Urban Sustainability in Caribbean Small Island Developing States

What is it about?

Urban planners in the Caribbean have long advocated for a resolution of conflicts between built development and the environment. They have grappled with challenges of small geographic size, an increasingly urbanised landscape and the need to facilitate urban centres as engines of economic development and as the loci of prosperity. This article investigates the views of urban planners with respect to the drivers of unsustainable urbanisation and provides a conceptual framework for urban planning to attain urban sustainability in a small island developing state context. Trinidad is used as a case study. The research found that urbanisation has been inadequately regulated despite a plethora of legislation, urban plans and policies, and that the political will to achieve urban sustainability is lacking. This has resulted in ecosystem damage, economic losses and the undermining of human well-being. Several policy prescriptions are recommended to help reduce the marginalisation of urban planning in the Caribbean.

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Why is it important?

This research is important in the context of the growing challenges of fulfilling the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 which calls for more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable urban settlements and improved human wellbeing. Furthermore, it is timely and relevant in bringing attention to decision-makers of SDG 13 and the need for climate action in adapting to the unprecedented impact of climate change which is wrecking havoc on the Caribbean's small, vulnerable states.

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