Be­ing aware of and pur­su­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions-des­ig­nat­ed (17) ob­jec­tives of the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDG) for the progress of in­di­vid­ual coun­tries, re­gions and in­deed the globe, have be­come an ab­solute ne­ces­si­ty for the world com­mu­ni­ty of na­tions.

Dri­ving this means of de­vel­op­ment is the need to pro­tect the world en­vi­ron­ment and its re­sources from den­i­gra­tion and de­struc­tion. There­fore, for coun­tries to meet the SDG re­quire­ments, they must have built in­to their in­dus­tri­al pro­grammes re­lat­ing to the min­ing and pro­cess­ing of ma­te­ri­als, sys­tems which will pre­serve the en­vi­ron­ment for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. At a hu­man lev­el of un­der­stand­ing the con­cept, this gen­er­a­tion has to leave an en­vi­ron­ment for the chil­dren of to­day and grand­chil­dren of to­mor­row to utilise.

The bad news is that the Caribbean has achieved a mere 20 per cent of the sus­tain­able goals de­fined and es­tab­lished by the UN un­der its SDG pro­gramme. More­over, on­ly 33 per cent of oth­er goals is mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion but still too slow­ly. This poor achieve­ment rate leaves a mas­sive 47 per cent of the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives, es­tab­lished by the UN in 2015, “mov­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion.”

The as­sess­ment of the con­di­tion of the Caribbean in re­la­tion to the achieve­ment of the SDG goals was made at the re­cent con­fer­ence of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment and Co­op­er­a­tion Com­mit­tee by Manuel Salazar-Xiri­nachs, Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary of the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

In short, the da­ta cit­ed by the ECLAC Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary in­di­cate that Caribbean gov­ern­ments, in­sti­tu­tions, cor­po­ra­tions and in­di­vid­u­als are a long way be­hind achiev­ing the ob­jec­tives of pro­tect­ing their cit­i­zens from the neg­a­tive ef­fects of en­vi­ron­men­tal and re­lat­ed eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter.

The elim­i­na­tion of pover­ty, achiev­ing ze­ro hunger, good health and well-be­ing, qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion, gen­der equal­i­ty, de­cent work­ing con­di­tions and eco­nom­ic growth, the ex­pan­sion of in­dus­try, the con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of in­fra­struc­ture and in­no­v­a­tive pro­duc­tion of process, and af­ford­able and clean en­er­gy, are amongst the ma­jor de­vel­op­ment goals that the UN set out for coun­tries and re­gions to achieve un­der the SD ob­jec­tives by 2030.

The above-list­ed goals are not ab­strac­tions and op­tions; in fact, they are the ba­sic es­sen­tials for a peo­ple to achieve a de­cent qual­i­ty of liv­ing in the 21st cen­tu­ry and be­yond.

The ECLAC Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary did not leave the as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion at the lev­el of mere­ly stat­ing it. He nar­rowed in on one of the ma­jor prob­lems which makes it dif­fi­cult for mem­ber coun­tries to achieve the goals, and for ECLAC to as­sist with and guide the process.

The rudi­men­ta­ry state of da­ta as a means of iden­ti­fy­ing the prob­lem ar­eas is a ma­jor prob­lem. “Da­ta in­suf­fi­cien­cy presents a fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge to the ac­com­plish­ment of a range of de­vel­op­ment im­per­a­tives,” Salazar-Xiri­nachs told del­e­gates at the con­fer­ence.

The miss­ing da­ta in­clude that need­ed to al­low for “dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion and to en­sure use of da­ta in a Mul­ti­di­men­sion­al Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty Risk in­dex,” the ECLAC Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary said. Im­por­tant­ly, he not­ed to the con­fer­ence of Caribbean min­is­ters and tech­nocrats that “it’s the kind of da­ta sys­tem which can be used to col­lec­tive­ly make your case for greater ac­cess to con­ces­sion­al fi­nanc­ing.”

T&T’s Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter, Pene­lope Beck­les, has as­sumed chair­man­ship of the CD­CC. She now has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that T&T’s an­cient and in­ef­fi­cient da­ta sys­tem is trans­formed.