and chairman of the London Business School, told IPS that the financial sector “is really quite significant” in Caribbean economies, accounting for as much as 50 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for islands like Barbados and Antigua and Barbuda.

“They represent a major part of tax revenues. Over the past 10 years they have come under tremendous pressure by the larger economies” such as those of London, Zurich, and New York, which are under fiscal pressure themselves with little or no tax revenues and which now want to compete with Caribbean financial centres.

“They are trying to establish a set of global rules which they decide themselves and then impose on us,” said Persaud. “Then they judge whether we are fitting with those rules or not. Judge and jury. It is really ad hoc and it is really designed to close down the international financial centres coming from the Caribbean. It is certainly not a level playing field.”

New standards to follow

Ivan Ogando Lora, the director general of CARIFORUM, which is comprised of the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) bloc and the Dominican Republic, said recent recommendations by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) regarding international standards for combating money laundering and financing of terrorism, will also now pose new problems for the region.

“Compliance to international standards now seems to be the order of the day and Caribbean jurisdictions have been making strides in this regard,” he said, noting however, despite the efforts, that Caribbean countries “continue to attract negative attention”.

CARICOM countries have already developed a final draft of a Financial Services Agreement that if approved by mid-2013 would create a single financial space with common legislation, regulations, administrative procedures and practices and will also provide for cross border supervision and harmonisation of standards.

The United States, which has complained in the past of its wealthy citizens using the Caribbean to escape paying taxes, has itself introduced a range of changes to its financial regulatory environment that regional stakeholders fear could also undermine the financial services sector within CARIFORUM.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), for example, would require U.S. tax authorities to levy a 30 percent withholding tax on both foreign and non-financial foreign institutions where new reporting requirements have not been met.

The requirements would affect traditional financial institutions such as retail and commercial banks as well as investment banks, securities and brokerage firms, private banks and wealth management firms that do business in the United States. Any institution doing business with U.S. individuals and entities would have to immediately adopt procedures, processes and systems necessary for FATCA compliance.

Persaud said that this latest strategy underscores the struggle facing the Caribbean in recent years.

“They have essentially moved land and water to try and comply with the new rules and when they do so, the rules then change again and the costs are extremely burdensome. The cost for the Caribbean financial centre complying with international rules is ten times as the per cent of GDP as the cost of the larger rich countries complying with the rules they have set.

“The problem is we can’t abandon the sector because it is an important sector,” he said, urging the Caribbean “to fight a better fight”.

Lionfish specimen in Jamaican waters. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ST. JOHN'S, Antigua, Jul 25 2012 (IPS)

In a case of “if you can’t beat them, eat them,” Caribbean countries have embarked on a new strategy to deal with the invasive lionfish, whose voracious appetite is wiping out fish stocks from Bermuda to Barbados in what scientists believe to be the worst marine invasion in history.

Regional authorities are promoting a rather unusual solution – incorporate this “beautiful menace” into their diet.

Matt Strong, who heads the Bermuda-based environmental charity, Groundswell believes that a solution to the problem would be to incorporate lionfish into local menus and have it targeted by commercial and recreational fishermen.

“We can essentially eat them to reduce their numbers. It’s worked before — we ate the Nassau grouper in such large numbers that they no longer exist in Bermuda’s waters,” Strong said.

“Every time you are at a restaurant, grocery store or buying fish from your roadside fisherman, ask for lionfish. If we build up enough demand, the fishermen will target them,” he urged islanders.

The environment official noted that every day, authorities are getting more and more reports of lionfish on the country’s reefs.

“They are in great numbers on our deeper reef and now they are showing up inshore in the fish nursery grounds and relentlessly eating our juvenile fish,” Strong said.

“Lionfish are eating important commercial species but even more importantly, they could potentially decimate the herbivorous fish populations such as parrotfish. This is a huge problem as the herbivores keep the algae in check. Without them, the algae outcompetes the corals and the reef, as we know it, dies.”

The lionfish explosion occurred in Bahamian waters in 2010 and was described then as “a plague of biblical proportions stalking the Bahamian economy”.

Today, 97 percent of the reef fish endemic to the Bahamas have been eaten.

In 2011, the country created an annual bash to raise awareness about the lionfish. The family event, which was held Jul. 13-15 this year, saw a total of 345 lionfish being caught.

A similar event held in Dominica in July each year – the annual Dive Festival – organised by the Dominica Watersports Association, was used to appeal to citizens to assist in controlling the lionfish.

The theme for the 2012 festival was “Save the reef; eat a lionfish.”

The association’s president Simon Walsh said the festival this year “reflected that although this is a species that needs to be controlled in order to protect the dive sector and coastal fisheries, it is looked at as a sustainable food source”.

British Marine Biologist Arun Madisetti is on a mission to encourage the people of the Caribbean to put the lionfish to their diet.

“These things have no natural predator in our region,” he told IPS.

“We are never ever going to win this war, we can take on certain battles and control certain reefs but it’s a problem that is not going to go away.”

Madisetti, who now resides in Dominica (which saw its first lionfish in December 2010), was on a visit to Antigua at the invitation of the local Environmental Awareness Group to give a lecture on the lionfish.

Already, at least one player in the dive industry in Antigua has begun promoting the idea of eating the troublesome lionfish in a bid to control its fast growing population.

“We should encourage the community to eat them because they taste really good,” said Shawn Clarke, who runs a recreation dive business here.

Clarke and others who make their living from marine resources say the lionfish population has drastically increased since being first spotted here early last year.

In recent times there has been concern about the fish’s venomous nature and Clarke believe this is what has kept it from most dinner plates.

But he said “they are free of fish poisoning when prepared. Once you have people hunting and wanting to eat them we don’t have to worry about it so much because we want to get rid of them.

“If fishermen go out there and they know people are buying them they will catch them. If you don’t catch them in the next 20 years, all there will be is lionfish.”

The lionfish, which is native to the Pacific Ocean, is believed to have entered Atlantic and Caribbean waters during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 when a Florida aquarium broke. They rapidly consume small fishes on coral reefs and can produce up to 30,000 eggs every four days.

The lionfish’s arrival has sent shock waves of fear among members of the marine community in Barbados.

To date, six of the voracious feeders have been killed by divers or caught by fishermen.

“As part of our public awareness campaign, we have roped in the divers and the dive association and all the dive shops because, frankly, they are the ones that are out there the most,” said marine biologist Caroline Bissada-Gooding, whose company East Coast Conservation Organization Inc. runs the Lionfish Barbados Hotline.

“It’s in their own interest to get involved because as the lionfish population grows, the reef fish communities will shrink and that’s their livelihood at stake, so it’s really up to the divers, dive shops and fishermen to get involved.”

She said the island’s lionfish population is still small and those caught are being collected by members of the Lionfish hotline and taken to the Fisheries Division to be examined.

She too has assured the public that the lionfish are quite tasty, especially when prepared in a fillet.

“It’s very nice, like white meat, like a snapper. It’s not raw at all,” she said.

Madisetti said the lionfish invasion will impact the region’s fisheries and tourism industries and “something has to be done.”