Barbuda: Is It the Most Threatened Island in the Eastern Caribbean?

Story, photos and illustrations by Chris Doyle

Barbuda has always had a special place in my heart and after many visits I have felt a sense of loss as I sailed away. It is low-lying, peaking at 146 feet in the highlands, and yet has a rugged, wild beauty. Most of the 1,700 or so residents reside in Codrington, which allows visitors to feel they are in a natural and unspoiled habitat when outside of that one settled area. Snorkeling and walking are a delight, with a lot of underwater life and many birds. It has for years had the longest and most beautiful 11-mile pink-sand beach in the Caribbean. Alas, this has now been breached, which is part of this story.

Before Hurricane Irma hit the island in 2017, Barbuda had not changed much over many decades. Though part of Antigua, the island was governed by the locally elected Barbuda Council. Barbudans considered that the land belonged to all of them, and land use was administered communally by the Barbuda Council for the benefit of Barbudans. There was plenty of land — a total of about 40,000 acres — so if a Barbudan needed a house, the Barbuda Council could assign them land on which they could build a new house. For better or worse, this system takes land out of the economy, so on the one hand, it slows development and prevents land and housing booms. On the other, every Barbudan can get somewhere to build, and they cannot be deprived from having somewhere to build because of rising land values. Communal land ownership is not common, but it also exists in the Carib Reservation in Dominica and some land in the Bahamas.

Leases to foreigners are another matter and could be negotiated by the Barbuda Council. This was done for the high-end, low-profile Coco Point Lodge, created in 1960, and later the K-Club and the Palmetto Point Development, which did not last. More recently, the Barbuda Belle, which is still going, acquired a lease. There are advantages for Barbudans to be sure, a source of income being a major one.

Another way money was made on the island, though mainly by Antiguans, was from the sale of sand. Much of the island is sand, and a lot of it has been shipped out over the years, an environmentally destructive process. But by and large the natural beauty of Barbuda, its wild nature and wildlife remained. This changed in 2017 with Irma.

Hurricane Irma caused major damage to most buildings in Barbuda. Within days another possible hurricane was predicted so the Antigua government evacuated all Barbuda residents, forbidding anyone to stay.

Before Irma, the Antiguan government had wanted to see Barbuda commercially developed. And it had plans to privatize land on Barbuda so that it could be bought and sold on the open market. It was also approached by a group of investors, which included Robert De Niro, who planned to take over the defunct K-Club and turn it into a millionaire’s playground. This was approved both by the Barbuda Council and then at a public meeting (206 in favor 175 against)  

The hurricane destroyed the aging Coco Point Lodge, and that lease was sold to a development company called Peace Love and Happiness. The same company acquired the lease to the defunct Palmetto Point Hotel, and the Barbuda Council gave it a lease on more land in the area.

While everyone was evacuated, the Antiguan government sent heavy equipment, in part to help rebuild the settlement, but mainly to begin construction of an international jet airport, so that the new millionaire-owners would be able to fly in on their private jets. This was done without a proper environmental impact study and has been halted while court cases are ongoing.

Peace Love and Happiness wasted no time beginning construction of expensive houses at Cocoa Point. This development is now nearing completion and is called the Barbuda Ocean Club. Work is being done at high speed in Palmetto Point, in preparation for building more million-dollar homes, a golf course and a marina. The developers claim they are “restoring wetlands.”

The United Nations disagrees: 

  “On Palmetto Point, natural surroundings were altered by the removal of mangroves in certain areas and damaging habitats of protected flora and fauna, exacerbating the vulnerability of the island’s ecosystems to storms and natural disasters. Being the highest site in the area, Palmetto Point is also key for feeding fresh water to Codrington Lagoon which hosts a variety of young fish, lobsters and conch populations.”

“In the midst of a global climate crisis and a pandemic, it is shocking to see the development of a yacht marina in an area known for its fragile ecosystem and a golf course on an island that relies on scarce groundwater resources,” the UN experts said. “It is difficult to reconcile these kinds of projects with the urgent need for sustainable development.”

“We call on the Government and the project proponents to employ rights-based and nature-based solutions to address current challenges including in conserving and restoring wetlands.”  [https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/02/antigua-and-barbuda-luxury-resort-puts-wetland-and-healthy-environment-risk]

Meanwhile, another unwelcome change is underway along the west coast of Barbuda. Perhaps the most salient feature of the island is the huge Codrington Lagoon to the west of the village. Including the entrance channel, it is over 6 nautical miles long and 1.6 nautical miles wide. An amazing fish and wildlife nursery, it contains the largest frigatebird colony in the Caribbean. It protects the low-lying shore of Codrington from the destructive northerly swells that lash the west coast from time to time. Until Irma, the narrow and sandy western edge of the lagoon has been largely intact and was a major part of Barbuda’s iconic 11-mile pink sand beach.

Barbuda has been hit by several hurricanes, and when rainwater fills the lagoon faster than the narrow channels can empty it, water sometimes washes through the protective spit, forming a channel. This occurred at the south end of the barrier spit at a place called Donna Mouth in 1960. And, farther to the north, in Low Bay, an opening called Louis Mouth was created in 1996. In both cases, once the hurricane passed, the break in the barrier filled in less than six months.

Louis Mouth opened again after Irma and I was surprised when I revisited Barbuda in 2019, that it was not only still open, but a little bigger. I was shocked this year when looking at Google Earth to see that it had rapidly enlarged from about 0.33 nautical miles to 1.12 nautical miles in the past four years.

It appears that the whole of Barbuda’s barrier spit is under threat and breaking down gradually.

Right now, Codrington is still protected, because the breach is only about 6 feet deep at the deepest point, shallow enough to cause giant swells to break before they cross the lagoon and reach the town. But if, as seems likely, the gap continues to expand, it is likely to not only destroy the nature of the lagoon but threaten Codrington itself.

I called my friend George Jeffries to talk about it. George is a local naturalist and guide who I met about 45 years ago and who has been a friend since. He has taken me on many hikes and mangrove trips, including to the frigatebird colony. He has piloted my boat into Codrington Lagoon through the narrow north channel. I have come to appreciate his wisdom and observations.

He reminded me that a large new solid dock was built in Barbuda’s Boat Harbor in the late 1980s or early 90s and that, though this made docking easier for commercial vessels and created quite a nice, sheltered area for docking, it changed the way the current flows, and it is since then that the protective spit has been losing sand. Indeed, the Google Earth pictures confirm this, and I witnessed it. In 2007, Barbudan Michael Branker built a large hotel on the narrow spit just north of Low Bay, called Lighthouse Bay. Each year the sea took away beach from in front of it, and even before Hurricane Irma destroyed the hotel in 2017, the sea had encroached enough that swells had deposited sand inside the buildings.

It seems surprising that the small boat harbor dock could contribute to the deterioration of the sand spit as it is south of the Codrington Lagoon and two miles east-northeast of Palmetto Point, but I trust George and wouldn’t rule it out. When I first used to visit Barbuda, Spanish Point had a lovely beach all along on the west side. A solid dock was built for removing sand on the inner end of this about 40 years ago. The beach has now completely washed away.  In Grenada a wall built to protect Sauteurs destroyed houses and beach about half a mile to its west.

It is important to recognize the importance of this change: a sand spit, which protects Codrington Lagoon and Codrington, and that has been in place for all human memory (minus a few temporary breaches), is now slowly and steadily disappearing. This is likely to have disastrous consequences for both Codrington, Codrington Lagoon and Barbuda’s coastal environment. Barbuda’s iconic 11-mile beach is now a sand spit and a barrier island.

The rapid changes in Barbuda wrought by Peace Love and Happiness, hell bent on changing a beautiful and natural island into an expansive resort with homes for millionaires, where natural wetlands will be turned into a golf course and gardens, plus the ongoing fight over the finishing of the international airport, has caused so much confusion that the threat to Codrington’s sand spit barrier is largely getting ignored.

Figuring out why the sand spit is disappearing and planning for getting it reestablished should be a priority. This would probably need an environmental engineer, and I doubt there is one among Barbuda’s population of 1,700. However, there are many Barbudans living abroad with a whole wealth of qualifications, so one may exist somewhere. If George Jeffries is right, the solid dock could be replaced with one on pillars and perhaps the trend could possibly be reversed.