SANTO DOMINGO—The nearly 7,000 islands and the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea are home to thousands of endemic species and are on the migration route of many kinds of birds. Preserving this abundant fauna requires multilateral actions in today’s era of global warming.
That is the goal of the Caribbean Biological Corridor (CBC), a project implemented by the governments of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which was created in 2007 with the support of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNE P) and the European Union with the aim of protecting biodiversity in the region.
“Puerto Rico should form part of the corridor in 2016,” Cuban biologist Freddy Rodríguez, who is taking part in the initiative, told Inter Press Service (IPS). In late 2015, Puerto Rico, a free associated state of the US, presented an official letter asking to join the sustainable conservation project, whose executive secretariat is in the Dominican Republic on the border with Haiti.
“The admission of new partners, which has been encouraged from the start, is a question of time,” Rodríguez said. “Several countries have taken part as observers since the beginning.”
He said the Bahamas, Dominica, Jamaica and Martinique are observer countries that have expressed an interest in joining the corridor.
The Caribbean region is already prone to high temperatures, because the wind and ocean currents turn the area into a kind of cauldron that concentrates heat year-round, according to scientific sources. And the situation will only get worse due to the temperature rise that was predicted as a result of climate change, a phenomenon caused by human activity which has triggered extreme weather events and other changes. The extraordinary biodiversity of the Caribbean is increasingly at risk from this global phenomenon, which has modified growing and blooming seasons, migration patterns and even species distribution. Meanwhile, the biological corridor is one demonstration of the growing efforts of small Caribbean island-nations to preserve their unique natural heritage. It also reflects the long road still ahead to regional integration in the area of conservation.
The 1,600-kilometers CBC includes the Jaragua-Bahoruca-Enriquillo Biosphere Reserve and Cordillera Central mountains in the Dominican Republic; the Chaîne de la Selle mountain range, Lake Azuéi, Fore et Pins, La Visite and the Massif du Nord mountains—all protected areas in Haiti; and the Sierra Maestra and Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa mountain ranges in Cuba. Studies carried out by researchers involved in the biological corridor have documented damage caused to nature by extreme events like Hurricane Sandy, which hit eastern Cuba in 2012, and the severe drought of 2015, which affected the entire Caribbean region.
Rodríguez said they have carried out more than 60 training sessions, involving local communities, as well as government officials from the three countries, with the participation of guests from other Caribbean nations.
Their web site compiles the results of studies, bulletins, a database and maps of the biological corridor. “Other people and institutions say the CBC’s biggest contribution has been to create a platform for collaboration with regard to the environment, which did not exist previously in the insular Caribbean. This has created the possibility for the environment ministers to meet every year to review the progress made, as well as pending issues,” Rodríguez said. “We are trying to grow in terms of South-South collaboration,” he said.
The insular Caribbean is a multicultural, multiracial region where people speak Spanish, English, Dutch, French and creoles. It is made up of 13 independent island-nations and 19 French, Dutch, British and US overseas territories. These differences, along with the heavy burden of underdevelopment, are hurdles to the conservation of the natural areas in the Caribbean, which is one of the world’s greatest centers of unique biodiversity, due to the high number of endemic species.
Experts report that for every 100 square kilometers, there are 23.5 plants that can only be found in the Antilles, an archipelago bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the south and west, the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest, and the Atlantic Ocean to the north and east. The project is focusing on an area of 234,124 sq km of greatest biodiversity, home to a number of unique reptile, bird and amphibian species. CBC’s 2016-2020 development plan also involves continued research on climate change, and aims to expand to marine ecosystems.
The 4 million sq km of ocean around the Antilles are “the heart of Atlantic marine diversity,” according to the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund. The region contains 25 coral genera, 117 sponges, 633 mollusks, more than 1,400 fishes, 76 sharks, 45 shrimp, 30 cetaceans and 23 species of seabirds. The area also contains some 10,000 sq km of reef, 22,000 sq km of mangroves, and as much as 33,000 sq km of seagrass beds.
Ivet Gonzalez/IPS