Biodiversity in the Caribbean from 1950 to the Present
Authors: Mohammed Ryan S. , Fanovich Lanya 
Published: September 2024

The Caribbean is regarded as a biodiversity hotspot, with high levels of endemism in some northern regions and mainland species in some southern countries. The region's biodiversity has been documented since well before the 1950s, but knowledge transfer and sharing have been chronic challenges. First, much of the documentation was done by people who were not from the Caribbean, therefore the information was taken with them when they returned to their home countries. Second, because several European countries claimed various Caribbean islands as overseas territories, data across islands was not exchanged. Finally, there was no data repository unless documented species and specimens were relocated to a North American or European museum. The Caribbean saw various periods of development and technological advancement which influenced biodiversity documentation. Several states had external owners and administrators between the 1950s and 1960s, which had a direct impact on their actions. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Caribbean states were in a period of transition, with a number of islands gaining independence from the United Kingdom and developing their own economies. Between the 1980s and the 2000s, these countries underwent infrastructure stabilisation and economic diversification. As communication and real-time documentation proliferated with the emergence of cyber technology in the 2000s, the global community shrank, culminating in the digitisation of historic Caribbean records. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is one platform that has digitised these records. The GBIF has around 1 million records of digitised natural history specimens from the Caribbean. There are now 5 million data from the Caribbean from georeferenced images supplied by the citizen-science platforms iNaturalist and eBird. Several factors have contributed to the existence of biodiversity and its documentation in the Caribbean. These include governance, geography, geology, meteorology, and trade. To trace the changes in biodiversity documentation and distribution throughout the insular Caribbean, sixteen specific taxa were selected for discussion. Furthermore, the role of Indigenous and cultural influences on the acceptance and management of biodiversity cannot be overlooked, as entities such as IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) and IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) have recognised theses as avenues for traditional knowledge. The Caribbean's 70 years of political governance and its influences on biodiversity documentation are commented on, with a focus on the regions biogeography. The various roles of culture and folklore as social impacts on biodiversity management are addressed, as well as the various threats to Caribbean biodiversity. A coalition of international treaties to which the island states have become signatories to help address international biodiversity and management challenges is presented to support the new direction of sovereign decision making and the region's progression in conservation. Lastly, we recognise that even if the Caribbean adopts new conservation practices, it is unlikely we can reverse the effects of international resource and waste management.