COVID-19, climate change and Caribbean food security
One might have taught that one of the consequences of the novel coronavirus and its fallout was that it might have rung alarm bells across the region, galvanizing Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member countries into actions designed to lessen the impact of ensuing rising food prices. This does not appear to have happened across the region, up to this time, in any alarming way. Perhaps more to the point, there has been no discernible sense of urgency among CARICOM Heads, the customary high profile meetings at the level of CARICOM Heads, to address the issue.
Long before now, as a region, we had pointedly done nothing to reduce the region’s estimated US$5 billion annual food import, which, manifestly, would have made a significant difference.
Last week we learnt from the Food & Agriculture Organization’s Resident Representative in Guyana (FAO) Dr. Gillian Smith that we in Guyana are not alone in our experience of rising food prices though the reality is that our particular circumstance, in terms of the availability of relatively cheap foods (as distinct from being ‘food secure’) ought to give us considerably less reason to bellyache than other countries both here in the region and in other regions of the world, where there exists no sufficiently robust food-production infrastructure to fend off pre-existing food security vulnerabilities that are now being compounded by COVID-19.
Discourses on the issue of regional food security ought to do much more to realize outcomes that are underlined by specific, time-bound recommendations for actions designed to implement those practical and concrete recommendations. Where food security issues are concerned there have been, over the years, an overbearing propensity in the region to bureaucratize decisions, to endlessly debate them and to have assorted cliques of experts set upon them for interminable periods of time, tweaking them with their own expert perspectives in a manner that always tends to impose interminable delays to any kind of action that takes the process forward.
One consideration that presumably underlines the understanding that Guyana is the ‘lead’ territory insofar as taking forward the push towards regional food security is concerned, is that Guyana should, for the most part, be looked to when it comes to coming up with concrete plans of action for regional food production and leading the way in terms of their implementation. Truth be told, we do not have a great deal to show for that formula. Over time, Guyana has simply been unable to play the ‘lead territory’ role that appears to have been designed for it. There are several likely reasons for this. First, there exists no locally-based specialized machinery through which the country can effectively implement that responsibility. Our local Ministry of Agriculture has always appeared to be lagging (for reasons some of which are beyond its control) in the effective pursuit of its own domestic responsibilities, which leaves it little time to deal effectively with regional food security issues. Whether there are any strong and specific institutional links between the President of Guyana, whoever that might be, in his/her capacity as ‘lead’ Head of Government in matters to do with agriculture and food security and his/her counterparts in the region is unclear. The other consideration that the region is loathe to concede is that when ‘push comes to shove’ in terms of ‘turfism (protection of markets) is concerned, intra-regional cooperation in matters that have to do with food security usually gets pushed, sometimes not too gently, to one side. We need, perhaps, to begin, by not sparing CARICOM governments the flak they fully deserve for, over a protracted period, simply shoving the issue of regional food security to one side.
Even now that the region is faced with the likelihood of a more aggravated food security dilemma arising out of the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic and the more recent dire climate change warnings, there has, as yet, been no indication that these have pushed it into any kind of ‘high gear’ as far as practical food security-related action is concerned.
What we need are definitive indications of movement out of the realm of polemic and into a zone of clear and uncomplicated practical action to lift ourselves out of the realm of food insecurity in which, truth be told, we ought not to belong in the first place.
Up to this time, even the region’s now more immediate food security concerns that have arisen against the backdrop of the very recent dire climate change predictions do not appear to have pushed it into any kind of ‘high gear’ as far as evidence of practical food security-related action is concerned. What we are doing at this time has not gone much beyond the repeated articulation of food security vulnerabilities with nothing in the way of practical action to show for the chatter. The outbursts are fleeting, buttressed by remedial recommendations but always lacking in any resolute follow-up action.
There exists an understanding in the Caribbean that it is Guyana, first, that should be looked to in the fashioning of an agenda for regional food security and proffering clear and concrete guidance with regard to its implementation. There is no real evidence that this has been happening.
2021 provided a modest but important opportunity for Guyana to give leadership to the wider Caribbean in the planning and implementation of the United Nations-designated International Year of Fruits and Vegetables. While, three months into the global execution of the programme the government finally announced the launch of a local initiative, one could find no concrete evidence of serious implementation of any aspect thereof nor, for that matter, any indication that the country had been involved in any initiative designed to help implement a regional programme.