Barbados: Coastal Infrastructure Program

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Date
Jul 2019
EDITOR
Perez, Darrel
This infographic presents a summary of the paper “The impact of shoreline stabilization on economic growth in Small Island Developing States” that investigates whether Barbadian efforts to stem shoreline retreat and enhance beach amenity along their south-western coast under the Coastal Infrastructure Program (CIP) implemented between 2002 and 2009 had beneficial effects on medium-term economic growth. The analysis relies on the synthetic control method as a way to systematically choose comparison units (beach sites), which allows for precise quantitative inference in small-sample studies. Our results indicate that in the first three years after shoreline stabilization works were completed, local economic effects, as measured by nighttime lights data, are positive and show a positive trend. Confidence bounds obtained by a bootstrapping method suggest that the positive trend is robust in the last two years post-treatment. Shoreline stabilization works may therefore not only help preserve fragile ecological conditions, but further lead to sustainable growth in the local economy.