Girvan bemoans slow pace of regional gov’ts on sustainable tourism
Professor Norman Girvan, the secretary- general of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) was in Jamaica last week meeting with Prime Minister P J Patterson, other ministers and government officials as part of ongoing efforts to speed up the work of the ACS on several important initiatives affecting the 25 member-states group. Observer writer, Earl Moxam, interviewed him about his mission.
Moxam: Professor Girvan, you are in the final year of your four-year term as secretary- general of the ACS. Would you say that you have had a clear mandate with which to work, and how would you report on the progress you’ve made so far in fulfilling that mandate?
Girvan: I would say yes, I had a clear mandate and I set a few objectives for myself, and these were supported by the membership. One of them was to focus the work of the association clearly on some specific things, where we could make progress. The initial priorities were trade, transport and tourism. But over the years they got expanded, we had a committee dealing with science, technology, health, education, and culture. All of those things are important and relevant, but there’s just so much that an organisation can do. We also had committees dealing with natural resources and the environment.
One of the things that happened in the first year of my tenure is that we had an independent evaluation of the ACS’s first four or five years, and I used that to highlight the need for a re-focusing. So at the end of that year, they agreed to do that; they suspended certain committees; they agreed to keep just those four – trade, transport, tourism, and natural disasters – and within each of those to identify priorities for action. And this has paid off in terms of us being able to have, for example, the Convention on Sustainable Tourism, which we’re working on now. We’re working on the final stages of the Air Transport Agreement. And we’re getting money! In the last 18 months we’ve raised one million US dollars from donors for projects in the priority areas.
What I’ve discovered is that donors like it when you focus, because you don’t have credibility when you’re trying to do everything, especially if you’re perceived as duplicating the work of other organisations.
Moxam: Speaking of focus, I believe you see the Convention on Sustainable Tourism in the Greater Caribbean as a matter of great importance. Are you somewhat impatient with the pace of actual implementation thereof?
Girvan: Yes. I’m impatient with the pace of implementation of the convention and the Air Transport Agreement in particular. In a way I can be allowed impatience because I’m not an insider as far as Government is concerned. And governments, especially when you’re dealing with 25 governments, do move slowly; they each have their internal processes, and then they have to agree among themselves, and it does take time.
We do have the Convention on Tourism; it’s been signed, but it hasn’t yet been ratified because there are some problems in the wording and in the drafting that we need to resolve. The Caricom countries are in the process of proposing an amendment to the convention before it comes into force. so we’re doing our best to push it along.
Moxam: While Caricom approaches so many things as one body, and perhaps that does facilitate a smoother implementation of some decisions, what’s the position from the greater Latin American side of the association; do you have any additional difficulty in cutting through some of the obstacles?
Girvan: Let’s break them down: You have the Group of Three – Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela. Venezuela is extremely supportive of the association. Mexico is extremely supportive. Colombia was supportive at the beginning; they were the hosts of the first summit where the Cartagena Convention was signed; I think they’re going through their own problems. They’re very preoccupied with their own internal situation, naturally; they’ve closed a number of foreign embassies. They’re still in the ACS and are supportive, but I don’t think it has the high priority that it had four or five years ago. but we’re working on that and I’m going to be visiting Colombia this year to talk about how they can play a more active part in the association.
Central America’s main interest in the ACS is in the field of natural disaster management. Obviously, for well-known reasons they’ve had a whole series of natural disasters. and they see the ACS as a mechanism by which they can co-operate in disaster mitigation with the Island Caribbean and also leverage assistance from international donors, and a lot of the aid that we’re getting now is for disaster management co-operation. For example, fatalities could be reduced quite significantly and damage reduced with more adequate early-warning systems and then for preventive action to be taken in advance.
Moxam: I believe one of your main goals is to bring the people of the Caribbean together through air links. Particularly in the post-9/11 era. With the downturn in air transport, how much of an obstacle are you facing there?
Girvan: In air transport, what we have is the text of a draft agreement on air transport rights in the Greater Caribbean region, which would essentially allow, in a multi-lateral framework, the airlines, which are owned and based in the Greater Caribbean region to operate the intra-Caribbean routes more freely.
We’ve hit a snag with that, and the snag is that some countries have reservations on the “fifth freedom” rights, which are rights to traffic between the second country and the third country of the participating countries. One of the things we have been talking about here in Jamaica is how we can get around that, how we can resolve the issues that some countries have raised, Caricom countries in particular.
Moxam: Air Jamaica has recently re-established links with Belize. To some it would seem an obvious plus if Air Jamaica would then move on to Honduras and other Central American countries. What would be the obstacles to that?
Girvan: A fifth freedom right would allow Jamaica to take passengers from Belize to Honduras. Of course, it would also allow TACA to take passengers from Jamaica to Cuba. So that’s the other side to it. Now some countries have a problem with that because they see the traffic between their country and third countries as a very lucrative source of revenue and they don’t want to give it away, they want to retain it for bilateral negotiations, which is understandable. But then, we also have to look at the bigger picture, and the profitability of the individual airline sometimes has to be weighed against the need for greater intra-Caribbean routes. Right now, the biggest obstacle we have to greater trade, investment and tourism is that people have to go via Miami. Even until recently, if you were going to Belize you had to go via Miami! For most Central American destinations you have to do that. It’s very time consuming and it’s very costly, and we need the lateral links within the region.
Another thing we’re doing along those lines is promoting a forum of executives of regional airlines. That will be held in the second quarter of this year where the objective is to come up with one or two multi-destination tourism packages that the regional airlines would market.
Moxam: I don’t know whether you have had a chance to look at the text of the Open Skies Agreement between Jamaica and the United States and whether there’s anything in that that can be used on a wider scale in the region.
Girvan: That’s a good question; we’re actually studying it at the moment and I will, in fact, be meeting with the transport ministry tomorrow (Friday) to discuss the ACS Air Transport Agreement, but obviously the US/Jamaica Agreement impinges on that and also on the proposed Caricom Agreement, which is still to be completed. So the answer is yes; we are studying it and we will look to it to see how far we can utilise it for the ACS Air Transport Agreement.
Moxam: The ACS, I believe, wants the Caribbean Sea designated a special zone for sustainable development. Of course, the passage of nuclear materials is not compatible with that goal. What’s happening in that regard?
Girvan: We have renewed the initiative to have the sea declared a special area. What we discovered last time was that the technical and legal issues involved in such a designation were rather complicated. When it was first taken to the UN General Assembly in 1999, it ran into heavy flak. Eventually another resolution was passed calling for integrated management of the Caribbean Sea, but the island states, in particular those of the OECS, are very anxious for it to be put back to the General Assembly. But what they have determined this time is that this time we have to do the necessary technical and legal work to ensure its safe passage, if I might coin a phrase.
Now, the question of the transmission of nuclear waste is possibly the most ticklish: Is it the case that the designation of the sea as a special area would effectively preclude the transmission of nuclear waste? I think the countries that are pushing for this designation believe that this would provide the legal basis to prevent such shipments. The point that these countries make. is that no matter how well the regulations are kept. no matter how high the standards of safety, there’s always the possibility of an accident, and even worse, a terrorist attack on one of these shipments, which, if radioactive waste is released, could kill a large portion of the Caribbean Sea, the marine environment, and depending on when and where it happens, could kill a large number of people as well.
So we in the ACS are working with ECLAC, the Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, in carrying out the technical work for this resolution to be thoroughly prepared the next time.
Moxam: What about Panama’s sovereign right over the Panama Canal; by virtue of that right does it have a veto power as far as the passage through the canal of shipments of hazardous waste is concerned?
Girvan: Panama’s position is the following: They are fully supportive and sympathetic to the concerns of the islands, and they themselves have concerns, because these ships go through the Panama Canal, and if, God forbid, it were to happen, it would be right there in the middle of Panama. But their position is that they are bound by international treaty obligations, and once the shipment conforms to international law, they do not have the legal basis on which they can prevent any ship passing through the canal, which does so in conformity with international law.