Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

How does Saint Vincent and the Grenadines compare in Caribbean?

Scored Caribbean destinations, Eco Index.

The global top 10 of the 77 destinations scored

What is Saint Vincent and the Grenadines particularly good at?

✓ Culture, scored 5/5. This is the Garifuna homeland, and the history is precise rather than decorative. St Vincent is Yurumein in the Garifuna language. Paramount Chief Joseph Chatoyer was killed by British troops in 1795 and was declared the country's first National Hero on 14 March 2002, now National Heroes Day. Between July 1796 and February 1797, 4,776 people were removed to Balliceaux, where 2,445 died. On 11 March 1797, 2,248 people embarked from Bequia for Roatán and 2,026 landed. Garifuna from across the diaspora still make a March pilgrimage to Balliceaux. The Owia Salt Pond in the north east is the clearest case anywhere in our Caribbean coverage of visitor money reaching a community directly. Owia is home to Callinago people, and the pond is co managed by the Owia Salt Pond Management Committee. Open 09:00 to 17:00, US$5 for visitors and EC$5 for nationals, about 217 steps down.

✓ Heritage, scored 5/5. Saint Vincent, known ancestrally as Hairouna, is the homeland of the Garifuna (Black Carib) people and still holds surviving Kalinago communities in the north at Sandy Bay, Owia and Fancy, keeping indigenous ancestry alive. The Spiritual Baptist faith, locally the Shakers, is a living African-Christian ancestral tradition that was banned from 1912 until 1965 and is now openly and proudly practised. The unique Nine Mornings festival fills the pre-dawn streets before Christmas with music and dance, while big drum, quadrille, bele, string band, calypso and soca carry the island's rhythms. This weave of indigenous heritage, ancestral spirituality and Afro-Caribbean music marks a deep, widely alive culture.

✓ Natural fibres, scored 5/5. St Vincent has the closest thing in the Caribbean to Jamaica's calabash: a plant with a job, grown for the land, worked by named people, sold in a shop you can walk into. Vetiver, khus khus, was traditionally the roof thatch here. It is now the basis of the country's main craft programme, run by the NGO Hand2Earth with designer Vonnie Roudette. Sandals Foundation put US$10,000 into the Vetiver Craft Project in May 2024 and a further US$5,500 into re roofing the building that becomes the Vetiver Heritage Craft and Design Centre at Troumaca. The makers are women from Petit Bordel, Rose Bank, Rose Hall and Coulls Hill, trained in August 2024, and prisoners and ex prisoners from Kingstown and Belle Isle, a programme running since 2015 that has trained over 160 people and reports a three per cent reoffending rate. They make vetiver baskets and placemats, and since April 2025 you can buy them at the Beach House Resort Shop at Sandals Saint Vincent. The route from the village to the shelf is documented at every step, which is rare. Alongside it: the Wallilabou Craft Centre on the Leeward Highway is a village cooperative weaving pandanus and wiss into baskets, handbags, hats and toys, though we could not confirm it is currently open. The St Vincent Craftsmen's Centre on Frenches Street in Kingstown sells grass mats and hand painted calabashes and is cash only. Kingstown Market carries handcrafted straw baskets and brooms alongside the produce. And eat ducana, sweet potato and coconut steamed in a banana leaf, which arrives with no packaging at all. Be honest about what has gone quiet. A 1996 government heritage survey listed gommier log canoes, drums from hollowed gru gru palm, bamboo flutes, three log bois flo fishing craft, nail mats and vetiver roof thatching. We could find current evidence for almost none of it. Vetiver is the exception, and it is expanding rather than merely surviving.

Where does Saint Vincent and the Grenadines score worst?

✕ Recycling, scored 3/5. Better than most of its neighbours, and recently invested in. Diamond Landfill was completed in September 2021 with a twenty year design life. A metal baler has been installed there to bale scrap metal for export, and a twice yearly White Goods Collection Programme has removed more than 30,000 large household items since 2011. Collection is handled by the Solid Waste Management Unit of the water authority, which is an unusual but apparently workable arrangement. No national recycling rate is published, which is why this is a three rather than higher.

✕ Organic farming, scored 2/5. The honest position is that we could not verify organic certification for any Vincentian producer, so this sits at two on the strength of growing method rather than paperwork. What is genuinely low input is sea moss, line farmed in the sea with no fresh water, no land, no feed and no chemicals, which on islands with no rivers is close to an ideal crop. The SeaMoss Association is a community based organisation founded in 2023 supporting over 10 women entrepreneurs across three islands, with 60 plus farmers across four. Dasheen, the country's flagship export crop, is formally designated its Blue Gold and goes to the UK and France, but we found no organic certification attached to it.

✕ Water, scored 2/5. The mainland and the Grenadines are hydrologically opposite, and you should plan for both. St Vincent is volcanic and river fed: the Central Water and Sewerage Authority runs 12 catchments and pipes water to roughly 98 per cent of the island. The Grenadines have no public water system at all. On Canouan, residents rely on rainwater harvesting for their entire supply, caught off roofs into cisterns. The climate there is already semi arid at 45 to 60 inches of rain a year. In the 2009 to 2010 drought, water was brought to the islands by boat, and in May 2026 the responsible minister called Grenadines water a super critical crisis. Bequia's desalination plant has been stalled seven years. So in the Grenadines the water in your shower came off a roof or out of the sea. Short showers, no running taps, and carry a refillable bottle.

Energy, 3/5

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a very low per-capita emitter at roughly 1.31 tonnes of CO2 per person, and it already draws about a fifth of its electricity from renewables, chiefly long-established hydropower on the main island with a small solar contribution. The remainder of the grid runs on imported diesel.

Food and farming, 4/5

Dasheen is the flagship crop and has been formally declared the Blue Gold crop of St Vincent and the Grenadines, exported to the UK and France. Breadfruit is the other pillar, and the lineage is real: the Botanic Gardens in Kingstown were founded in 1765 and still hold a sucker descended from the breadfruit Captain Bligh landed in 1793.

Heritage, 5/5

Saint Vincent, known ancestrally as Hairouna, is the homeland of the Garifuna (Black Carib) people and still holds surviving Kalinago communities in the north at Sandy Bay, Owia and Fancy, keeping indigenous ancestry alive. The Spiritual Baptist faith, locally the Shakers, is a living African-Christian ancestral tradition that was banned from 1912 until 1965 and is now openly and proudly practised.