Caribbean Sea Earns US$400B a Year; But Economic Activity, Pollution Threats Loom

A report released yesterday has put the economic value of the Caribbean Sea to the region—to include all its services, from fishing, transport, trade, tourism, mining, waste disposal, energy, carbon sequestration and drug development—at US$407 billion per year based on 2012 data, or just shy of 18 percent of the region’s total GDP. Co-authored by a researcher at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, The Jamaica Observer reports that the figure is an underestimation because the region’s ocean economy to date “is not well measured or understood”. Nonetheless, it is projected to nearly double by 2050. In tandem with that increase in economic activity and earning is a projected rise in the number of threats to the ocean from the very activities which it supports.