4
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 5TH APRIL, 2015
REGIONAL
“The Caribbean has been stalled
at a crossroads of
indecision,” said PrimeMinister of St Lucia, Kenny Anthony.
“The old assumptions are out of synch with reality.”
Prime Minister Anthony made these statements at
The UWI St Augustine’s CARICOM Leaders’ Lecture
Series. Since the launch of the series in October 2013,
four Caribbean leaders have grappled with the regional
institution, its legacy, its future, and the on-going quest
for integration. The St Lucian PM delivered his address on
March 3 at the Daaga Auditorium.
Indeed, it was an environment well-suited to the
occasion for, in the words of UWI Principal Clement Sankat,
The UWI is one of the older, well-established advocates of
Caribbean unity and regional integration.
Yet unity and integration seemmore distant than ever as
the region is confronted with a worsening economic future.
Speaking on the theme,
Delivered or Denied? The Dividends
of Integration
, Dr Anthony highlighted the Caribbean’s
inability to adapt to a more competitive global market place.
He called for a renewal of the integration mission, led by a
CARICOM, that is more ambitious in its goals and relevant
to its people.
Struggling in the
face of competition
“At the root of our dilemma is the demise of our
commodity sectors, nor has the transition to service-based
economies such as tourism made much of a palliative,” Dr
Anthony told attendees at the Distinguished Open Lecture.
“Virtually all our primary exports have taken a beating on
the open market.”
He was quick to assert that the barriers to a buoyant
economy are not insurmountable but are handicaps of our
own making – products of our own insularity.
Indicating that the region is able to overcome traditional
hurdles like scale and domestic market size, he added that
we have access to technology and entry into other markets.
Banana, he said, was once amillion-dollar-a-week enterprise
or “Green Gold”.
However, the St Lucian PMpointed out, the Caribbean
did not prepare for openmarkets andwith collapsingmarket
protection, we hoped to be given exceptional preference.
Instead of expanding production to reach other shores,
“we remained insular,” said Dr Anthony. We had decades
of industry knowledge but we did not capitalise on this
resource.
Prime Minister Anthony highlighted some of the
vulnerabilities within regional economies characterised by
high levels of external ownership; little emphasis on local
equity; and relegated to being industry hosts rather than
owners.
“A prevailing condition of low growth, high debt and
dwindling investment is our predicament,” he said.
CARICOM must evolve
In his lecture, PM Anthony reflected on the original
vision for CARICOM – each member state helping the
other nations and the region as a whole to realise their full
potential, including providing a high standard of living for
Caribbean citizens. Grimly, he noted that “it is more difficult
to be magnanimous when one is hungry.”
The Watchword is Relevance
B y D a r a W i l k i n s o n B o b b
What’s one of the best ways
to ensure food security?
Healthy crops. And a new agreement between The
UWI and a unit of the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) is set to intensify the region’s
pest-fighting operations.
On March 13, UWI and the USDA’s Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) through its
International Services (IS) APHIS formalised their
long-standing collaboration with the signing of a
Memorandum of Understanding at the University Inn
and Conference Centre. Through the agreement, The
UWI will provide office space and facilities for APHIS
in Trinidad and Tobago.
For several years now, APHIS IS has supported
the Caribbean Plant Health Directors’ (CPHD) work
in protecting the region’s plant life. It has been working
with The UWI since the 2007 establishment of the
CPHD Forum. The forum’s goal is to assist the greater
Caribbean and regional agricultural institutes, such
as APHIS IS, in strengthening their phytosanitary
(plant disease fighting) capabilities. This has long been
recognised as one of the ways to boost countries’ ability
to improve their trade in agricultural commodities.
Using The UWI’s technical expertise in areas
such as plant health and the global sanitary and
phytosanitary principles, the CPHD Forum has been
able to tackle issues related to pest prioritisation and
the Giant African Snail in the region.
UWI/APHIS SignMOU for Regional Agriculture
As such, Dr Anthony advised, “it is vital that the role
of CARICOM evolves not only to keep up with the times
but to set the pace for the times.”
For him, it is a question of relevance.
The issue of integration is not isolated to West Indies
cricket and CARICOM, said Dr Anthony. Rather, “it is
a crisis of our societies, our economic systems and our
governance”.
According to PM Kenny Anthony, if regional
institutions must survive, not only will they have to adapt
to global trends but they must also become relevant to the
lives of the people of the region – the realities we face on a
domestic level in our daily lives.
Time and effort must be dedicated to building
democracy, the quality of human interaction and how we
earn, he said.
“We must embrace systemic change if we are to effect
real transformation and allow our region to survive in a
hostile environment,” said Dr Anthony.
For him, there has to be an ideological, psychological
and strategic shift.The St Lucian PMsaid the new generation
perceives CARICOM as an archaic institution of rules and
regulations, and it must become less of the latter and more
of the embodiment of an ideal that transcends particular
historical persons and circumstances.
Dr Anthony argued for a radical rethinking of the ideas
underpinning CARICOM as a regional organisation.
Our countries are experiencing high debt and high
unemployment, and have lost aspects of our economies, he
said. CARICOM has failed to see this as an opportunity to
reshape the Caribbean as countries and as a region.
“We have been operating in silos, focusing on isolated
initiatives,” Dr Anthony said, “but we have to think more in
terms of how we can integrate initiatives and organisations
and approaches, and really think about howwe are affecting
people’s lives. We have to be more relevant to people.”
In his lecture, Dr Anthony emphasised that the issues
we face are not isolated, they are systemic, and neither are
they merely structural as they affect the everyday realities
of Caribbean men and women. He said that there is a
disconnect between CARICOM and the realities of the
region. The economic downturn has provided CARICOM
an opportunity to redress its mission by guiding the region’s
people through this latest trauma. As such, he stated, if we
are prepared to usher in the new transformations, we can
yet endure into the future.
“We must embrace systemic change if we are to effect real transformation and allow our region to survive in a hostile environment”
From left are Richard Madray, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry
of Food Production; Keith Gilges, Deputy Chief of Mission, US
Embassy; Beverly Simmons, Deputy Administrator International
Services, APHIS and Richard Saunders, Campus Registrar, The UWI.
