Cecilia A. Green, Syracuse University and Farah Nibbs, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Many countries collect and store rainwater for use during drought or dry seasons. But this technique is rarely used in the Caribbean, where hurricanes can leave people without water for months.
The Empire Windrush, photographed a few years after its famous journey from Jamaica to Tilbury Docks.
PA Archive
Corruption has made hurricane Caribbean countries’ recovery less efficient and more expensive, new research shows. Misuse of funds may also trigger more disaster-related deaths.
The Caribbean braces for another hurricane season even as many nations remain crippled by the catastrophic damage of 2017. Here, experts assess the region’s difficult and costly storm recovery.
Rising seas, harsher weather, rainier days. The impacts of climate change make it harder for Caribbean countries to plan their transition toward renewable energy sources.
Ricardo Rojas/Reuters
Masaō Ashtine, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
The 2017 hurricane season showed that Caribbean nations urgently need more resilient power grids. But the effects of climate change – including more severe storms – complicate the shift to renewables.
Juvenile blue tang sheltering in restored staghorn coral.
Mark Ladd
Deron Burkepile, University of California, Santa Barbara and Mark C. Ladd, University of California, Santa Barbara
With coral reefs in crisis around the world, many organizations are working to restore them by growing and transplanting healthy corals. A new study spotlights techniques that help restored reefs thrive.
Adios Raúl, hola Miguel.
smael Francisco/Courtesy of Cubadebate/Handout via Reuters
Miguel Díaz-Canel, a 57-year-old engineer and Communist Party loyalist, is expected to succeed Raúl Castro as president of Cuba. Will change bring prosperity or instability to the Cuban people?
Yellow-bellied sea snake (Hydrophis platurus).
Coleman M. Sheehy III, Florida Museum of Natural History
Sea snakes spend their lives in the water, giving birth to live young at sea, so why are they only found in some of the world’s oceans? The answer lies in a combination of climate and geography.
People in the U.S. and the Caribbean share vulnerability to climate change-related disasters, but only in the Caribbean is the public truly worried. Why?
US Navy
New research suggests politics and risk perception may explain why the US and Caribbean see climate change so differently, though both places are ever more vulnerable to powerful hurricanes.
Jamaica’s lotto scammers have gotten rich tricking American seniors and gamblers into thinking they’ve won the lotto, then demanding a modest ‘processing fee.’
Gene Blevins/Reuters
Lotto scamming — a criminal enterprise largely targeting elderly Americans — is lucrative in western Jamaica, where it is thought to be behind 50 percent of all area murders last year.
After Haiti signed its Declaration of Independence from France, in 1804, the U.S. started a nearly 60-year political and economic embargo that hobbled the young nation’s growth.
Wikimedia
Trump’s anti-Haitian rhetoric ignores a long pattern of migration from Haiti to the U.S., often driven by American meddling in Haitian affairs. Today, the two nations are irrevocably bound by history.
If Caribbean governments can’t afford to rebuild their islands, maybe big tech firms can?
Masaō Ashtine, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
Tesla, China and Richard Branson are among those offering to help Caribbean nations rebuild – and do so in a greener, more resilient way – after the devastating 2017 hurricane season.
The author, distributing medications at a shelter in Villalba, Puerto Rico.
Elimarys Perez-Colon
It’s hard but feasible to make a difference, as long as you work with the locals and don’t become a ‘disaster tourist.’
Guyana, a former British colony on the north shore of South America, may soon supplant Trinidad and Tobago as the Caribbean region’s biggest oil producer.
Reuters/Andrea De Silva
Anthony T. Bryan, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine Campus
Guyana is on the verge of an oil bonanza that could bring in US$1 million a day. But if it’s not careful, this poor nation – population 750,000 – could fall prey to the dreaded ‘resource curse.’
Hurricane Maria denuded forests in Puerto Rico, revealing once-hidden homes and communities. A graffiti-sprayed saying is now popping up across the island, noting that “Behind the trees live people.”
Lucas Jackson/Reuters
A Puerto Rican librarian with a personal relationship to hurricanes describes the brutal reality of life on this Caribbean island more than a month after Maria and Irma left their mark.
Puerto Rico, a key piece of U.S. military and economic machinery, is in crisis.
Reuters/Lucas Jackson
If humanitarian need can’t move the Trump administration to save Puerto Rico, then perhaps American self-interest will: The island is a crucial part of the country’s economic and military machinery.
The Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort traveled to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
Ernest R. Scott/U.S. Air Force/Handout via Reuters
The military can make a big difference right away but humanitarian deployments should generally be rare and brief.
Few Puerto Ricans expect the Trump administration to help the island as it did hurricane-hit Texas and Florida, yet the island’s recent bankruptcy has left it facing a humanitarian disaster.
Reuters/Ricardo Rojas
Hurricane Maria has left 3.4 million Puerto Ricans facing shortages of food, health care and transit, an American humanitarian crisis fueled by the US territory’s May 2017 bankruptcy.
Levi Gahman, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine Campus and Gabrielle Thongs, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine Campus
The Caribbean is facing its second deadly hurricane in as many weeks. This isn’t just bad luck: the region’s extreme vulnerability to disaster also reflects entrenched social inequalities.