Marla Dukharan isn’t one to shy away from hard truths. Widely regarded as the Caribbean’s leading economist, she has built a reputation for her sharp, no-nonsense assessments of the region’s most complex challenges.
She sits down with me to discuss the region’s increasingly severe hurricanes and Caribbean food insecurity, but quickly steers the conversation toward a broader and far more uncomfortable subject.
“Colonization and all its effects are alive and well in the Caribbean,” she says.
The statement seems, at first, like a diversion. But as she continues, it becomes clear that she’s cutting directly to the heart of the matter.
“There’s a powerful nexus between our colonial past, the climate crisis, our food and fuel insecurity, and the fact that our progress as a people in the Caribbean has largely stagnated,” she declares.
“Agriculture, in my view, and food security more specifically, is one of the most important avenues available to us to escape the vicious cycle we find ourselves in.”
Dukharan describes the devastating loop that has gotten progressively worse with time.
The industrial activities of the Global North— fueled by the profits of colonization and slavery— have significantly contributed to climate change, leading to increasingly severe disasters in the Caribbean. These events cause widespread destruction, exacerbate food insecurity, and weaken resilience, forcing Caribbean nations to borrow from the very countries responsible for the crisis. This drives the region into debt and underdevelopment, making it even more vulnerable to future disasters.
It’s a relentless cycle that connects climate devastation to a colonial legacy that Dukharan says never fully disappeared.
The Imminent Threat of Hurricanes
As the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season peaks, with 85% certainty of above-normal activity, the Caribbean is on high alert.
Having grown up in Barbados, I’ve never seen devastation on the scale that we’ve witnessed in recent years. Dukharan, who hails from Trinidad and Tobago, shares a similar reflection. Over the past decade, the intensity of hurricanes has skyrocketed, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that human-induced climate change is making hurricanes less frequent but far more severe. Rising sea temperatures are fueling storms with greater wind speeds and heavier downpours.
Already this season, Hurricane Beryl— the earliest recorded Category 5 storm— has wreaked havoc on Jamaica’s agriculture, impacting nearly 50,000 farmers and causing $41 million in losses. In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Beryl wiped out 90% of bananas, plantains, and coconuts, alongside hundreds of fishing boats and key infrastructure. In Grenada, key crops like nutmeg, cocoa, and avocados were devastated, while Barbados lost hundreds of fishing vessels.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines decried the lack of meaningful action from the world’s top carbon emitters, saying, “you are getting a lot of talking, but you are not seeing a lot of action.” His frustration is shared across the region.
Guyana’s President and CARICOM’s lead on agriculture and food security, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, expressed deep concern over the blow dealt by Hurricane Beryl to the region’s 25 by 2025 initiative— a program to reduce the Caribbean’s food import bill 25% by 2025.
“It is heart-wrenching,” he said, referring to lost investments “in infrastructure, water systems, technology, crop variety, farm support, and farm to market infrastructure.”
Following Hurricane Beryl came Category 4 Hurricane Helene, which devastated a region critical to U.S. food production, and a major source of Caribbean food imports. At the time of writing, Hurricane Milton has made landfall as a catastrophic Category 3 storm, threatening Florida’s Citrus Belt, the state’s rich agricultural zones, and the region’s fragile food supply chain.
With each passing storm, the region’s food security— and its economic stability— hang in the balance, as climate change intensifies the Caribbean’s vulnerability.
A Colonial Legacy of Vulnerability
Records show that over the past half century, small island developing states (SIDS) such as those in the Caribbean have faced an average GDP loss of 2.1% from climate-related disasters— seven times higher than the global average, while agricultural GDP experienced a 7% hit during the same period. Losses are particularly pronounced in agriculture-dependent economies like Dominica, which lost 224% of its GDP in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017.
While reported hurricane losses have been staggering, Dukharan says they only scratch the surface of the problem. Given the region’s limited statistical infrastructure and large informal sectors, a great deal of economic activity is not measured, or is measured incorrectly.
“The economic damage we experience following these disasters is unsustainable,” she says. “Hurricane Maria obliterated Dominica’s economy in a matter of hours, causing over $1 billion in damages. This came just two years after Tropical Storm Erika wiped out 90% of the country’s GDP.”
The Food Insecurity Crisis
Caribbean nations are net importers of food, a reality Dukharan believes is directly tied to their colonial past. The region’s post-colonial economic model shifted from agriculture toward industries like tourism and financial services, leaving countries heavily reliant on external food sources.
“For decades, the Caribbean has been over-reliant on expensive food imports,” she says— “a dependence exacerbated by our colonial legacy. We import more than 60% of the food we consume, and in some countries, that figure is as high as 80%.”
According to Dr. Carla Barnett, CARICOM Secretary-General— between 2018 and 2020, the region’s food import bill totaled $13.76 billion, representing about 5% of its GDP.
Dukharan underscores how this reliance on imports leaves the Caribbean vulnerable to external shocks. Price fluctuations, supply chain disruptions, and natural disasters further threaten the region’s ability to feed itself.
“If food alone accounts for one-fifth of our imports, at a value estimated at around $6 billion per year, it means that this is money we must earn via exports, just to eat,” she explains.
“We have to earn foreign exchange to pay for our imported food— some of which is consumed by tourists— and while tourists bring in foreign exchange, much of it leaks back out in the form of imports to provide for those tourists. So the net foreign exchange gain from tourism is likely a fraction of what the tourists bring in. To what extent has this economic model made us more free?”
Breaking Free from A Colonial Legacy
Dukharan’s critique strikes at the heart of the Caribbean’s ongoing dependence on external sources— many of which are responsible for the climate crisis— for essentials like food and fuel.
Though politically independent, most Caribbean nations remain economically tethered to the Global North— a reliance that grows more unstable in the face of climate change. This reliance stifles true development and leaves the region vulnerable to external shocks.
“Amartya Sen defined socio-economic development as ‘the process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.’ So, in essence, development is freedom. The extent to which we can provide for ourselves is the extent of our freedom, as individuals and as nations, especially from our former colonizers and the Global North.”
Today, Caribbean nations find themselves in the unenviable position of having to borrow from the same Global North to rebuild after climate events, often at unfavorable interest rates.
At the end of 2023, government debt as percentage of gross domestic product was 77% for the region, significantly surpassing the sustainability threshold of 40%. This has imposed a fiscal burden that has made it nearly impossible to afford the infrastructure needed to shield against future climate disruptions.
“Because Caribbean countries import most of our food and almost all our fuel— fundamental building blocks of our productivity— we have very low fiscal multipliers. This means that Government spending does not drive growth in Caribbean economies,” Dukharan explains.
“Fiscal spending grows the economies of the countries we import from! So this economic structure of over dependence on imported food and fuel hamstrings the Caribbean’s macroeconomic management toolkit and makes it much more difficult [to use fiscal policy] to achieve progress.”
A Path Toward Agricultural Independence
Dukharan envisions a future where the Caribbean embraces modern, sustainable agriculture— not the backbreaking labor of the past but a form of agriculture that supports economic independence, providing farmers with affordable insurance and financing, and fostering environmental resilience.
Such efforts could unlock not only food security but also broader economic benefits.
“Look at those countries that have greater domestic linkages between their tourism product and their wider local economies; countries like Dominica, Jamaica, Guyana and Dominican Republic come to mind,” she says.
“Food independence is essential, and it is not a question of if tourism, but how. More community-based tourism, more authentic experiences including food experiences, are better for our economies and our food systems as they keep more foreign exchange in our countries.”
As the Caribbean braces for more extreme weather events, the conversation about food security and economic resilience takes on greater urgency.
Dukharan’s message is clear— the Caribbean must break free from its colonial past, reclaim its agricultural independence, and invest in resilience if it is to withstand the escalating climate crisis.
“Food and fuel independence are fundamental to our freedom,” she declares— “and therefore, to our progress.”