I decided to wait until all the comments on my paper Port of Spain Declaration: A Critical Analysis were posted before making a global response. Four comments were received – those by Norman and Yash in this exchange and two others – by Wendy Lee and Margaret Gill – (Wendy’s contribution is posted on the website, Margaret’s is not) in two separate, parallel e-mail exchanges. Notwithstanding the several important points made by Norman and Yash (which I discuss below), it is my opinion that only Wendy’s and Margaret’s contribution grasped the essential issue involved – sustainable development.
Wendy posed the crucially important question “How can we get decision-makers to absorb and act on the information that is so readily available about sustainable development IMPERATIVES, including critical ecological requirements, instead of pursuing the same old false, unjust and unsustainable models?” Margaret identified another key aspect (one that I explored in the paper) – how do we inform and educate the Caricom public on that essential issue.
Mervyn, just to point out that the reasons for the non-approval of the POS Declaration went beyond the Cuba question. Six ALBA countries issued a long statement of their own which indicated a profound difference in perspective between them and the content and spirit of the Declaration on perspective on the global economic crisis and global ecological crisis. Pasted below is the first part of the Declaration, whose signatories include one Caricom country (Dominica)
The heads of state and governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela, member countries of ALBA, consider that the proposed Declaration of the 5th Summit of the Americas is insufficient and unacceptable for the following reasons:
- It offers no answers to the issue of the Global Economic Crisis, despite the fact that this constitutes the largest challenge faced by humanity in decades and the most serious threat in the current epoch to the wellbeing of our peoples.
- Unjustifiably excludes Cuba in a criminal manner, without mentioning the general consensus that exists in the region in favour of condemning the blockade and the isolation attempts, which its people and government have incessantly objected to.
For these reasons, the member countries of ALBA consider that consensus does not exist in favour of adopting this proposed declaration and in light of the above; we propose to have a thoroughgoing debate over the following issues:
1) Capitalism is putting an end to humanity and the planet. What we are living through is a global economic crisis of a systemic and structural character and not just one more cyclical crisis. Those who think that this crisis will be resolved with an injection of fiscal money and with some regulatory measures are very mistaken.
The financial system is in crisis because it is quoting the value of papers at six times the real value of goods and services being produced in the world. This is not a ” failure of the regulation of the system” but rather a constitutive part of the capitalist system that speculates with all goods and values in the pursuit of obtaining the maximum amount of profit possible. Until now, the economic crisis has created 100 million more starving people and more than 50 million new unemployed people, and these figures are tending to increasing.
2) Capitalism has provoked an ecological crisis by subordinating the necessary conditions for life on this planet to the dominance of the market and profit. Each year, the world consumes a third more than what the planet is capable of regenerating. At this rate of wastage by the capitalist system, we are going to need two planets by the year 2030.
3) The global economic, climate change, food and energy crises are products of the decadence of capitalism that threatens to put an end to the existence of life and the planet. To avoid this outcome it is necessary to develop an alternative model to that of the capitalist system. A system based on:
* Solidarity and complementarity and not competition;
* A system in harmony with our mother earth rather than the looting of our natural resources;
* A system based on cultural diversity and not the crushing of cultures and impositions of cultural values and lifestyles alien to the realities of our countries:
* A system of peace based on social justice and not on imperialist wars and policies;
* In synthesis, a system that recuperates the human condition of our societies and peoples rather than reducing them to simple consumers or commodities.
The full text of the ALBA Declaration is at http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2009/04/document-of-bolivarian-alternative-for.html. The question arises as to how come the content of the Draft Declaration was so greatly at variance with the position of so many member states attending the Summit. I do not have the answer to that question. There is an emmbarassed silence whenever I raise it with those who are in a position to know. I can only say that I have heard that the drafting process was steered by the T&T official who was head of the Summit preparations group, and that the text itself was negotiated by the Washington Ambassadors of the OAS member states. Nuff said!
By the way, there is slight correction that should be made in the interests of accuracy and fairness, as I don’t think Yash Tandon meant to give the impression the South Centre is totally lacking in financial support from the South. The South Centre has in fact been receiving regular support from up to 18 of its member states from the South. This is less than the number of memeber states of the Center (50 plus) and the amount falls short of what is required to cover its basic expenses, but it is not insignificant. The countries that have been contributing include not only the largest countries of the South who are obviously in the best position to do so, but also some of the smallest and most resource-challenged, including Tanzania, Guyana, Cuba, Jamaica and Barbados.
There is much more that needs to be done, of course, and the appreciation for ‘our own knowledge’ is still far from satisfactory. The attitudes you recall in your latest comment in reaction to Nyerere’s suggestion at 1970 Non-aligned Conference are still to be found–but Nyerere persevered and the South Centre exists today as a result, for it is his brainchild. So the picture is not entirely bleak, and we should give credit where credit is due.
Regards, Norman
I am well aware of the points made in the ALBA disssenting Declaration and that is why I said in the summary introduction of my paper that I agreed with the ALBA countries’ statement that the Declaration that is “insufficient and unacceptable” but not necessarily for the reasons advanced by the ALBA group. I may be wrong but I am convinced that, but for the Cuba issue, the ALBA group would have signed the POS Declaration, with Bolivia’s reservation on Biofuels. Having decided to oppose the Declaration, the group dosed their dissent with a heavy helping of anti-capitalist ideology. Ideologies make me feel very uncomfortable. Ideologists too often try to twist the facts to fit their particular ideology. Orwell once described ideologies in terms that I heartily approve: “those smelly orthodoxies that keep contending for our souls.”
Apart from the issue of Cuba, as reasons for opposing the Declaration, the Alba group mentions the Global Economic Crisis and the fact that the Declaration provided no answers to it. I consider that that is ideological posturing against the capitalist system. How in God’s name could a Declaration from a regional gropuping provide answers to the most important GLOBAL crisis in almost 100 years, when none of the global powers or any grouping of those powers are able to do so?
The other sub-reasons: “Capitalism is putting an end to humanity and the planet”; “Capitalism has provoked an ecological crisis by subordinating the necessary conditions for life on this planet to the dominance of the market and profit:” and “The global economic, climate change, food and energy crises are products of the decadence of capitalism that threatens to put an end to the existence of life and the planet” all concern the issue of sustainable development for which, the ALBA Group justifiably denonunces the POS Daclaration as “insufficient and unacceptable”, a judgement with which I heartily agree.
Dear All:
May I say YES I to Mervyn’s reccommendations to move to get more public action on his analysis of the POS Declaration. While I did not suggest to Norman that my comments be posted on the website, I did actually send a comment to the newspapers here in Barbados referring people to the article, just as I mentioned some of its ideas when calling in to CBC – far too few and without credit as it was not feasible I thought. My letters, which gave credit, were not published.
I actually have also been meaning to take my down-loaded copy to the Director of the NGO Caribbean Policy Development Centre located here in Barbados. No doubt, Norman’s website is read by the CPDC, but I felt it necessary to hand deliver Mervyn’s analysis with personal strong recommendations that CPDC take action on its recommendations as far as they are able. I ALSO SEE THE REAL NEED FOR A REGIONAL ECONOMIC CONFERENCE LIKE THE ONE OF SOMEWHERE AROUND 1990. i MEAN REAL NEED, crisis or not crisis. I also called when I was a small trade unionist for a Latin American Caribbean trade union congreso from back in 1995. Who listen to me. Will someone listen now?
I say as far as CPDC are able because to date I also have not completed the full reading of the 61 page article by Mervyn because my life has intervened. CPDC’s life may intervene also as they already have a programme, which must surely have included a reaction to the Summit in Port of Spain, even if it was not the one Mervyn has done.
Nevertheless, I see the summary of Mervyn’s paper for which Yash called already exists in the first six pages and anybody reading those cannot help but be convinced of Mervyn’s thesis. If they work on behalf of the region, I cannot help but see some attempt to integrate his analysis into one’s work plan or even to shifting things to accommodate it.
It is amazing that I sent some friends an email about sustainable development as proposed in the defunct CCC newspaper, Caribbean Contact, just before I read this email by Mervyn.
We really do have to take aside some time and deal with the issues Mervyn raised about the Declaration for all of the sound reasons he raises. Certainly his analysis should be at least presented (by someone to whom they would take notice like Norman or Sir Shridath Ramphal) to the Prime Ministers and other relevant ministers of CARICOM before they next meet at the Commonwealth ministers summit. At least. I naively do not believe that CARICOM ministers in the main want to mash up the region. I sometimes think it is lack of clear knowledge and perspective coupled with a bit of fear of the industrials.
We take Mervyn’s clear and well researched and argued analysis up or else we go from issue to issue and exhaust ourselves on discussions on President Obama (important though he be) and our region continues to lose its people and ideas and historical knowledge/though not intelligence (remember, I teach fundamentals of written english at UWI where too many students look uncomprehending when I mention Grenada revolution and some write garbled what is not even bad conventions of english), and culture and capacity to impact the world. And come up with policies like the DLP government’s (which are problematic for far less or more, I think, than the reasons people are raising) I know this is not a sentence but it is correct.
And we lose those things through, for example, a lil thing like not being able to pay to keep alive any regional media organ we have ever attempted that is not private sector paid for or even those (eg. CANA), through not enough funds to keep them alive. Meanwhile CARICOM disintegrating regional locally as we speak
Guidance,
Kawamuinyo