Bahamas.

How does Bahamas compare in Caribbean?

Scored Caribbean destinations, Eco Index.

The global top 10 of the 77 destinations scored

What is Bahamas particularly good at?

✓ Conservation, scored 5/5. The Bahamas is the strongest protector in the region and it has the best origin story. 34.6 per cent of land was protected in 2024, nearly double Jamaica's, and 7.7 per cent of territorial waters, the only island here above one per cent. There are more than 30 national parks and reserves across 16 islands, managed by the Bahamas National Trust. The Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park was established in 1958 across 112,640 acres of land and sea. In the Trust's own words, as the first land and sea park in the world it contributed significantly to the development of marine protected areas globally. No fishing, shelling or conching of any kind is permitted. In other words, the Bahamas effectively invented the marine protected area as a category, which is a far better headline than any beach. Inagua National Park, established 1965 across 287 square miles, holds the largest breeding colony of West Indian flamingos in the world at roughly 70,000 birds, after a forty year journey back from the edge of extinction. The Trust itself was created in 1959 out of the Society for the Protection of the Flamingo, and hired local hunters as its first wardens. Blue Holes National Park on Andros, established 2002 across 40,000 acres, protects 22 inland blue holes.

✓ Culture, scored 4/5. Junkanoo was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 5 December 2023, the country's first inscription. The Bahamas government calls Junkanoo the national cultural festival, and in the country's own case to UNESCO the festival was traced back more than two centuries, its rhythms rooted in Africa. Costumes are built in community workshops known as Junkanoo shacks, which University of The Bahamas research describes as the places where groups gather for months of a season to assemble them. That is what separates Junkanoo from a staged parade. The parades run on Boxing Day and New Year's Day along Bay Street in downtown Nassau, roughly from one in the morning until nine. On indigenous heritage, be accurate. Excavations at Preacher's Cave in North Eleuthera recovered Lucayan Taino remains dated to AD 800 to 1300, alongside seventeenth century English settlers and, later, a free black community. But the Lucayans were eradicated within decades of European contact. There is no continuing Lucayan community in the Bahamas. Preacher's Cave is an archaeological heritage site, not a living indigenous community, and should be visited as one.

✓ Heritage, scored 4/5. Bahamian living heritage centres on Junkanoo, the exuberant masquerade street parade of goatskin drums, cowbells, brass and whistles staged on Boxing Day and New Year's Day. Rake-and-scrape, played on a carpenter's saw, goatskin drum and accordion, is the islands' foundational folk sound, alongside goombay. Ancestral traditions carried from West and Central Africa endure in Obeah spiritual practice and bush medicine, and older ring-play and quadrille survive in the family islands. These forms are widely practised and passed down through the generations.

Where does Bahamas score worst?

✕ Water, scored 2/5. The Bahamas manufactures most of the capital's drinking water from the sea. The Water and Sewerage Corporation states that its reverse osmosis plant provides 90 per cent of the water used in New Providence, and that it no longer barges water into the capital. That barging is worth knowing about, because it lasted about 35 years. After strict rationing from the mid 1970s, when New Providence could not meet demand from groundwater, water was shipped from Andros to Nassau until expansion of the Blue Hills facility ended it. Andros is the island best endowed with fresh water, though parts of South Andros have very high salt content, and groundwater declines as you go south through the archipelago. The constraint here is geological rather than a formal water stress ranking: thin freshwater lenses sitting on porous limestone, easily over drawn and easily contaminated.

✕ Food and farming, scored 1/5. This is the starkest figure in our whole Caribbean coverage, and it is verified twice over, once by the US Department of Commerce and once by a serving Bahamian minister on the record. The Bahamas imports nearly 90 per cent of its food, at a cost of around US$1 billion a year. The reason is geological. Agricultural land is 1.3 per cent of the land area and agriculture is 0.51 per cent of GDP, both among the lowest in the region. The Bahamas is limestone, and there is very little soil. Government policy aims to lift agriculture from 1.5 per cent of GDP to 10 per cent by 2031, and requires foreign investors to source 40 per cent of food from local farmers and fishers. One useful lesson in reading statistics: food is only 19.96 per cent of Bahamian merchandise imports, the lowest of the islands we compare, while the share of food consumed that is imported is the highest. The two numbers measure different things and are not interchangeable.

✕ Organic farming, scored 1/5. There is very little soil to farm. Agricultural land is 1.3 per cent of the land area and agriculture is 0.51 per cent of GDP, both among the lowest in the region, because the islands are limestone. The one genuine exception we found is The Farm on North Eleuthera, a very small cottage hotel built around a working organic farm with over 200 garden beds and a freshwater well, supplying its own kitchen and the owner's other hotels. Government policy aims to lift agriculture from 1.5 per cent of GDP to 10 per cent by 2031 and requires foreign investors to source 40 per cent of food from local farmers and fishers. Until that lands, nearly 90 per cent of food arrives by ship and almost none of it is certified organic.

Energy, 2/5

The Bahamas depends almost entirely on imported oil and gas for power, with renewables supplying under 1 per cent of electricity generation in 2023. Per-person emissions are about 7.4 tonnes of CO2, high for the region and tied to fuel imports, tourism and cooling demand across many islands.

Food and farming, 1/5

This is the starkest figure in our whole Caribbean coverage, and it is verified twice over, once by the US Department of Commerce and once by a serving Bahamian minister on the record. The Bahamas imports nearly 90 per cent of its food, at a cost of around US$1 billion a year.

Consequence: It is the lowest-scoring part of Bahamas's record, so it is where the score moves first.

Heritage, 4/5

Bahamian living heritage centres on Junkanoo, the exuberant masquerade street parade of goatskin drums, cowbells, brass and whistles staged on Boxing Day and New Year's Day. Rake-and-scrape, played on a carpenter's saw, goatskin drum and accordion, is the islands' foundational folk sound, alongside goombay.