Twenty major islands and smaller ones, strung like green jewels across 5 million square kilometers of azure sea, bathed in solar radiance, crowned with white clouds, and home to a beautiful, talented, and contented people: such is the public relations image of the Caribbean environment.
 
The reality, of course, is a little more complex. Divided among 25 sovereign states and dependent territories, the Caribbean environment defined here comprises a land area of mostly mountainous islands plus Belize (but excluding Guyana) totalling a quarter of a million square kilometres (about 100,000 square miles), with relatively shallow marine banks that were dry land a few thousand years ago, during the Pleistocene glacial epoch, adding another 640,000 square kilometres (250,000 square miles).