August 2014


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The UWI St. Augustine’s Department ofEconomics Annual Conference on the Economy(COTE) 2014 is scheduled for October 9-10,2014, at the Learning Resource Centre (LRC) Auditorium, UWI St. Augustine Campus. This year the Conference honours the work of the late Dennis Pantin.

As developing countries we face issues of high population densities: poverty, high levels of unemployment, negative impacts from climate change and limited resources for which sustainable development has been identified as a possible solution by many governments. Whilst it may be easy to assume that it is inherently natural for social units to incorporate sustainability and planning for generations to come, sustainable development, as the late Professor Dennis Pantin highlighted, is in real danger of becoming a cliché which everyone acknowledges and respects but remains ill-defined and elusive.

At The UWI we have been privileged to benefit from the knowledge and academic foresight ofProfessorPantin for whom the study of ways to facilitate the achievement of sustainable development in island states was an academic and professional preoccupation. Professor Pantin stands out as a pioneer in our region who saw sustainable development as requiring a multi-disciplinary approach to address our many challenges and achieve its objectives, that is, development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.This objective is of particular importance since it involves the marrying of environmental, social and economic objectives whilst seeking to ensure efficient management of limited resources.

Given considerations of our social space and environment, achieving sustainability involves finding solutions for our development issues which balance all three of these objectives. Since meeting development objectives requires use of resources, the primary focus of sustainable development is therefore responsible resource use. That is, each generation must identify and pursue development objectives keeping in mind not only their current needs and constraints but that of future generations. However, whilst it may be natural for all objectives to be considered when planning it is often the case where one or more of these objectives are ignored.

Pantin’s work provided a dialogue for sustainable development from the perspective of Small Island Developing States in which he highlighted that the economic fortunes of small island economies are largely dependent on the ability to anticipate opportunities and threats resultant from trends in the world economy. He identified approaches for forecasting the likely impact of the global trends; both positive and negative and presented a framework for sustainable Caribbean development in the twenty-first century in which the role of public policy in informing a strategy for achieving sustainability was highlighted.

Pantin had presented criticisms of sustainable development which included the general failure to identify measurementsfor development and had suggested the examination of three indicators surrounding employment which are pertinent to country’s development. In the case of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) particularly SIDS of the Caribbean, sustainable development objectives have failed to pay attention to their peculiarities, challenges and constraints. This concern continues to be reflected in the ongoing sustainable development discourse.

Whilst many Caribbean countries have incorporated the sustainable development objectives in their development agendas, its implementation has remained elusive. There is much difficulty in translating the theory into practice and clearly articulating the role of all actors. For island states that are heavily dependent on the environment, the reality is that sustainable development is not easily achieved and takes considerable time, political will and national commitment particularly as it relates to resource use.

Roxanne Brizan has an MSc in Economics (Distinction) and a BSc Economics with minor in International Relations. She is a Teaching Assistant with the Department of Economics, UWI, St. Augustine.