Ryan F Al­lard, PhD

Board Di­rec­tor, En­vi­ron­ment To­ba­go

Let’s be the Sin­ga­pore of the Caribbean! That’s ba­si­cal­ly the un­der­ly­ing wish of many of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pol­i­cy doc­u­ments. We are very of­ten com­pared to the city-state, es­pe­cial­ly along eco­nom­ic lines. In fact, we fo­cus a lot on eco­nom­ic mea­sures: we are called a “de­vel­op­ing econ­o­my.” With COVID-19, every­one wants to re­open “The Econ­o­my” and some folks are call­ing the Na­tion­al Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee an “Eco­nom­ic Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee.” Aren’t there oth­er things that need re­open­ing and fix­ing na­tion­al­ly?

This fo­cus on eco­nom­ic com­par­isons is at best, un­for­tu­nate. We in­trin­si­cal­ly know that our per­son­al val­ue is not based on our bank ac­count but the non-fi­nan­cial wealth of our lives. Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s 75-year study on Adult De­vel­op­ment has shown that the key to long-term hap­pi­ness and suc­cess at life is not the bank ac­count but rather our re­la­tion­ships with fam­i­ly, friends and com­mu­ni­ty. They found that “lon­ers” of­ten died ear­li­er than those with mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion for in­stance (but per­haps the study sub­jects weren’t trapped with their part­ners dur­ing an ex­tend­ed lock­down!). Would it be pure­ly se­man­tic wran­gling to say that we should be work­ing to re­open and fix our en­tire “so­ci­ety?”

Oh the Hu­man­i­ty!

The UN un­der­stands that coun­tries are first and fore­most made of com­plex webs of peo­ple, in­sti­tu­tions, na­ture, and cul­ture that we call “so­ci­ety.” This is the ba­sis of the sig­nif­i­cant glob­al achieve­ment in 2015, of de­clar­ing Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) for the world to as­pire to by 2030 that were agreed on by 193 coun­tries. The 17 broad­ly de­fined SDGs (and 169 sup­port­ing tar­gets), though not per­fect, cov­er so much that we find im­por­tant here in T&T: from end­ing hunger and gen­der in­equal­i­ty, to pro­tect­ing na­ture, to en­sur­ing qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion, to good health, to gen­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic wealth. So with this de­c­la­ra­tion, the UN is pro­mot­ing the shift in fo­cus from pure­ly eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, to hu­man and so­ci­etal de­vel­op­ment. T&T is not on­ly a sig­na­to­ry to this, we were al­so very in­volved in help­ing iden­ti­fy the most rel­e­vant SDGs for CARI­COM.

Port-of-Spain was the lo­ca­tion for the 2015 work­shop to pri­ori­tise the SDGs for CARI­COM. We al­so in­cor­po­rat­ed the SDGs in­to our Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy, “Vi­sion 2030,” which is s aimed at guid­ing us in the long term. So we should re­mem­ber that holis­tic and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment is our goal, not on­ly eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, al­though the two are close­ly re­lat­ed as shown in SDG8 “De­cent Work and Eco­nom­ic Growth.”

Our na­tion­al score

In terms of holis­tic de­vel­op­ment, how is T&T do­ing? Are we achiev­ing the SDGs? What should any so­ci­etal re­cov­ery fo­cus on?

Well, the SDG In­dex of the UN tracks achieve­ment of the SDGs. The in­dex is based on avail­able da­ta that mea­sure how well we are meet­ing each tar­get and then ag­gre­gates them in­to a sin­gle score that sum­maris­es our per­for­mance. This is sim­i­lar to a GDP per capi­ta met­ric but is far more im­por­tant for our na­tion’s well-be­ing. The lat­est da­ta for 2019 show T&T’s SDG In­dex as 67.6, which puts us at 85th place of all coun­tries with avail­able scores (for com­par­i­son, our GDP per capi­ta from the IMF of US$17,130 puts us in 50th place in the list of coun­tries). With such an SDG In­dex, we are be­hind com­pa­ra­ble coun­tries like Ja­maica, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Sin­ga­pore and Es­to­nia. We are even be­hind Bhutan, a coun­try with a GDP per capi­ta that is a third of our own. No­tably, though, Bhutan is the coun­try that de­vel­oped the Gross Na­tion­al Hap­pi­ness as a guide for their na­tion­al pol­i­cy, show­ing how im­por­tant it con­sid­ers non-eco­nom­ic da­ta as crit­i­cal to fu­ture so­ci­etal growth.

Did T&T do well on any as­pect of the SDG In­dex? On SDG1 (No Pover­ty) (as de­fined by the UN), we are giv­en good marks and we’re pret­ty good on SDG4 (Qual­i­ty Ed­u­ca­tion) and SDG7 (Af­ford­able and Clean En­er­gy). How­ev­er, we scored poor­ly on the re­main­ing goals with avail­able da­ta. We got fail­ing grades on SDG13 (Cli­mate Ac­tion) since we are one of the high­est per-capi­ta emit­ters of green­house gas­es world­wide. We al­so failed SDG16 (Peace, Jus­tice and Strong In­sti­tu­tions) main­ly be­cause of our high mur­der rate. See a sum­ma­ry in in­set fig­ure.

˚Set­tling the score

Some im­por­tant re­al­i­sa­tions should oc­cur here. First­ly, even ad­just­ing for lim­it­ed da­ta on some met­rics, it’s clear that fo­cus­ing sole­ly on eco­nom­ic growth with­out ac­tive­ly work­ing on these oth­er key met­rics of our coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment is not in our na­tion­al in­ter­est. Sec­ond­ly, clear­ly de­vel­op­ing all these ar­eas re­quires de­vel­op­ing the econ­o­my as well as liveli­hoods, and that means ful­ly achiev­ing Vi­sion 2030 or any up­dat­ed ver­sion of it. All new­er ini­tia­tives must help us achieve this, in­clud­ing our Na­tion­al Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee. Third­ly, de­spite the need for its lead­er­ship, there is no way that any gov­ern­ment can do all of this alone. There is a crit­i­cal role for the pri­vate sec­tor as well as civ­il so­ci­ety in im­ple­ment­ing Vi­sion 2030 (not just plan­ning for it). Civ­il so­ci­ety, in par­tic­u­lar, is as broad and di­verse in fo­cus and ca­pa­bil­i­ties as the SDGs them­selves and can be the con­duit con­nect­ing the state, pub­lic sec­tor and the wider pub­lic on some mat­ters. Civ­il So­ci­ety Or­gan­i­sa­tions (CSOs) are al­ready busy at work on some of these.

For in­stance, take the EU-fund­ed project En­hanc­ing Civ­il So­ci­ety Ca­pac­i­ty for Gov­er­nance of En­vi­ron­men­tal Trans­paren­cy and Ac­count­abil­i­ty in T&T’s Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries. Its aim is to im­prove the sys­tem for da­ta gath­er­ing and de­ci­sion-mak­ing on the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts of our ex­trac­tive sec­tors (gas, oil, min­ing). In this project, where En­vi­ron­ment To­ba­go is part­nered with four oth­er na­tion­al CSOs, we col­lec­tive­ly en­gage both the state and the pri­vate sec­tor. If this project achieves its goals, it will help im­prove our na­tion­al per­for­mance for SDG12 (Re­spon­si­ble Con­sump­tion and Pro­duc­tion), SDG13 (Cli­mate Ac­tion), SDG14 (Life Be­low Wa­ter), SDG15 (Life on Land) and SDG17 (Part­ner­ships). This tri­par­tite part­ner­ship mod­el is a great ap­proach for help­ing T&T re­open and fix our so­ci­ety. Imag­ine its im­pact if ex­pand­ed to oth­er ail­ing SDG scores with the help of en­tre­pre­neurs!

To our cred­it, we al­ready have the SDGs in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to na­tion­al pol­i­cy (Vi­sion 2030) and we have an ex­tra­or­di­nary op­por­tu­ni­ty to align our lim­it­ed re­sources with (more or less) na­tion­al back­ing and in­ter­est. We there­fore need to en­sure that the re­cov­ery plan is writ­ten with a suf­fi­cient­ly broad per­spec­tive on our so­ci­etal re­cov­ery, that all stake­hold­ers are in­vit­ed to pro­vide their in­put (as we have seen) and all are ready to pull their weight as well as part­ner with oth­ers in oth­er sec­tors. 2030 is less than 10 years away but it still gives us just enough time to de­vel­op a health­i­er pop­u­la­tion, re­duce our cli­mate vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, holis­ti­cal­ly re­duce our crime rate and gen­er­ate more non-en­er­gy in­come. If we do it right, coun­tries like Bhutan might as­pire to be­come the “Trinidad and To­ba­go of Asia.”

En­vi­ron­ment To­ba­go is a part­ner on the Eu­ro­pean Union-fund­ed Ac­tion ‘CSOs for Good En­vi­ron­men­tal Gov­er­nance’ that is work­ing to en­hance the ca­pac­i­ty of T&T’s civ­il so­ci­ety for gov­er­nance of en­vi­ron­men­tal trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the coun­try’s ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries.