Fighting Blight in Paradise

By Frederic Golden

The U.S. and its Caribbean neighbors try to save a precious sea

Glittering islands in the sun. Long stretches of sandy, palm-shaded beaches. Azure waters flecked with colorful sails. These are the popular, still largely correct, tourist-poster views of that playground of the New World: the Caribbean. Sadly, in recent years less enticing images have begun to intrude. They show thick plumes of exhaust spilling from new oil refineries; bubbling, dark cesspools of untreated wastes only a hop away from beaches jammed by tourists; mountainsides scarred by open-pit mining and hardscrabble agricultural plots. The vacation paradise now faces the spread of environmental blight at an alarming rate.

Last week the countries of the Caribbean, 27 nations in all, from such tiny islands as Grenada and St. Lucia, to such coastal powers as Venezuela, Mexico and the U.S., took a long step toward improving the region. At a meeting in the old Spanish colonial port city of Cartagena, Colombia, a majority gave initial approval to two treaties that should help encourage cooperative action toward a cleanup. One of those pacts governs all types of pollution; the other deals specifically with oil spills. Negotiated under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Program, the treaties are relatively toothless declarations of good intent. But they have one notable aspect: the enthusiastic backing of such foes as the U.S. and Cuba, Honduras and Nicaragua. It is one of the rare times that the Reagan White House and Castro's Cuba have come to terms in an international agreement. Said Mostafa K. Tolba, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program: "I firmly believe that common environmental interests will overcome any political and economic differences."

Much of what has gone wrong in the Caribbean traces to the very success of its economic development. Some 100 million tourists flock to the region every year. Hotels and condominiums are springing up almost everywhere, from the volcanic islands of the Antilles to the 100-mile-long stretch of hitherto virtually untouched barrier reef off the tiny Central American republic of Belize. Along with the vacationers has come a multitude of corporate enterprises: petrochemical plants, electronics factories, cement works. Attracted by special economic enticements and an eager labor force, industry now occupies or overlooks once pristine mangrove swamps and placid lagoons like those that dot the coast of Puerto Rico.

More and more Caribbean nations are tearing up irreplaceable rain forests to plant such export crops as bananas, sugar cane, tobacco, coffee and cacao. On the sea, tankers, carrying oil from Venezuela and more distant shores, crisscross the Caribbean; as much as half of the U.S.'s imported oil comes through these crowded sea arteries, many of them leading through dangerous, narrow straits.

These developments are slowly helping to raise the standard of living throughout the Caribbean basin, with its exploding population of nearly 200 million, but the price has been high. Each new hotel or factory takes away a bit of jungle, sometimes replacing valuable mangrove, whose matted roots provide shelter and sustenance for aquatic life. Says Puerto Rico's Arsenio Rodriguez Mercado, a scientific adviser to the U.N. Environment Program: "Sewage generated by 30 million people is dumped more or less untreated into the Caribbean." On some islands, hotels discharge wastes into the waters where guests swim. Adding to the mess are the cruise ships and yachts anchored offshore.

No one knows yet what effects these discharges may have on the sea, but marine scientists are not optimistic. In Jamaica's Kingston harbor, numerous fish kills have been linked to the high bacteria count in the water. Fishermen in Cartagena, site of last week's conferences, worry about the effect of mercury and pesticide levels on shellfish and other marine life. Known for their collections of picturesque coral and nourishing sea grasses, the Caribbean's shallow coastal waters are a rich breeding ground for sea life, ranging from shrimp, mollusks and crustaceans to numerous varieties of finfish. Any major disturbance of this fragile ecosystem could have far-reaching repercussions. Unfortunately, as Rodriguez Mercado notes, there is little awareness of the economic importance of these resources. Few officials seem willing to trade off the immediate payoff of a new hotel for the long-term benefits of a protected reef or thriving coastal estuary.

Inland the story is worse. Each year nearly 4.4 million acres of forest are destroyed. In Central America, vast tracts have been converted to pasture land, largely to raise beef for the U.S. market, while natural grasslands in Venezuela and Colombia go largely unused. Still another reason for loss of forests is the in creasing incidence of slash-and-burn agriculture. As impoverished peasants lose their traditional lands to the spreading single-crop plantations, they move higher and higher up forested mountains, clearing away timber for firewood and subsistence farming. In Haiti and Jamaica, the results have been disastrous.

Once the mountainsides are denuded, erosion begins. The land can no longer hold water. Soil fertility drops without the replenishing nutrients from trees. Rivers swing from one seasonal extreme to another, sending flood waters surging off the mountains in the rainy season and causing long periods of drought in summer. The torrents may be accompanied by landslides. More subtle damage comes from silting. As rivers wash debris into the clear coastal waters, the particles reduce the transparency of the sea, cut down sunlight and kill off coral reefs and valuable coastal sea grasses, on which much marine life depends.

No less damaging are the effects on the rain forest's flora and fauna. Perhaps a hundred of the famed parrots that appear on St. Lucia's stamps are believed to be still left. Conservationists estimate that 40% of the vertebrates that have become extinct around the world in recent years have died off in the Caribbean. Scientists can only guess how many species of plants are permanently gone. Such losses represent a tragic assault on the splendid diversity of terrestrial life. They deprive us of genetic varieties that could have been valuable for any number of purposes, from supplying natural pharmaceuticals to offering the genes for crossbreeding hardier plants.

Informed, sensible agricultural policies could reduce such losses in the future, but even the most sophisticated technologies have so far been little help against the growing threat of Caribbean oil spills. In addition, there is the danger of seepage from offshore fields along the coasts of the U.S., Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago and Mexico. Rodriguez Mercado points out that past experience suggests that 6.7% of total offshore oil production will spill into the sea because of such mishaps as blowouts, platform fires and other accidents. The world's largest oil spill, in fact, occurred in the Caribbean when a well being drilled by Pemex, the Mexican national petroleum company, blew on June 3, 1979. Before it was capped 290 days later, it had poured some 475,000 metric tons of oil into the sea. Scientists still cannot say what the effects were on the rich fisheries, coral reefs or sea-grass beds of the Caribbean basin. But they agree that the beautifully delicate world of the Caribbean could not readily withstand a repetition of that environmental disaster. -- By Frederic Golden This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.