About

The Caribbean as geography and economy

Carib Pro treats the Caribbean basin as three geological objects that happen to share a name: the continental fragments of the Greater Antilles, the live volcanic arc of the Lesser Antilles, and the carbonate platform of the Bahamas, which sits on a different plate altogether.

The economics follow the rock. Islands with mountains force rain out of the trade winds and grew export agriculture on volcanic soil; flat limestone islands get little rain and buy their fresh water from a desalination plant. Everything the site covers — the sugar and banana economies, the hurricane and sargassum record, Trinidad's hydrocarbons, the shared currency of eight states — sits on top of that division.

Every figure is attributed and, where it can go stale, dated in the sentence that carries it.