The regional food security train: The seeming absence of motion is troubling
The Stabroek Business has lost count of the number of occasions on which our various requests for updates on the promised creation of a Regional Food Terminal have been completely ignored by the ‘competent authorities,’ that is to say, the two ‘lead Heads’ on what, arguably, is the region’s most important collective assignment at this time. Nor have there been any official acknowledgement of our inquiries, a condition of silence that may well be designed to cause us to ‘throw in our hand’ and go away. The problem is that this is not a mission that we can afford to set aside, never mind the fact that neither the ‘lead’ Heads of Government nor their respective suitably appointed Cabinet Ministers, Agriculture Ministers Zulfikar Mustapha of Guyana and Indar Weir of Barbados, have, as far as we are aware, uttered a recent word on this matter. Here, and less our position is misunderstood, we hasten to restate that what we are seeking from those responsible is not a once-and-for-all pronouncement but incremental updates on a process which, by its very nature, is incremental. It is the extant condition of protracted silence, an absence of updates that we find troubling.
Nor has there been anything by way updates coming from regional institutions like CARICOM (and here we acknowledge that the Secretariat can provide no update without the imprimatur of the Heads) so that we are left with nothing by way of updated information on two things - first the extent of the headway being made towards the realization of the Terminal and, secondly, the extent to which the UNannounced food security crisis announced more than two years ago, has been growing better or worse as time has gone by. There has been, as well, no information forthcoming on the circumstances of the region’s worst case scenarios as far as food insecurity is concerned, given what we were being told many months ago, were the dire circumstances that they had been in at that time. Nor has there been any sustained information forthcoming insofar as progress being made in the various projects associated with the wider undertaking being executed by some countries, including Guyana.
One might have thought that February 25-28 CARICOM Heads of Government Conference, or, perhaps, the March 18-21 38th session of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean (LARC), both staged in Guyana, might have both been suitable fora for a comprehensive update on the Caribbean’s regional food security pursuit. Quite why those opportunities were not seized is difficult to fathom. No one who had been following the discourses that have been ensuing in the region for a period in excess of two years on the matter of regional food security would have thought that we would have been safely cocooned in a completely transformed circumstance by this time. What, however, has baffled and, frankly, irked the Stabroek Business is the fact that after the whole elaborate food security ‘performance’ by the Heads of Government of Guyana and Barbados, the dissemination of information on matters pertaining to where we are going and how far we have gone in that journey, has completely dried up. This, notwithstanding the fact that we have no official clue, whatsoever, as to where we are at this time.
Whatever is the state of play in the matter of the creation of a Regional Food Security Terminal, what is required, not weeks away, but immediately, is a comprehensive update, including some kind of timeline for the completion of that assignment. Truth be told, given what lies ahead, particularly in terms of the inclement regional weather, and the further assault on what, in some instances, are the already fragile food resources in several CARICOM territories, it would be shocking, to say the least, if the persistent silence continues on the matter of the Food Security Terminal and just where we are going next in terms of taking the broader initiative forward, is concerned. It is for President Irfaan Ali, who, apart from being the regional ‘lead head’ on agriculture and by extension, on food security, along with Prime Minister Mia Mottley, to which the Caribbean must now look for leadership, in what now appears to have the makings of a decidedly Kafkaesque situation in which the regional food security train now appears to be in something of a condition of inertia, in danger of stalling altogether, unless some force causes it to either speed up or to move in a different direction. A stalled food security train is certainly one of the worst things that can happen to the Caribbean at this time.
Arising out of the recent meeting, participants, including high level officials and ministers of governments, again tagged “threats to biodiversity, economic uncertainty due to external shocks, and limited institutional and financial capacity” as being among the region’s key concerns, familiar as they are with the shifts in climate behaviour and their devastating consequences. Some of the stark realities of the region’s climate change dilemma were set out by CARICOM’s Assistant Secretary General, Joseph Cox, who reportedly underlined the critical importance of global engagement in tackling the challenges of climate change, never mind the fact that there, CARICOM countries are certain to encounter a lengthy queue comprising countries facing climate and other challenges facing other countries.
The May meeting is reportedly being seen by CARICOM member countries as a precursor to the Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States SIDS (SIDS4), which will take place in Antigua and Barbuda from May 2nd to 30th and which will bring together leaders from small island developing countries, world leaders and partners from other countries that have committed to providing support in tackling the challenges associated with climate change.