The Tribune

THE research The Bahamas most needs on fresh water, food and energy remains underdeveloped after five decades in which foreign institutions drove much of the science done here, the country’s academy of scientists has told the Government.

The Bahamas Academy of Sciences presented a policy brief to Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources Zane Lightbourne in September, urging the government to create a National Research Council, or strengthen the Academy, to coordinate research priorities and draw up a five-year national research agenda tied to Vision 2040.

According to the brief, which the Academy has now made public, the country “has for too long had a reliance on foreign labs” for genomics, oceanography, geochemistry and long-term monitoring, even though more Bahamians are professionally trained in these fields than at any other time in history.

It said bursts of research have often been tied to short-term funding and to field stations that later closed, citing Lee Stocking Island. As a result, environmental monitoring is fragmented and often paid for from abroad, the brief said, although it is critical to enforcing the country’s environmental laws. It also described national data stewardship as weak, with fisheries, biodiversity and health data scattered across government agencies.

The brief draws on a study led by Dr Amina Moss of the University of Stirling with seven Academy members, published in the journal Gulf and Caribbean Research. The study analysed 12,113 scholarly records about The Bahamas published between 1975 and 2025. It found a strong record in geology, fisheries, oceanography and conservation, with the United States, The Bahamas, Spain, England and Canada the leading contributors, but persistent gaps in social-ecological governance and locally led monitoring as well as water, food and energy.

Among its ten priorities, the Academy wants national laboratories for genomics, carbonate geochemistry and ocean observing; expanded field stations on San Salvador, Andros and Exuma; funded graduate training for Bahamians; and restored long-term monitoring of coral reefs, fisheries, coastlines, ocean currents and mangroves, feeding into a national climate-risk dashboard. It also called for a national environmental and health data repository and open data rules for government-funded research.

The brief further urged reform of the laws governing access to the country’s genetic resources and how the benefits are shared, a health observatory tracking climate-linked risks facing small island states, and a shift in leadership from foreign institutions to Bahamian scientists in fields where The Bahamas is globally important, such as carbonate geology, coral reef ecology and marine megafauna.

The meeting with Mr Lightbourne was the first in a series of introductory meetings the Academy plans to hold with government ministries in the coming months.

BAS President Dr Krista Sherman said: “The Bahamas has an extraordinary scientific record. Now we need to ensure that record informs the questions we ask, the decisions we make, and the science we build here at home.”

The Academy also released a science statement during Climate Week in The Bahamas last month that pulls together research on the climate threats facing the country. It said sea levels are projected to rise by nearly half a metre by 2100, even under optimistic emissions scenarios aligned with the Paris Agreement, which would put about 41 percent of the country’s land and 22 percent of its population below sea level. Without adaptation, up to half of the sandy beaches near hotels could be lost, the statement said.

It cited International Monetary Fund projections that hurricane damage will rise by 31 percent if global temperatures climb 3C and by 42 percent at 4.3C. Climate-related disasters have caused direct damage averaging 3.2 percent of GDP a year over the past decade, the statement said, and Hurricane Dorian alone destroyed $3.4bn in physical assets in 2019, equal to a quarter of annual GDP.

During a mass coral bleaching event across the archipelago in summer 2023, ocean temperatures reached 91F, the statement said, and the Perry Institute for Marine Science recorded the near-total loss of elkhorn and staghorn corals at several sites. On a 2024 expedition to Little Inagua, scientists found every pillar coral they surveyed had been killed by stony coral tissue loss disease, a fast-spreading infection that attacks most reef-building species.

With tourism accounting for about half of GDP, the statement pointed to a Caribbean-wide study projecting a 47 percent fall in direct tourism revenue by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario, and said The Bahamas, which holds a large share of the region’s beaches, faces above-average exposure. The country produces less than 0.01 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it said.

Academy board member Dr Kathleen Sullivan Sealey, professor emerita at the University of Miami, spoke on coasts and climate change at the opening of Climate Week in The Bahamas on September 21, while Academy Vice President Dr Adelle Thomas, vice-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, took part in Climate Week NYC.

The Academy, founded in 2023 and publicly launched last year, plans to host a classroom event for students in early November, launch a YouTube video-podcast series on Bahamian scientists the same