Barbados: Environmental Challenges

Barbados is a low coral-limestone island, capped by a reef-derived limestone layer up to 90 meters thick across most of its surface. In the northeastern Scotland District, however, that cap has eroded away, exposing older rock and creating caves, gullies, and dramatic cliffs along the Atlantic coast. The island has no significant rivers or lakes; rainfall drains into underground limestone aquifers that supply most of the domestic water, supplemented by desalination.

Coral reefs surround most of the coastline and have historically been threatened by agricultural runoff and untreated sewage, prompting the government to build sewage treatment plants on the south and west coasts beginning in the 1990s. Two marine parks off the west coast protect reef habitat, though overfishing remains a concern. Hurricanes strike only rarely, with severe damage recorded in a 1780 storm and again with Hurricane Janet in 1955, but erosion in the Scotland District has prompted a long-standing government conservation program to limit further land loss.

Forest cover has held steady at roughly 15 percent of the island's land area for decades, with only a small share formally protected. Barbados's beaches also serve as nesting grounds for several species of sea turtle, including one of the Caribbean's largest hawksbill populations, making coastal conservation a priority alongside the island's reef-protection and water-security efforts.