Our Share of the World

In SVG, we are just over 100,000 people and the ex-British Caribbean has about 6,000,000 (6 million people). We are 1/60 of this region. In Caricom, with more like 16 million citizens, we are an even smaller fraction. And when we look at the 6 billion people in today’s world, (that is 6 thousand, million people) it looks as if we really don’t matter. In any city, like Port au Prince, Haiti or Mexico City, our population will fit into a small ghetto.{{more}} We can also live in a mini village. Just taking the numbers alone, our share of the world 100,000/6,000,000,000 is small, very small.

Yet, at the United Nations, in the General Assembly, we have the same voting power as the People’s Republic of China, with its billion and a quarter people. We have more say than Taiwan, the Republic of China on Taiwan – they have no seat or vote at the UN. Our share of the world institutionally is not so small. I want us to look at that, but further, I want us to begin to examine how we use our share in the world. It is our share, should we not take stock of it?

A couple of weeks ago, our Prime Minister Dr Gonsalves attended an important meeting of Heads of the Nations in North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. President Obama was there, but President Castro was excluded. It was a busy and hectic meeting for our Prime Minister. Foreign Minister Slater, who also attended, said that in the corridors of the conference, people were saying the Dr Gonsalves address was one of the two best presentations at the Conference! After a stop-over here at home, where he did admit that he was dog tired, our Prime Minister left again to attend and speak at a world conference organized by the UNCTAD, the most effective agency that speaks for developing countries in the UN system. He fell ill in Barbados and had to take a rest. Dr Gonsalves takes the lead in designing how we venture out into the world as a nation and people. He manages our institutional and other shares of the world. He seems to do so single-handedly, perhaps with some advice from Ambassador Camillo Gonsalves and evidently, he does so at significant cost to his health and effectiveness. It is irresponsible on our part to govern our share of the world in this way, i.e. to expose our Prime Minister to personal threat and possible error from being the one-man chief, cook and bottle washer of our international business, especially being activist that he is. Let us try to take account of and budget our shares of the world. Does it make sense? A sobering reminder is the case of one of Dominica’s Prime Ministers, the late Hon. Rosie Douglas. His death through Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) occurred as a result of conditions due to much air travel. We can’t let that happen again, not under our watch.

ASSESSING OUR SHARE

From start, let me say that when I invite you to assess our share of our world – who we are and what we have, don’t expect a lecture on international relations. Rather, look for an invitation around the table to share ideas and positions and confrontations. The assessment will go well into the next article too. I propose that our share in our world can be put into two parts. Our own property, namely, our territory, our state and our society and secondly, our partnership or common shares, common ground with other partners and the world community. That is quite a good bit of shares. On the matter of our territory, 150 square miles of land, and umpteen square miles/knots of sea. Ourselves, we think it is not worth much, but 3 or so years ago, one communication that I read opened my eyes. It was from Guyana, I think, and it reported that in all the Caribbean, no territory had tourist, hotel land as cheap as SVG, up to 5 to 10 times cheaper than other territories! That was part of the attraction that brought the ‘Buccament’ project here. Look also at what I call the Argyle zone. I recall that the government offered landholders at Argyle a mere $5.00 to $6.00 per sq ft for their properties, acquired for the airport. I don’t know how much Dr Matthias paid for his estate. Such sites as the Argyle zone should be earmarked as a National Economic Zone, stretching from new Diamond settlement to Biabou. Developments in that area should be first enabled for local owners, then for other nationals who share equity with local/national developers. Do you remember one Chinese person who claimed to have right to set up a casino or something in that zone? Many persons just didn’t see the danger in that. Our own landholders have probably been led by the IADC to look at their property as something cheap. Not so. SVG territory as part of world share of territory, whether we think of volcanic St Vincent, or Coral Grenada or our fish and yachting marine seascape, is almost priceless. Today, most of us look at land in terms of house spots. It is so much more.

And then considering what we now know about climate change and the endangering of the world environment, our green heritage of almost 1/3 forest cover is an asset to be preserved and expanded. Interestingly, the Armajaro interest has invited a carbon trading group to assess the carbon banking deposit value of new cocoa plantings. Others see value in our territory. Let us too look anew at ourselves.