In his speech to the general debate of the UN General Assembly last month, Prime Minister David Thompson of Barbados reminded his audience of the special interest which the governments of the Caribbean have had in the recognition of the vulnerability of small island developing states, and the variety of vulnerabilities of the Caribbean region as a whole.

This was an issue to which Prime Minister Golding of Jamaica also alluded in his contribution to the general debate, in his case linking the vulnerabilities issue to the particular debt situation of his country, and implicitly we assume, of Guyana. And indeed in his turn in New York, President Jagdeo did refer to the special responsibility that his country has for the large forest area which it has under its jurisdiction and the relevance of its conservation to the international community as a whole in this time of concern with climate change.

Though the Caribbean area is not unique in its particular concern with these issues, it is a fact that this focus of our states of the region has been a long-standing one, with the declaration on the special character of Small Island Developing States being signed at the first major international conference held in Barbados in 1994. And it is some time now since Guyana rallied to the early initiatives taken, in particular by Brazil, on conservation of the special characteristics of the Amazon and their global relevance for climate change; and since the government has been a keen enthusiast of arrangements agreed by the international community for coping with carbon emissions.

These concerns, stemming from what we might call the structural characteristics of Caricom states, have in Caricom diplomacy tended to be linked to our concern with what can be referred to as the more contingent aspects of our countries’ existence which have also had a fundamental bearing on our prospects for development. These contingent aspects, relating to the colonial and post-colonial existence of our countries’ economies as dependent on preferential arrangements, have been so long-lasting that in fact, many have tended to view them as virtually permanent or structural, and therefore as entitlements.

We have referred, in a previous editorial, to Jamaican Minister of Trade Robert Lightbourne’s  virtual demand in the early 1960s that the United Kingdom, in seeking membership of the European Community, should give us “bankable assurances” for the retention of our traditional market space in the United Kingdom. This indicated a certain sense of legitimacy of a Caribbean place deriving from the historical and institutionalised access that our agricultural products seemed to possess. The triumph of the ACP countries in embedding the preferential arrangements within the first Lomé Convention seemed to consolidate this assumption. And it was assumed that the Sugar Protocol, not formally a part of Lomé, was even more strongly embedded.

But it was the refusal of the newly established World Trade Organisation (WTO), under intense insistence from President Clinton’s administration coupled with Latin American states, which shocked us into a realization that what seemed to be embedded in a permanent relationship with the United Kingdom was indeed temporary, subject as it now became to the free trade/liberalization philosophy and practice of the Reagan-Thatcher economic  policy revolution. The Windward Islands of Caricom were particularly surprised and shocked, when the first indication of the possibility of change came in the mid-1980s (after the European Union’s commitment to a Single Market and Economy was announced in 1986). The shock was even greater ten years later when, in discussions with President Clinton in 1996, the President subsequently did not act on the implications of a statement made to him by a Caricom leader, and which he seemed to appreciate,  that “the banana industry is to Caricom what cars are to Detroit.”  We know today, of course, that the Detroit car industry’s assumption of permanent domestic and export superiority is rapidly disappearing.

On the other hand, it is the transitory nature of the preferential arrangements which has seemed to dominate the Caricom intergovernmental discussions on whether the EPA which was negotiated should be signed by Cariforum Heads of Government. Sometimes this focus has seemed a deliberate over-emphasis, as some heads of government sought to identify an attraction to preferentialism as the main concern of the critics of the agreement.  (This was obvious in the sometimes euphemistic, implicitly critical observations on critics by the Foreign Minister of the host country, Mr Sinckler, even at the signing ceremony). And it was emphasized too by the EU and pro-EPA speakers in the continuing suggestion that an unwillingness to sign would mean the virtually immediate imposition of the Generalised System of Preferences in place of the existing preferential arrangements.

Yet, certainly the academic, and some diplomatic, critics preferred to put their emphasis not on traditional preferences, but on the aspects of the EPA that related to the timing and nature of EU access to Cariforum markets, the implications of granting Most Favoured Nation(MFN) status to the EU and its implications for subsequent free trade agreements that Caricom may sign, particularly in the hemisphere; and to the issues of the integrity of the Caricom Single Market and Economy and the permanence of the EPA as presently signed.

Most of these latter concerns in fact relate to the issue of how Caricom is to adjust to the changing world economy. And in a sense we have only ourselves to blame for the fact that they, and the divisiveness which has characterized them in the EPA debate, have been so publicly exposed to the world. We seem not to have taken one lesson of our relations with the EU over the years: this is that the EU diplomats have been well aware since the period of negotiation of the 1975 Lomé Convention, that acceptance by the Caricom diplomatic and political leadership of this or that formula for some agreement would, small as we are, have an important influence on the rest of the ACP community. It is clear that on this occasion the EU Commission was concerned to use a speedy Caribbean acceptance of the EPA which they offered, as a template for achieving quick agreement  in the rest of the ACP community.

Most of the non-preference concerns to which we have referred were also – under the rubric of adjustment to global liberalization – signalled to us by the West Indian Commission Report of 1992, and were indeed the justification for our heads of governments’ confirmation of their acceptance of establishment of a Caricom Single Market and Economy.

The fact of the matter is, however, that the length of time which it has taken to establish the CSME, has left little time or space for subsequent detailed discussion of what adjustment under the so-called “open regionalism” character of a single market and economy would entail. Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur indeed, given his responsibility as lead Prime Minister for the CSME, did give a number of speeches on the domestic implications of a form of development which had a substantial emphasis on services, rather than on agricultural or industrial commodities. And it is perhaps no accident that with his departure from office, the new government of Prime Minister Thompson has basically reiterated his concerns, and emphasized the extent to which Barbados has made up its mind on its path to economic adjustment in today’s world. And this, no doubt, also provides the assurance with which Foreign Minister Sinkler has taken on the critics, to the surprise of those within the NGO community concerned with development issues with whom he had so long been involved.

It is doubtful if any of the other Caricom countries, with the exception of the presently favoured mineral-rich Trinidad and Tobago, has any such similar sense of assurance of the path of adjustment to the new international circumstances, and how, in spite of now many years of trying, we can persuade the international community to accept the meaning and implications of our situation as small, vulnerable economies, entitled to some measure of special and differential treatment.

As we have suggested before, our heads of government need to mandate our regional institutions to provide a detailed and realistic projection of what these new circumstances and orientations mean in long-term policy and practical terms acceptable to Caricom countries as a region, and as integrated economies – whatever this last adjective might be taken to mean today.

There seems to be a vacuum of thinking or policy in this regard. Filling this vacuum should have been a major aspect of the preparatory phase of our EPA negotiations, and then of the negotiations themselves. That they were not, is perhaps why so many in the region are now asking: What really is the meaning of this EPA for us, apart from giving the EU clearance on the ending of preferences? And what really do our governments, singly and collectively, think is the relationship of the EPA to the future development of a CSME and its adjustment to the emerging international economy? In layman’s talk: What really is the meaning of all these thousands of pages of paper signed, and talk about the paper, for my future?