ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews a broad variety of options for the Caribbean Basin countries to expand their exports through sustained-yield exploitation of natural resource stocks in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors. The economies of the Caribbean Basin are heavily dependent for the most part on their natural resource base in terms of vegetation, soil cover, water stocks and the like. In Central America, for instance, half of all economic output and half of all employment are dependent upon the natural resource base, and agricultural exports account for about 70 percent of all Central America’s export revenues. A breakthrough response arrived with a World Neighbors initiative in 1981, supported by the Honduran government’s Ministry of Natural Resources, in conjunction with a Honduran nongovernmental organization known as Association for the Coordination of Development Resources. As long as there is a situation of too many people making too great demands on farmland resources, increasing numbers of would-be farmers are finding themselves landless.
