Bridging the gap: advancing climate services integration into environmental planning in Barbados

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) such as Barbados face escalating climate risks that threaten infrastructure, livelihoods, and economic stability, yet climate services remain unevenly integrated into regulatory planning. This perspective examines how climate information is produced, translated, and applied across Barbados’ climate services landscape, asking why strong technical capacity does not consistently translate into climate-informed development decisions. Drawing primarily on insights from a multi-stakeholder workshop, the study maps climate services actors, relationships, and applications using a value chain framework enriched with nexus perspectives. The analysis shows that Barbados possesses a technically robust climate information system with established applications in agriculture, health, and disaster risk management, but weaker linkages with infrastructure planning and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). Workshop findings highlight both strengths such as active scientific collaboration and established dissemination platforms and persistent gaps, including sector-bound framing of climate products, limited access to localized engineering-relevant datasets, and inconsistent regulatory expectations for climate-informed EIAs. The paper argues that advancing climate resilience in SIDS requires reframing climate services as collaborative boundary processes and embedding climate considerations within EIA frameworks through cross-sectoral co-production. Positioned as a science–policy–practice interface, EIAs offer a critical pathway for strengthening climate-informed development in Barbados and across vulnerable island contexts.