Freeman Rogers

Cruise visits to Caribbean ports have more than doubled since 2000, rising from about 14.5 million arrivals to roughly 35.5 million in 2025, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization. The industry and its backers promise economic growth, but critics say the cruise bargain is becoming increasingly unfavorable for island destinations.

Caribbean governments are struggling to track and manage ciguatera fish poisoning. As oceans warm and coral reefs degrade in the region, some scientists fear the illness will become more common.

As record coral bleaching swept across the Caribbean over the past two years, scientists raced to save reefs with tools ranging from multivitamins and artificial intelligence to underwater speakers. But their efforts, they warn, remain underfunded — and increasingly overwhelmed by the scale of the coral crisis.

A historic coral bleaching event has swept across the Caribbean over the past two years, threatening the ecosystems that feed, protect, and sustain life across the region. This investigation, reported from six countries and territories, reveals the scale of the damage —and the human costs mounting beneath the surface.

When Donald De Castro was a boy in the 1940s, mangroves lined the shore and cays in front of his family’s small waterfront home in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). “We used to do a lot of fishing in mangroves,” the 86-year-old recalled. “They had snappers and they had different kinds of fish; we caught good fish.”

Within days from each other, public education systems in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Cuba suspended classes in schools in March this year to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. With no time, tools or defined public policies to lay down strategies that would somehow ensure and measure student participation […]

MADRID — No Puerto Rico delegation took part in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid, but decisions made as the fractious two-week meeting came to a close on last Sunday could spell disaster for the territory if the United States and a handful of other large countries don’t change their ways, island nations […]

Claim a few large countries hindering climate talks

After two Category 5 hurricanes struck the unincorporated territory, climate fears take on new urgency.

Climate change effects like rising sea-level, more rainfall and stronger hurricanes are quickly eroding the coasts of vulnerable Caribbean islands and actively destroying community life and economic activity in plain sight with little to no governmental or international action to protect citizens. Hurricane's Irma and Maria terribly exposed this institutional neglect in Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, and British Virgin Islands where infrastructure collapsed, and coastal constructions were destroyed by storm surge and erosion. Politics play an important role in lack of action and visibility of these island-colonies -and about 10 others in the region- in official world global warming efforts because their data is not considered and they are not included in their analysis.