Deep sea mining on ISA agenda (Dec. 15, 2021)

The International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN body, met in Kingston, Jamaica, last week to agree a route for finalizing regulations by July 2023 that would allow the undersea mining of cobalt, nickel and other metals to go ahead, reports the Guardian. Discussions on this topic have been under way since 2017, but have been snarled up over how to share future mining proceeds among nations.

Then in June of this year, the South Pacific island nation of Nauru invoked a rule that requires the ISA to complete the code within two years or provisionally approve a “plan of work” to mine polymetallic nodules by a company Nauru sponsors under whatever regulations are in place at the time, explains China Dialogue Ocean.

Mining companies counter that the minerals that could be obtained from deep sea mining – copper, cobalt, nickel and manganese – are essential for a green transition, reported the Guardian in a deep-dive article earlier this year. Nonetheless many battery-makers and industrial users are lining up with the conservationists rather than the miners. In April, BMW, Volvo, Google and Samsung joined a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) call for a moratorium on seabed mining; 621 marine science and policy experts also signed the open letter calling for a pause on deep seabed mining until “sufficient and robust scientific information has been obtained”. (Climate Change News)

"More than 80% of the oceans remains unmapped, unobserved and unexplored, and there is increasing opposition to deep-sea mining from governments, civil society groups and scientists, who say loss of biodiversity is inevitable, and likely to be permanent if it goes ahead."

In October, a group of 10 Latin American and Caribbean nations, including Costa Rica, Argentina and Chile, filed a submission to the Council expressing unease with the two-year deadline. It noted that, among other things, the ISA has yet to agree on the creation of an inspectorate to monitor mining and enforce regulations and has not adopted environmental management plans for areas of the deep sea targeted for mining.

But there is little reason to believe the ISA would act in favor of conservation: The commission has a 100% record of approving exploration applications, reports the Guardian. Membership of its  Legal and Technical Commission is skewed towards extraction rather than environmental oversight – a fifth of the members work directly for contractors with deep-sea mining projects.

Climate Justice and Energy 

• Fish populations were significantly benefited by pandemic lockdowns in the Cayman Islands -- during which local waters were devoid not just of cruise ships, but also of jetskis, fishing vessels and dive boats -- according to an ongoing Central Caribbean Marine Institute study. (Cayman Compass)
  
  
• "Like many small island, big ocean states, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines faces a complex web of interconnected environmental challenges that affect human rights, especially the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment," said United Nations Special Rapporteur David R. Boyd after an official visit to the country. "The global climate crisis is multiplying a number of environmental risks, forcing the government to dedicate its limited resources to repair, rebuild, and reconstruct instead of develop. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines represents a textbook example of global climate injustice. Despite its negligible contribution to the problem, this nation is suffering and will continue to suffer dramatic consequences with major human rights implications, especially with regard to vulnerable populations."
  
  
• Guyanese Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said the country's Natural Resources Fund legislation "is cumbersome" and "almost impossible to operationalize," and indicated the government will seek to remove an oversight committee consisting of 22 organizations, reports Kaieteur News. Critics counter that the move would open the door for more corruption, reports Kaieteur News separately.
  
  
• The Guyanese decision to reopen mining at Marudi Mountain has attracted a growing chorus of denunciations from people who say the South Rupununi Development Council, that represents the Indigenous people of the surrounding area, mostly Wapichan, was not adequately consulted about the extraction plan that affects the territory, reports Stabroek.
  
  
• The United Nations Environment Programme recognized Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley with the Champions of the Earth award for policy leadership, the UN’s highest environmental honour.
  
  
• Yamide Dagnet, from Guadeloupe, will take on the newly created role of director for Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations, leading efforts to strengthen the Foundations’ commitment to climate justice and make it the centerpiece of Open Society’s work.
  

Public Security

• Before being assassinated in July, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse had been working on a list of powerful politicians and business people involved in Haiti’s drug trade, reports the New York Times. He planned to hand the dossier over to the U.S. government. The attackers who killed Moïse ransacked his bedroom, and in interrogations, some of the captured hit men confessed that retrieving the list was a top priority.
  
• Haitian blogger Patricia Camilien calls on the Moïse aides who were compiling the list to publicize the information, and contextualizes the piece within the ongoing power struggle between Moïse supporters and those of former president Michel Martelly, originally Moïse's political mentor. (La Loi De Ma Bouche)
• Religious groups are among the final institutions left in Haiti, delivering aid and support to an afflicted population -- but that has made priests, nuns and missionaries prime targets for kidnapping and extortion, explains InSight Crime.
• Several aid organizations in Haiti have temporarily cut back operations in response to a spike in violence that has hindered their work precisely as it is most needed, reports the Associated Press.
• A gasoline tanker overturned and exploded in northern Haiti yesterday, unleashing a fireball that swept through homes and businesses on its way to killing at least 75 people, reports the Associated Press.
  

Decolonization

• Jamaica's Chief Justice Bryan Sykes has reaffirmed his commitment to ensuring that Jamaica adopts the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as the island’s final appellate court, instead of the UK Privy Court, reports the Jamaica Gleaner.
  
  
• Calls for Jamaica to cut ties with the British monarchy have heightened arising from Barbados' transition to a republic last week. Prime Minister Andrew Holness said more attention should be given to building a strong and prosperous country rather than “empty symbolism," reports the Jamaica Gleaner.
  
  
• DefendPR released a documentary about the process of public school closures (over 500 in past years) in Puerto Rico, pushed by the U.S. imposed Fiscal Oversight Board. Watch at https://vimeo.com/535737291, PW: defendprmedia.

Economics, Finance and Debt

• Barbados' government is advancing on a plan to provide citizens with a universal basic income. Avinash Persaud, Special Envoy to the Prime Minister of Barbados on Investment and Financial Services, wrote recently that “despite all the pressure from international agencies to ‘target’ we hold the line on universality." (Barbados Today)
  
  
• President of the Caribbean Development Bank Gene Leon urged regional governments to institute strong accountability and compliance mechanisms to ensure that corruption does not limit access to climate finance from multilateral and private sources, reports Kaieteur News.
  
  
• The International Monetary Fund has warned of “economic collapse” in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Haiti, and other low-income countries, unless creditors in the world’s richest nations suspend debt-service obligations and help renegotiate new terms. With the Group of 20’s debt-service suspension initiative expiring at the end of the year and interest rates poised to rise, “low-income countries will find it increasingly difficult to service their debts,” the IMF officials said. (St. Vincent Times)
  
  
• The Caribbean Centre for Human Rights in Trinidad & Tobago held a dialogue on human rights and banking. The recording can be found here

Covid-19

• Covid-19 variants, coupled with high levels of vaccine hesitancy, correspondingly low vaccination rates, rampant social media misinformation, and economic hardship exacerbated by recurring lockdowns set the Caribbean stage for vaccine mandate unrest, writes Janine Mendes-Franco at Global Voices.
  
  
• A Global Americans report focuses on vaccines in the Caribbean region, with a view to understanding some of the vaccine diplomacy dynamics, notably in relation to the great powers and their combination of humanitarian and geopolitical motives. 
  
  
• "Without massive testing and complete mortality statistics, it is impossible to know how many people have been infected and died from Covid-19 in Haiti. But one thing is clear, the Haitian health authorities have not had control over the spread of the virus in the country," report the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo and AyiboPost.  

Migration

• Aruba, Curaçao, the Dominican Republic, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago host some of the world’s highest concentrations of refugees and migrants per capita, according to the Regional Inter-agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela.
  
  
• Trinidadian Agriculture  Minister Clarence Rambharat said there has been a global increase in food prices, and Trinidad and Tobago’s agricultural production was saved by Venezuelan labor -- Trinidad Express.
  
  
• Sexual trafficking here has become one of the most prevalent risks for Venezuelan women in Guyana, with mining sites becoming hotspots for this kind of exploitation, reports Connectas.
  

Gender

• "Boy, Girl and All the Rest" -- A short film about an abused non-binary child and their plight for acceptance and redemption in Jamaica. 

Culture

• Haitian film 'Freda' was selected for the Cannes Film Festival and has generated excitement at home and abroad -- Washington Post.
  
  
• “The dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson fused Jamaican music, linguistic innovation, and socialist politics. A new study finally treats his work with the seriousness it deserves," writes Edmund Hardy in Jacobin.
  
  
• One of reggae music's most admired bass players, Robbie Shakespeare, died in Florida at age 68 from kidney-related complications. He was "considered by many to be the greatest reggae bass player of all time," writes Emma Lewis in Global Voices.

Opportunities

• Apply now - University of the West Indies Climate Change and Health Leaders Fellowship Program.  Eligible Caribbean Countries for Round 2:  Antigua & Barbuda, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago. Application process open.
  
  

• Consultancy for Capacity Building through Training Programmes in Treaty and Legislative Drafting. Assignment duration: 24 months, home-based with regular trips to CARIFORUM Member. Project information: This consultancy is inscribed within the project “Support to CARIFORUM Member states in furthering the implementation of their Economic Partnership Agreement commitments and on meaningfully reaping the Benefits of the Agreement”, financed under the 11th EDF. https://www.bseurope.com/node/60342

We welcome comments and critiques on the Just Caribbean Updates. You can see the Updates on our website, as well as receive it directly through the mailing list. Thank you for reading.

Barbados becomes a Republic (Dec. 2, 2021)

Barbados officially became a republic this week -- with a midnight swearing in of President Sandra Mason in a Bridgetown ceremony. “Republic Barbados has set sail on her maiden voyage,” Mason said in her inauguration speech as the first president of the country, recognising the “complex, fractured and turbulent world” it would need to navigate. Barbadian singer Rihanna also attended the ceremony and was declared a national hero. "The republic is part of a wider agenda building steam across the Caribbean to forge a future outside a British framework," reports the Guardian. (See also New York Times.)

Barbados' decision to become a republic is intimately tied to last year's Black Lives Matter protests, and also reflects a debate in the Caribbean over the ongoing legacies of colonial era slavery, and a simmering demand for reparations from those who profited from the work of enslaved people. (Guardian, National Geographic)

"Slavery’s legacy is underdevelopment and dependency," writes Kareem Smith in Open Democracy. The transatlantic slave trade a "barbaric and brutal form of human trafficking, murder, torture, and rape made rich men of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. They amassed huge fortunes, which laid the foundations for multi-generational wealth."

Some voices in the Caribbean hope "that Barbados’ decision will be a catalyst for more changes in the region, or at the very least renew conversations about colonialism, reparations, and the legacy of the British monarchy, which built its wealth on the backs of enslaved Africans," writes Jacqueline Charles in National Geographic.

The debate is salient for current diplomacy, argues David Comissiong, Barbados Ambassador to CARICOM in Democracy Now. "The reality is that formerly enslaved and colonized nations and people like those in the Caribbean, including Barbados, have been inserted in that international order in a structurally subordinate and exploitative manner. So, many, many remnants of those centuries of enslavement, of colonial exploitation and domination that we are still trying to undo."

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Vaccine mandate protests in French Caribbean

Police reinforcements arrived in Martinique on Tuesday in the midst of ongoing unrest that erupted over Covid-19 measures, in particular the mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers. Protesters in Guadeloupe and Martinique have erected barricades and blocked roads this month as anger mounted over an order also in place in mainland France requiring health workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19. 

Hundreds of police reinforcements have also been sent to the islands, and strict night curfews implemented, reports AFP.

Paris announced that it would be postponing a requirement that public sector workers in Guadeloupe and Martinique get a Covid-19 vaccination. But the move has failed to quell unrest, which reflects long-standing grievances over living standards and the relationship between France's Caribbean islands and Paris, reports Reuters. 

Martinique and Guadeloupe, islands of 375,000 and 400,000 people, respectively, are considered formal parts of France whose inhabitants hold French citizenship and are allocated representation in the French National Assembly. But the territories suffer higher poverty and unemployment rates than mainland France, and the protests have put a spotlight on local anger over broader issues with the French government, reports Al Jazeera.

Suspicion of public health policies is especially high in the French Caribbean, where the government authorized the use of a highly toxic pesticide called chlordecone on banana plantations for decades, despite repeated health warnings, notes the New York Times.

Democratic Governance

• Haiti's "best hope is a political transition in which inclusion provides legitimacy, leading to free elections," writes Monique Clesca, a member of the civil-society led Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis, in a New York Times guest essay. The group has proposed "an interim government whose members, in the absence of elections, will be nominated by various sectors to legitimately represent Haitians," and calls on the U.S. to support the commission's plan for democratization in Haiti.
  
  
• Haitian Interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry named a new cabinet last week. Ministers will be tasked with assisting Haiti to adopt a new constitution and elect a new president, parliament and local mayors, said Henry, who obtained the country's leadership following a power struggle after the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. “With the installation of a new government, we are entering a decisive new stage in the interim period,” he said. (Miami Herald)
  
  
• But the new list consists of only eight new changes in the 18-member cabinet, leaving some to speculate that two months after the signing of a political pact between Henry, political parties and other organizations, he still has not fully found a consensus on who should be in his interim government, reports the Miami Herald.
  

Public Security

• Haiti's increasingly powerful criminal gangs are carrying out a wave of extremely accute sexual violence, say health workers who are overwhelmed by the numbers of women affected and the sheer horror of the victims' ordeals, reports AFP.

Migration

• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued the resolution "Protecting Haitians in Human Mobility Contexts: Inter-American Solidarity," which seeks to provide guidance for States in the region to protect the rights of Haitians who are migrants, refugees, stateless persons, or victims of human trafficking, or who have been displaced.
  
  
• Turks and Caicos police say they have recovered the bodies of seven undocumented Haitians who authorities say were attempting to illegally migrate from their country. (Miami Herald)
  
  
• Puerto Rico's historic Iglesia San Mateo de Cangrejos, in San Juan, helps Haitian migrants, part of a long history of aid to Afro-Caribbean people on the island. Between May and October of this year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Puerto Rico detained 310 Haitian nationals in Puerto Rico, reports the Miami Herald. 

Food Security

• In 2020, 59.7 million people in the Caribbean and Latin America suffered from hunger, according to a new U.N. report. The prevalence of hunger in the region increased by two percentage points last year, which means  13.8 million more people suffered from hunger in 2020 than the year before.  Over the same period, moderate or severe food insecurity increased by nine percentage points and 41 percent of the population of the region is moderately or severely food insecure.
  

Economics, Finance and Debt

• Caricom Commission on the Economy proposed that participating member states should establish a single, independently operated, internationally credible and scrutinised agency that would deliver an anti-money laundering certificate that would be accepted by all government agencies and voluntarily any others in participating countries.This, it said, would dramatically reduce the cost and time of ­compliance for local and regional businesses and release resources for more productive use. (Trinidad Express)

Climate Justice and Energy

• Coastal mitigation efforts against rising sea levels stemming from climate change could cost some Caribbean countries more than five percent of their GDP each year,  according to World Bank official Carlos Felipe Jaramillo. (Kaieteur News)
  
  
• "We must recognise that climate mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage are three different things requiring three different funding mechanisms for three distinct outcomes," wrote Avinash Persaud on Twitter, in reference to COP26 calls for climate financing.
  
  
• "The final Glasgow Climate Pact is a mixed bag," writes Ryan Assiu in an analysis of COP26. 
  
  
• Trinidad and Tobago is currently the fifth highest emitter per capita in the world, but its ambitions for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are “not sufficiently bold," according to Dr. Devon Gardner, Head of the Energy Unit at the Caribbean Community Secretariat. He said that a perceived lack of ambition on the part of the Trinidad and Tobago government could cause other nations to question the region’s commitment to climate action. (Climate Tracker)
  
  
• Local Guyanese fisher-people say ExxonMobil’s ongoing oil operations in the country's waters have led to declining catch, but the oil company said impacts from its operations on marine life is minor to negligible. (Kaieteur News)
  
  
• An ExxonMobil report on its fourth project in Guyana, the Yellowtail development, estimates that greenhouse gas emissions are set to increase by as much as 30 percent, throughout the production stage. But the company argues that Guyana's forest will offset the environmental impacts. (Kaieteur News)

Racial Justice

• Scholars and activists criticize Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program for its lack of government oversight, disrespect for migrant rights and indentureship of foreign workers. "Sentenced for the season: Jamaican migrant farmworkers on Okanagan orchards," by Elise Hjalmarson, argues the program is predicated upon naturalised, deeply ingrained and degrading beliefs that devalue Black lives and labour.
  

Critters

• A mythic white sperm whale was captured on film near Jamaica. The type of whale immortalised in Moby-Dick has only been spotted a handful of times this century, reports the Guardian.

Events

1 Dec 2021  |  Online Book Launch  |  Legal Identity, Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic: From Citizen to Foreigner Speakers: Junot Díaz (MIT), Raj Chetty (St John's), David Howard (Oxford) & Eve Hayes de Kalaf (CLACS) 7 Dec 2021  |  Online Seminar  |  Papers for The People: The Radical Press of the late Colonial Caribbean  Speaker: Kesewa John (UCL Institute of the Americas)

Opportunities

• AOSIS Fellowship Programme -- Fellows will work at their UN Permanent Mission in New York, receive comprehensive training on climate change, oceans, environmental protection, and sustainable development issues, and gain real-world negotiation experience working with their national delegations and AOSIS at related UN conferences.
  

We welcome comments and critiques on the Just Caribbean Updates. You can see the Updates on our website, as well as receive it directly through the mailing list. Thank you for reading.