CARIBBEAN ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP: Why Frameworks Fail and What Might Actually Work

This lecture argues that persistent biodiversity decline in the Caribbean is a failure of political economy rather than of science, frameworks, capacity, or financing. Drawing on six IPBES assessments spanning 2022 to 2026: on the diverse values of nature, sustainable use of wild species, invasive alien species, the biodiversity–water–food–health nexus, transformative change, and business and biodiversity. It examines, for each, why Caribbean governments have systematically declined to act, and locates the answer in power and incentives rather than knowledge gaps. It assesses regional performance against the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, finding designated protected areas without management plans or monitoring, fisheries governed without adequate stock assessment, no mandatory biodiversity disclosure legislated anywhere in the region, and no completed harmful-subsidy review. It further contends that governments actively construct the incentive structures that undermine their own commitments, through investment tax regimes that exempt developers from environmental bonds and impact fees, and citizenship-by-investment real estate pathways that compress environmental impact assessment. Eight structural causes of implementation failure are identified such as electoral time horizons, patronage networks, donor-induced institutional dysfunction, brain drain, structural disincentives to monitor, the tourism–conservation conflict of interest, framework inflation, and an accountability vacuum sustaining performative compliance. Five recommendations are proposed that deliberately do not depend on governmental goodwill: resourcing civil society and investigative journalism as an external enforcement layer; attaching environmental conditionality to indispensable financing instruments; applying pressure to private operators through extraterritorial due-diligence regimes and investor ESG mandates; consolidating independent, publicly accessible regional monitoring infrastructure; and concentrating resources in one or two jurisdictions to produce a demonstration effect.