Table of Contents Chapter 1 1 Country Overview 1 Country Overview 2 Key Data 3 Saint Vincent and Grenadines 4 Central America and the Caribbean 5 Chapter 2 7 Political Overview 7 History 8 Political Conditions 11 Political Risk Index 20 Political Stability 34 Freedom Rankings 49 Human Rights 61 Government Functions 64 Government Structure 65 Principal Government Officials 67 Leader Biography 68 Leader Biography 68 Foreign Relations 70 National Security 73 Defense Forces 75 Chapter 3 77 Economic Overview 77 Economic Overview 78 Nominal GDP and Components 80 Population and GDP Per Capita 82 Real GDP and Inflation 83 Government Spending and Taxation 84 Money Supply, Interest Rates and Unemployment 85 Foreign Trade and the Exchange Rate 86 Data in US Dollars 87 Energy Consumption and Production Standard Units 88 Energy Consumption and Production QUADS 89 World Energy Price Summary 90 CO2 Emissions 91 Agriculture Consumption and Production 92 World Agriculture Pricing Summary 94 Metals Consumption and Production 95 World Metals Pricing Summary 97 Economic Performance Index 98 Chapter 4 110 Investment Overview 110 Foreign Investment Climate 111 Foreign Investment Index 113 Corruption Perceptions Index 126 Competitiveness Ranking 138 Taxation 147 Stock Market 147 Partner Links 148 Chapter 5 149 Social Overview 149 People 150 Human Development Index 151 Life Satisfaction Index 155 Happy Planet Index 166 Status of Women 175 Global Gender Gap Index 178 Culture and Arts 188 Etiquette 189 Travel Information 190 Diseases/Health Data 199 Chapter 6 205 Environmental Overview 205 Environmental Issues 206 Environmental Policy 207 Greenhouse Gas Ranking 208 Global Environmental Snapshot 219 Global Environmental Concepts 230 International Environmental Agreements and Associations 244 Appendices 269 Bibliography 270 Saint Vincent and Grenadines Chapter 1 Country Overview Saint Vincent and Grenadines Review 2016 Page 1 of 281 pages Saint Vincent and Grenadines Country Overview SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES The island country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is located between the Caribbean Sea and North Atlantic Ocean. For most of the 18th century, the islands were disputed between the British and French settlers. After a few years of French control, the islands were returned to the British in 1783. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines remained under British rule until it gained independence in 1979. Like other Eastern Caribbean countries, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has tried to reduce its reliance on banana exports after the phasing out of preferential treatment from Europe. Efforts to diversify the economy have been made and tourism has grown to become the largest foreign exchange earner. Saint Vincent and Grenadines Review 2016 Page 2 of 281 pages Saint Vincent and Grenadines Key Data Key Data Region: Central America and the Caribbean Population: 102627 Tropical; little seasonal temperature variation; rainy season (May to Climate: November). English Languages: French patois Currency: 1East Caribbean Dollar (EC$) = 100 cents Holiday: Independence Day is 27 October (1979), CARICOM Day is 4 July Area Total: 340 Area Land: 340 Coast Line: 84 Saint Vincent and Grenadines Review 2016 Page 3 of 281 pages Saint Vincent and Grenadines Saint Vincent and Grenadines Country Map Saint Vincent and Grenadines Review 2016 Page 4 of 281 pages Saint Vincent and Grenadines Central America and the Caribbean Regional Map Saint Vincent and Grenadines Review 2016 Page 5 of 281 pages Saint Vincent and Grenadines Saint Vincent and Grenadines Review 2016 Page 6 of 281 pages Saint Vincent and Grenadines Chapter 2 Political Overview Saint Vincent and Grenadines Review 2016 Page 7 of 281 pages Saint Vincent and Grenadines History The earliest known inhabitants of St. Vincent and the Grenadines were the indigenous Ciboneys who settled the islands around 5000 before the common era, or B.C.E. They were followed by the Arawaks, and later, by the Caribs. The Caribs, a much more warlike people than the earlier groups they displaced, were the predominant culture on the islands when European sailors first came upon St. Vincent and the Grenadines at the end of the 15th century. Christopher Columbus was the first European to encounter the island chain, on his third voyage to the New World in 1498, and he gave the main island its present name. Reputedly, pirates who frequented the region in the 16th and 17th centuries are responsible for naming the Grenadines and the island of Grenada, now a separate country. The lushness of St. Vincent beckoned European settlement attempts during this era, but the fierceness of the island's Carib inhabitants repelled such efforts, and the indigenous people maintained full control of the area for nearly 200 years after their initial contact with Europeans. In 1660, France and Britain-countries whose colonial hegemony over the Western Hemisphere was ascendant while Spain's was beginning to decline-agreed that St. Vincent, along with nearby Dominica, should be left alone because the challenge of combating Carib depredations on would-be settlers was proving too arduous. Supposedly, the first new arrivals who succeeded in making a permanent home on St. Vincent were Africans who survived the sinking of a Dutch slave ship in 1675, and were absorbed into the Carib community. Their presence gave rise to two ethnic strains- the descendants of the Africans' intermarriage with the indigenous people, known as Black Caribs, and Amerindians with no African ancestry, called Yellow, or Red, Caribs. Despite the agreement to let St. Vincent remain neutral territory, off-limits to Europeans, and despite the Caribs' continuing resistance to outsiders, both French and English colonists coveted the islands. Finally, around 1719, the Caribs permitted a group of French settlers to establish a foothold on St. Vincent, an event that marked the beginning of the plantation system, based on African slave labor, that characterized the island for the next 100 years. Meanwhile, British planters set up similar operations on some of the Grenadines. Sugar cane was the initial crop of choice, as it was in the West Indies generally; its pre-eminence was eventually superseded by coffee, cocoa, cotton, fruit and spices. Rivalry between France and England for dominance of the area persisted, occasionally erupting into incidents of armed conflict. Saint Vincent and Grenadines Review 2016 Page 8 of 281 pages Saint Vincent and Grenadines In 1763, the Seven Years' War between France and England ended with the defeated French ceding St. Vincent and any claims on the Grenadines to Great Britain. However, St. Vincent's indigenous and black inhabitants decidedly preferred the somewhat more relaxed French style of rule to the highly regimented British system, and the French planter community saw fit to encourage this sentiment; the upshot was a French invasion to regain the island at the time of the American Revolution, in 1779. The United States' victory in its war for independence-in which naval support by the French fleet played a key role-was part of the geopolitical context of resurgent French power in the Caribbean. Nevertheless, the 1783 Treaty of Versailles, in which Great Britain formally recognized the United States as a separate nation, included a stipulation that St. Vincent and the Grenadines would revert to British control. Still, the Caribs as well as French colonists actively fought British domination, and a state of revolt prevailed for a number of years. A turning point came in 1795, when the Carib chief Chatoyer was killed in battle. The following year, British General Ralph Abercrombie crushed a region-wide revolt led by the Guadeloupe- based radical Victor Hugues, a militant proponent of the French Revolution. Soon thereafter, over 5,000 Black Caribs were deported to Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras. Those Caribs allowed to remain on St. Vincent were confined to a reservation. A significant cultural transmission took place in 1793 - the importation to St. Vincent of breadfruit cuttings from the South Pacific by Captain William Bligh, notorious for the mutiny that overthrew his command of the vessel "Bounty." The starchy fruit was intended to provide an easily cultivated, reasonably nutritious food for the burgeoning population of plantation slaves; it eventually became a staple comestible across most of the West Indies. Plantation society flourished relatively briefly around the turn of the 19th century. However, a major eruption of Mount Soufrière in 1812 caused widespread damage, and this blow was followed by a secular decline of the world sugar cane industry, driven by overproduction, the dismantling of protectionist trade regimes that guaranteed profitable markets, and the onset of large-scale sugar beet production in Europe and North America. Moreover, abolitionist views were coming to the fore in the British political system. The British Empire banned the slave trade in 1808, and abolished slavery entirely in 1834. The number of people freed from slavery in St. Vincent and the Grenadines totaled about 18,000. The remaining plantations sought laborers from a variety of locations, and the resulting influx, including Portuguese immigrants in the 1840s and East Indian indentured laborers in the 1860s, added appreciably to the small island chain's ethnic diversity. Economic conditions remained harsh for both former slaves and immigrant workers, as the agriculture-dependent economy underwent a difficult transition from the heyday of sugar cane to reliance on more diversified production. Saint Vincent and Grenadines Review 2016 Page 9 of 281 pages Saint Vincent and Grenadines Because of the lengthy period of Carib resistance to European settlement, the era of sugar-based plantation prosperity was briefer in St. Vincent and the Grenadines than it was in many other parts of the Caribbean. Although the islands, both as a British colony and more recently as an independent country, developed a significant range of alternative crops, inefficient small-scale production, legal and physical barriers to market access, and frequently low commodity prices combined to impede satisfactory economic progress.