A just-released report on the state of the Caribbean environment which highlights three decades of environmental degradation and the unsustainable use of natural resources has taken on added urgency against the backdrop of last month’s tsunami disaster in Asia.

The Caribbean Environment Outlook publication, a special edition for the Mauritius International Meeting for the 10-year review of the Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), was launched here Thursday as the world contemplated the utter devastation of 11 Asian countries by tsunamis triggered by an underwater earthquake.

The report revealed that environmental abuse had reduced the availability of ecosystem-based goods and services, with negative consequences for sustainable social and economic growth in the Caribbean.

In his review, lead author of the document, Leslie Walling, told guests at the launch inside the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston that Caribbean environmental changes were being driven by socio-economic factors such as deforestation. The denuding of the land, he said, was “fuelled by the need for land for transportation, infrastructure, agriculture, housing and industrial development”.

The document complained that deforestation had left the region with forest covering only 19 per cent of total land area, and that the expansion of road networks had improved access to more remote forest areas and timber resources, but led to further deforestation.

Walling also noted that external economic forces such as the fallout from trade liberalisation in traditional agricultural industries, local economic factors like the small export base and social factors, including the spectre of HIV/AIDS in the region, were also cause for concern.

However, he said that social indicators such as low child mortality rates and relatively high literacy rates in the majority of Caribbean countries were positive trends to be maintained and improved.

Many Caribbean countries, too, were taking more action to deal with environmental decline, he said.

He also pointed to factors such as a growing appreciation that environmental management was part of social and economic development in the region, and that fundamental assumptions on what made economies tick and what were preferred lifestyles to maintain sustainable development needed to be revisited.

Walling warned, however, that former assumptions about the environment could no longer guide policy-makers, as global changes in environmental patterns impacted the region.

“We can no longer sacrifice the environment in the face of economic initiatives…,” he said. “Reports indicate the linkages and the fact that these linkages can no longer depend on past assumptions. Global change affects aspects of our own life.”

He added that such climatic shifts also had implications for freshwater resources regionally, and these would have to be more carefully managed as “dry seasons get dryer and wet seasons wetter”.

Among the major objectives of the United Nations Environment Programme-funded report are to:

. Highlight the state of the environment in SIDS, showing trends and vulnerabilities of national, regional and global significance;

. Provide policy guidance and early warning information on environmental threats;

. Provide a basis for regional consultations and for identifying the environmental issues and priorities;

. Help catalyse and promote international co-operation and action based on the best scientific and technical capabilities available; and

. Contribute to the development of a common strategy for sustainable development in SIDS.