Caribbean Leaders Shun Summit

By Bert Wilkinson

Caribbean leaders have largely stayed away from the WSSD charging that Johannesburg is too far to come to be ignored.

Up to late yesterday only two leaders from the 15-nation Caribbean Community – Bharrat Jagdeo, president of Guyana and Pierre Charles, prime minister of Dominica – had arrived. Caribbean officials here say it is hardly likely anyone else will turn up.

Charles said from conversations he had had with several colleagues, many felt flying to South Africa would be a wasted effort “because our voices are crying out in the wilderness”.

The Caribbean Community, though encompassing 15 nations, has a population of just over 5 million people. The region, because of its size and its lack of wealth, has very little clout on the world stage.

The Dominican leader himself almost did not make it to the summit. For cash-strapped small island states like those in Caricom, the cost of getting a delegation to Johannesburg is prohibitive.

“I found it very difficult to tell my people that I was coming just when the International Monetary Fund was approving a standby arrangement for Dominica. I also found it to be quite embarrassing to have to tell the press that our delegation had to be sponsored to come here,” Charles told Terra Viva yesterday.

The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Sustainable Energy Islands Initiative (GSEII) were among agencies that are paying the expenses of Dominica’s four-person delegation.

Conspicuous absentees are prime ministers Owen Arthur of Barbados, Percival Patterson of Jamaica, and Patrick Manning of Trinidad and Tobago and presidents Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti and Ronald Venetiaan of Suriname.

Despite the absentees, Caribbean officials like Byron Blake, trade chief at the Guyana-based Caribbean Community Secretariat, said the region remains largely satisfied that a long and hard fought battle had been won because the conference has recognised the unique difficulties of Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

“We managed to get a whole chapter on SIDS in the text. The meeting recognised the vulnerability of small islands and low-lying states and we are happy to say that ours was the very first one approved. It is a major achievement,” said Blake.

The SIDS group, made up mostly of island chains and low-lying coastal countries across the globe has been campaigning for special attention for more than a decade given their susceptibility to natural disasters like hurricanes and fears about being swamped by sea level rises from climatic changes.

Blake said other challenges remain such as getting the G-8 nations to agree to implement 0.7 percent of their GDP to development assistance (a commitment that they renewed themselves to in Rio, 10 years ago), to provide debt relief and to reduce the level of subsidies paid out to their farmers.