In December 2010, the FAO Global Food Price Index surpassed the previous high level reached in 2008 which had led to food riots and social instability in many countries. This is the context in which the CARICOM Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy (RFNSP) has been prepared..
“The paper notes that Jamaica remains one of the most highly indebted countries in the world, and that its interest payments as a percent of GDP were higher than anywhere else in the world in 2011, including even crisis-stricken countries in the eurozone. Jamaica’s large debt burden has displaced most other public expenditures, taking up almost 50 percent of total budgeted spending over the last four fiscal years while health and education have been only around 20 percent combined.”
At UNCTAD XIII recently held in Doha, a united front of the BRICS, the G77 and China, supported by intense NGO lobbying and a highly publicised letter from former senior UNCTAD staff (including several from the Caribbean), successfully resisted efforts by the Global North to retsrict the agency’s critical work linking trade, development and the global financial and economic crisis. Was it a victory for the South, or a draw?
Since its establishment almost 50 years ago at the instigation of developing countries UNCTAD has always been a thorn in the flesh of economic orthodoxy. Its analyses of global macro-economic issues from a development perspective have regularly provided an alternative view to that offered by the World Bank and the IMF controlled by the west. Now efforts are afoot to silence that voice…
(At their recent meeting ) the BRICS states not only repeated their critique of the world economic order and North Atlantic financial hegemony, but they offered new policy guidelines and institutions as a counterpoint (and they) have taken some more steps toward the rejection of the North Atlantic’s political leadership over the planet..
This Reflection could be written today, tomorrow or any other day without the risk of being mistaken. Our species faces new problems. When 20 years ago I stated at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro that a species was in danger of extinction, I had fewer reasons than today for warning about a danger that I was seeing perhaps 100 years away….
Celebrated scientists and development thinkers have warned that civilisation is faced with a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption and environmentally malign technologies. In the face of an “absolutely unprecedented emergency”, say the 18 past winners of the Blue Planet prize - the unofficial Nobel for the environment - society has “no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation…
The EU’s response to the financial crisis and the escalating eurocrisis has exposed more clearly than ever the disastrous dominance of neoliberal ideology. Obsessed with budgetary discipline, EU decision-makers are imposing sweeping austerity measures, privatising public services and cutting welfare…(but) There are encouraging signs of resistance. The indignados and occupy movements, union strikes and demonstrations, mark a growing rejection of the EU’s free-market fundamentalism..
The generation of young Caribbean adults who did not live under colonialism, nor the dictatorships of Batista and Duvalier, must play a leading role in the re-thinking of our region and its identity. It must be a collective reflection on many levels: regionally, nationally, locally, and across generations…
