a hydrological census. 97 per cent of the population had at least basic drinking water in 2024.

Abundant on paper is not the same as reliable in the tap. Investigative reporting has documented intermittent supply and month long outages, and the former agriculture minister Atherton Martin has pointed to a significant reduction in water reservoirs over the past two decades. The utility has begun trying to reach the island's aquifers. Do not use soap or shampoo in the rivers and pools.

Dominica's food import bill was US$40 million in 2017 and had reached US$56 million six years later, and food made up 25.2 per cent of merchandise imports in 2023, the highest of the destinations we cover.

Hurricane Maria in 2017 is the pivot. Destruction of root crops, vegetables, banana and plantain ranged from 80 to 100 per cent, and livestock losses ran to 45 per cent of cattle, 65 per cent of pigs and over 90 per cent of chickens. Agriculture's share of GDP fell from 16.3 per cent before the storm to around 11 per cent afterwards. The pledge after Maria was to rebuild more self reliant. Imports have gone the other way.

What grows well is still what to eat: dasheen and root crops, banana and plantain, mango, avocado, citrus and bay, which is the source of Dominica's bay leaf oil.

The New Market is the working farmers market, best at daybreak on a Saturday, where farmers come in with vegetables and everything on the stands is whatever is in season.

Cassava bread is the living plant based tradition here, still made in the Kalinago Territory, and it is tied directly to the craft (see natural fibres).

The fertile volcanic soil produces dasheen, yam, plantain, banana, citrus, coconut, cocoa, coffee, mango, guava, passionfruit, avocado, breadfruit and bay, and bay leaf oil is a real export.

What we could not find is certification. The Kalinago cassava tradition, from the larouma reed squeezers and sifters through to the bread, is about as unprocessed as food gets, but it is a heritage practice rather than a certified supply chain.

The honest read is that a lot of Dominican food is grown the way an organic standard would want, without anyone paying to prove it.

Its marine protection is 0.1 per cent of territorial waters. The series reads zero for 2019 through 2023. The Nature Isle protects its forest and barely protects its sea, and you should know that before you book a diving trip.

On land the estate is genuine: Morne Trois Pitons National Park, established in 1975 and a World Heritage Site since 1997, covering around 7,000 hectares and holding the Valley of Desolation, the Boiling Lake, Titou Gorge and Emerald Pool, plus Morne Diablotin, Cabrits, and the Central and Northern Forest Reserves. Forest cover is 63.8 per cent of the land, the highest in our coverage.

Days after Hurricane Maria, on 23 September 2017, the Prime Minister told the UN General Assembly that Dominica would become the world's first climate resilient nation, targeted for 2030. The delivery agency, CREAD, was launched in March 2018 and concluded in December 2023. Treat it as a stated ambition rather than an achieved status.

The Sisserou, or imperial amazon, is endemic to Dominica, Critically Endangered, and was estimated at only about 50 mature individuals in the wild in 2019. It had fallen to between 25 and 40 after Hurricane David in 1979, recovered to between 160 and 240 by 2012, and Maria is believed to have cut it back sharply again. It is the national bird and it is on the flag. The Jaco, or red necked amazon, is also found only on Dominica, is listed Vulnerable, and holds an estimated 850 to 1,000 mature individuals in the old growth forests of Morne Diablotin and Morne Trois Pitons.

One correction worth carrying: the mountain chicken frog, one of the largest frogs in the world, is native to Dominica and Montserrat, so it is a two island endemic, not a Dominica only species. It is Critically Endangered, down more than 85 per cent in 25 years from chytrid fungus.

Larouma reed grew in the forest close to Kalinago settlements and is split by hand into thin flexible strips, coloured black, purple and yellow using mud and plant extracts. What gets made gives it away as working equipment rather than souvenir: alongside trays and mats, weavers make manioc squeezers and flour sifters, the tools of cassava processing. The basket is how the cassava bread gets made. You cannot separate the two.

Buy from the makers at Kalinago Barana Autê's craft shop and gallery and through Kalinago Treasures, in the Territory. A larouma tray or basket is a genuine everyday swap, and the money goes to the person who cut and split the reed.

In the July 2018 budget address the Prime Minister announced that from 1 January 2019 Dominica would ban plastic straws, plates, forks, knives and styrofoam cups and containers. As of July 2021, two years past the deadline, the ban had not been implemented and the banned items could still be seen littered around the island.

We could not find the name or number of any statute or statutory instrument giving the ban legal force. Every source reports a prime ministerial announcement rather than an enacted regulation, so we are not listing Dominica as having a plastic ban in force.

The Dominica Solid Waste Management Corporation was established by the Solid Waste Management Act of 1996 and runs the Fond Cole landfill north of Roseau, about 18 acres, designed for a fifteen year life. No national recycling rate could be found.

res, designed to take the island's waste for a fifteen year period. Weighbridge data from 2011 showed around 23 tonnes a day.

No national recycling rate could be found. And Dominica's plastics position is weaker than most people assume: a ban was announced for January 2019 but we could find no enacted statute, and reporting two years later found it unimplemented.

Around 3,000 Kalinago live on roughly 3,700 collectively owned acres across eight hamlets on the north east coast: Sineku, Mahaut River, Gaulette River, Salybia, Crayfish River, Bataka, Atkinson and part of Concord. The legal basis is the Carib Reserve Act of 1978, now the Kalinago Territory Act, which holds the land in communal ownership and grants veto power over outside development. Residents over 18 elect a Chief and a six member Council for a five year term. The office of Chief dates to 1903.

This communal tenure is the only arrangement of its kind left in the Caribbean, and that is the version of the claim we can stand behind.

Kalinago Barana Autê at Salybia opened on 3 April 2006 on 4.2 acres, with craft demonstrations, a herbal medicine garden, trails and a craft gallery, entry around US$10. We could not verify who owns it or where the revenue goes, so we make no community ownership claim. Buying directly from craft makers in the Territory does pay the maker.

Dominica also has a documented maroon heritage. The government's own Division of Culture records Chief Jacko, born in Guinea, enslaved at Castle Comfort, who escaped to a plateau near Belles still known as Jacko Flats, led maroon raids and sheltered escapees, and was shot in July 1814 after more than forty years in the forest. The Jacko Steps, 135 steps cut into the rock as a secret route to his camp, can be walked.