BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

It’s is no time to think or act as a ‘one man is­land,’ for­mer di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Pro­fes­sor Andy Knight ad­vis­es.

Speak­ing on the re­cov­ery process in the Caribbean re­gion, Knight who is cur­rent­ly the Pro­fes­sor of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta, said via an email in­ter­view, to build that re­silience to the ex­ter­nal shocks caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, it re­quired the com­ing to­geth­er of strong re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

“We have to stop think­ing in si­los and recog­nise that the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties Caribbean coun­tries face are in­ter-sec­tor—a health cri­sis like COVID-19 has se­vere neg­a­tive im­pli­ca­tions for the economies of the re­gion and can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the ed­u­ca­tion­al sec­tor, the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, in­crease the lev­els of crime and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, and re­duce in­di­vid­ual fam­i­ly in­comes. So the prob­lem has to be tack­led in a holis­tic fash­ion. It al­so re­quires the strength­en­ing of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion ef­forts,” said Knight.

Ac­cord­ing to Knight, the one thing that COVID-19 has ex­posed was how vul­ner­a­ble small states like those in the Caribbean was to man­i­fold threats, in this case to glob­al health se­cu­ri­ty threats.

Quot­ing some sta­tis­tics in the re­gion, he said COVID-19 did not re­spect na­tion­al bor­ders. And the virus had in­fect­ed over 17,000 peo­ple across the wider Caribbean, re­sult­ing in 2,098 deaths. Knight high­light­ed, some states like the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic have had over 400 deaths so far as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic. Oth­er states he point­ed out, like Ja­maica, Guyana, the Ba­hamas, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Bar­ba­dos have record­ed few­er than 15 deaths so far from the virus. While states such as An­guil­la, Grena­da, Do­mini­ca, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and St. Lu­cia have yet to record any deaths as a re­sult of the virus. How­ev­er, he main­tained, one thing re­mained clear—in­di­vid­ual Caribbean states act­ing on their own can­not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress such a trans-na­tion­al and trans-re­gion­al glob­al pan­dem­ic.

It was why, Knight said, he was in to­tal agree­ment with the ef­forts by Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, Mia Mot­t­ley, who has been push­ing for a col­lab­o­ra­tive re­gion­al re­sponse via CARI­COM to ad­dress the chal­lenge posed by COVID-19.

On March 1, Mot­t­ley, who is the cur­rent chair of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM), con­vened an emer­gency meet­ing of the re­gion­al body to de­vel­op a re­gion­al re­sponse to the un­fold­ing glob­al pan­dem­ic.

“It makes sense to have a re­gion­al strat­e­gy for deal­ing with this prob­lem. Not all is­lands in the Caribbean have the hos­pi­tal ca­pac­i­ty to ad­dress a surge in in­fec­tions. Not all have the ap­pro­pri­ate test­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty. Not all have the nec­es­sary PPE equip­ment. Masks and ven­ti­la­tors have been dif­fi­cult to get in some cas­es. But with a re­gion­al strat­e­gy some re­silien­cy can be built in­to the health sys­tem that would al­low coun­tries in need to get the as­sis­tance they re­quire to ad­dress COVID-19,” Knight con­tend­ed.

Point­ing to the work by the Caribbean Health Pub­lic Agency (CARPHA) as a demon­stra­tive work­ing ex­am­ple of a uni­fied re­gion­al ap­proach, Knight said, COVID-19 be­ing a health first chal­lenge it would be im­por­tant to utilise the ex­ist­ing re­gion­al health bod­ies like it­self to co­or­di­nate the pre­pared­ness and re­sponse to the health chal­lenge.

“It seems that CARPHA has done an ex­cel­lent job in re­duc­ing the pan­dem­ic's threat in the re­gion. The PM of St Lu­cia, Allen Chas­tanet, praised CARPHA for its ac­tions and said that it was an ex­am­ple of "re­gion­al­ism work­ing,” Knight high­light­ed.

CARPHA was al­so praised by CARI­COM’s Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Ir­win LaRoche, for its proac­tive ap­proach to ad­dress­ing the prob­lem and for co­or­di­nat­ing a re­sponse to the fact that this par­tic­u­lar virus posed sig­nif­i­cant risks to Caribbean peo­ple who suf­fer from non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs).

Knight stat­ed CARPHA in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO), had sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence deal­ing with NCDs—par­tic­u­lar­ly since the ad­vent of the Port-of-Spain De­c­la­ra­tion. (See side Bar)

He not­ed, The Healthy Caribbean Coali­tion (HCC) had es­ti­mat­ed that four out of ten adults in the Caribbean have some form of NCDs. And NCDs hap­pened to be the most com­mon form of co-mor­bidi­ties of COVID-19 in the old­er age groups with the high­est mor­tal­i­ty. It is his be­lief there­fore; build­ing on the re­gion­al re­sponse to NCDs would help in the de­vel­op­ment of a Caribbean re­gion­al re­sponse to COVID-19.

COVID-19 more than just a health prob­lem

More than just a health chal­lenge how­ev­er, Knight re­it­er­at­ed, the eco­nom­ic and so­cial chal­lenges di­rect­ly sprung from COVID-19.

He said tack­ling the health chal­lenge by shut­ting down the na­tion­al bor­ders of each in­di­vid­ual Caribbean state may work for a while, but these states were de­pen­dent large­ly on tourism for their eco­nom­ic sur­vival. And, Caribbean states im­port much of their food and ma­te­r­i­al goods from out­side. As such their economies were there­fore high­ly de­pen­dent on main­tain­ing open bor­ders. And, all Caribbean states would be be hit hard eco­nom­i­cal­ly by the shut­ting down busi­ness­es, ho­tels and car rental op­er­a­tions, among etc. He said the drop in rev­enues from those ar­eas was def­i­nite­ly af­fect­ing small is­land states. And pre­dict­ed it was on­ly go­ing to get worse.

Knight ar­gued, there­fore, adopt­ing a re­gion­al strat­e­gy for re­open­ing busi­ness­es and jump-start­ing the economies of each Caribbean state was some­thing that ought to be con­sid­ered. He be­lieves this was where re­gion­al bod­ies like the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) could play a sig­nif­i­cant role in mit­i­gat­ing the in­evitable eco­nom­ic down­turn that would in­evitably in­flict the Caribbean re­gion.

To date, the CDB has al­lo­cat­ed US $140 bil­lion to tack­le the eco­nom­ic fall­out of the COVID-19 cri­sis. The eco­nom­ic and so­cial shock that re­sults from this pan­dem­ic is said to dev­as­tate most of the is­lands' economies.

CDB Pres­i­dent, Dr. War­ren Smith, had pro­ject­ed that the coro­n­avirus prob­lem for Caribbean states could be ex­ac­er­bat­ed ex­po­nen­tial­ly if there were nat­ur­al dis­as­ters in the up­com­ing hur­ri­cane sea­son.

Knight il­lus­trat­ed, “Just imag­ine if Caribbean coun­tries' eco­nom­ic growth over the next few years take a ma­jor hit, as pro­ject­ed by the eco­nom­ic ex­perts in the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) and the CDB? Then com­bine that with a ma­jor hur­ri­cane, mas­sive flood­ing, de­struc­tion of ho­tels and beach­fronts, etc. That com­bi­na­tion of man­i­fold vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties is some­thing I have writ­ten about in the past as it per­tains to the Caribbean Re­gion. The Caribbean needs to find a way, re­gion­al­ly, to build re­silience in­to its op­er­at­ing sys­tem.”

He warned eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, post-COVID-19, had to be based not just on na­tion­al strate­gies but al­so on a thought­ful re­gion­al strat­e­gy.

“There ought to be a think tank (com­posed of aca­d­e­mics and prac­ti­tion­ers across the Caribbean re­gion) brought to­geth­er to as­sist CARI­COM in de­vel­op­ing a post-COVID eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery strat­e­gy for the en­tire Caribbean. Re-open­ing air­ports, sea­ports, ho­tels, should be done and co­or­di­nat­ed at the re­gion­al lev­el. The re­gion as a whole has to be pre­pared for the pro­ject­ed in­flux of tourists and busi­ness in a post-COVID-19 world. That means co­or­di­nat­ing a plan to take ad­van­tage of what some eco­nom­ic an­a­lysts are billing as "the post-pan­dem­ic re­bound.”

Knight said he was con­fi­dent that with lead­ers like Mot­t­ley there was a glim­mer of hope that re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion would be strength­ened as a re­sult of this pan­dem­ic. He said at the very least all Caribbean peo­ple should now be awak­ened to the fact that small is­land com­mu­ni­ties were ex­treme­ly vul­ner­a­ble and we are all in this to­geth­er.