Climate Tracker, in partnership with the Open Society Foundations, is hosting a Caribbean Climate Justice Journalism Fellowship. For six months journalists from across the Caribbean region will learn environmental issues, effective storytelling, and journalism skills. For more information and to apply, click here.
Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program from the Mercatus Center, is opening up its next stream of funding dedicated to people from the Caribbean, Central America and Africa. This grant is for “entrepreneurs and brilliant minds with highly scalable, ‘zero to one’ ideas for meaningfully improving society.” For more information, click here.
Rasheed Griffith, who will be assessing applications said the scope for projects is extensive. He described funding opportunities such as travel grants for STEM career development purposes such as a 6th form student who wants to attend an AI conference in San Francisco and needs funding; quantitative research on the economic development of Caribbean institutions from a comparative Empire on how institutions develop differently between French, Dutch and British Caribbean; podcasts blogs and more. For a reference on previous grants awarded, click here.
Applications are open for the Climate Technology Centre and Network’s (CTCN) Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator (AFCIA). AFCIA’s objectives are to support testing, evaluation, roll out and scale up of innovative adaptation practices, tools, and technologies in developing countries. Deadline is September 2022. For more information click here and here.
Climate Justice and Environment
The Center for Biological Diversity accused the US Government of endangering wildlife and humans because of construction work done to expand Puerto Rico’s biggest bay, the San Juan Bay in order to accommodate tankers for a new liquid natural gas terminal. The Center filed a lawsuit against the US Government. AP reports.
To prepare the region for climate impacts such as hurricanes and natural disasters, the Alliance of Small Island Developing States (AOSIS), is lobbying to have loss and damage finance included as an agenda item at COP27, the upcoming global climate talks. The Jamaica Gleaner reports.
While Small Island Developing States (SIDS), particularly in the Caribbean, are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, those countries receive a shockingly low level of climate financing. Development Matters discusses,
A group calling themselves the Concerned Citizens of St. Lucia issued a statement on a number of problems they have with access to the Gros Piton Nature Trail. This area is a world heritage site. The St Lucia Times published the press release.
Oil and Gas
Who will benefit from Guyana’s influx of oil money? This is what Gram Slattery via Reuters asks. In 2022 the Guyanese economy is expected to grow by 48%. Slattery questions if the money earned is managed poorly, then it will be wasted and the poor will not reap the benefits of the oil wealth. Kaieteur News reports.
Human Rights
Teachers from St Vincent and The Grenadines stand by their decision to not be vaccinated for COVID-19 despite being forced to resign. Those who want back their jobs will have to reapply and be subjected to COVID-19 tests. iWitness News reports.
Equality Bahamas is calling on the government to criminalize marital rape. The activist group tried to engage the Attorney General and the Minister of Social Services and Urban Development since the government took office in 2021 but received no response. Eye Witness News reports.
Diplomacy
Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister, Gaston Brown calls on the US and China to improve diplomatic relations given the negative impacts discord between the two can cause for the Caribbean, especially given the impacts of the Russia/Ukraine war. Antigua Observer reports.
Sir Ronald Sanders said, “The US are entangling the internal politics of their country with US obligations to the international community.” Republican Senator for Florida Rick Scott wants the Biden administration to deny visas to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to prevent them from attending next month’s General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) in New York. Caribbean News Global reports
Haiti
As Haiti sinks deeper into a humanitarian crisis, who is responsible for the declining state of the first Caribbean country to fight for and win independence? Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States of America and the Organization of American States, discusses the international aid Haiti has received and how in future aid could be delivered. Kaieteur News carries this opinion piece.
There is an impending catastrophic political and humanitarian crisis looming in Haiti as gang violence and extreme poverty rip though the nation. Georges Fauriol, a Senior Associate with the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), and a Think Tank Haiti (TTH) Steering Group member, a partnership of Université Quisqueya (Haiti) and the Inter-American Dialogue, discusses the potential ways Haiti can be helped, including giving support to the Haitian police, diplomatic intervention, effective rebuilding the country following two magnitude 7 earthquakes, and lay a foundation for Haiti’s transparency issues. The Global Americans report.
LGBTQI issues
Visit Rupununi, an ecotourism destination in Guyana, and the Guyana LGBTQ+ Coalition signed a memorandum of understanding declaring the Rupununi a safe tourism zone for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Read more by Stabroek News.
Human Mobility
Jamaica placed second out of 177 countries on Global Economy’s 2022 human flight and brain drain index rankings. The list assesses the political and economic impact of human displacement and the ramifications of the country’s development. Loop News Jamaica reports. Jamaican migrants are among the top three groups of foreign people to use the US military to gain citizenship. The Jamaica Gleaner reports.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness is satisfied with the strategies announced by the education ministry to deal with teachers migrating. Teachers leaving Jamaica could possibly pose a threat to public education. Since July, 167 educators have been tendering their resignation, resulting in a shortage. Retired teachers were hired as a way to deal with the problem. The Jamaica Gleaner reports. A teacher anonymously responded to the PM’s statement describing it as flippant and reactive. Read the letter to the editor in The Jamaica Gleaner.
Economic Justice
Bermuda, The Bahamas and Barbados are in the top five of the most expensive countries in the world. Numbeo ranks Bermuda as the most expensive place in the world to live, The Bahamas as the third and Barbados was fourth. Hamilton, Bermuda’s capital city was ranked the most expensive city in the world. The Virgin Island Consortium reports.
While the pharmaceutical industry is one of the biggest in the Puerto Rican economy, because of large tax breaks meant to incentivise pharmaceutical companies, the people of Puerto Rico who work in that industry receive low wages and have worked for years in their job without receiving a pay increase. The Nation reports.
The IMF’s record $650 billion issuance of reserve assets known as special drawing rights, or SDRs, last August “was badly needed,” and has been almost exclusively used by low- and middle-income countries, the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive think tank, said in a report Wednesday. Bloomberg reports.
The Bahamas’ Opposition Leader, Michael Pintard requested the government show how they calculated the outstanding debt profile caused by climate events. At the Opening Plenary Session of the Caribbean Regional Heads of Government Meeting in preparation for COP 27, Prime Minister Philip Davis said more than 50% of outstanding debt is linked to the expenses incurred from hurricanes between 2015 and 2019. Eyewitness News and The Tribune report.
Legal Issues
Attorney-at-Law Douglas Leys questions why former colonies of the British Empire still rely on the Privy Council as it’s final court of appeal when the Caribbean has its own internationally recognised final appeal court, the Caribbean Court of Justice. Read this letter to the editor in the Jamaica Gleaner.
Guyanese musician Eddy Grant was granted a request by a Manhattan judge to allow Grant’s lawyers to depose former U.S. President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan Scavino in a copyright dispute over the song Electric Avenue. Reuters reports.
Security
The United States is cracking down on illegal gun trafficking to Haiti and other Caribbean countries. A release from Anthony Salisbury, special agent in charge of HSI Miami, along with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said they will investigate and seek to prosecute any individuals involved in illegal arms trafficking. St Lucia Times reports.
Drug Policy
This letter to the editor by Rudolph Singh describes Guyana’s passage of the Hemp Bill as innately discriminatory because Clause 23 of the Bill, “gives the Minister the power to designate geographical areas, by Order subject to the negative resolution of the National Assembly, to cultivate or manufacture industrial hemp and hemp-related products.” It however gives the possibility for farmers to grow hemp. Read Stabroek News letters to the editor.
Decolonisation
Former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St Vincent and the Grenadines Jomo Sanga Thomas reflects on decolonisation in the Caribbean. While many islands are independent, there are just as many islands still colonised by the British, Holland, the US and France. Even culturally, people adopt a Eurocentric way of being by using skin bleachers and wigs that make their hair straight. Read more from iWitness News here.
Votes are yet to be counted on the Puerto Rico Status Act. The act is to determine if the US territory in the Caribbean can have its own statehood. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said “outside interests” are holding up the counting of the votes as they are trying to negotiate to have Puerto Rico have just recovery, economic growth and self-sufficiency. Power 4 Puerto Rico, funded by the Open Society Foundations, is one such group. Latino Rebels reports.
John Rankin, Governor of the British Virgin Islands, a British overseas territory, appointed Anthea Smith, David Abednego and Denniston Fraser, to lead reviews into the discretionary powers of public officials, the disposal of Crown lands, and House of Assembly members contracting with the government respectively. Winnfm.com reports.
Culture
Bermudan writer Angela Barry launched her novel The Drowned Forest in June 2022. Published by Peepal Tree Press, The Drowned Forest explores Bermuda’s colonial legacy, by interrogating the cross sections of race, class, education and privilege and education while living on a small island such as Bermuda. Read more by Big Issue and Repeating Islands.
Raquel Salas Rivera’s latest poetry book, whose antes que isla es volcán / before Island is Volcano won the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award in the 2022 Latino Book Awards. Rivera’s sixth book imagines a decolonised Puerto Rico, challenging the reader on questions about independence. Read more from Repeating Islands and Beacon Press.
Events
As energy prices around the globe spikes, Caribbean countries feel pain in their pockets because the region imports 85% of commercial energy supplies. People from the Caribbean pay twice as much on their electricity bills as people in the states do. See how the US can partner with CARICOM countries to help develop the hydrocarbon and renewable energy industries. The Caribbean Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center and the Global Energy Center on August 29, 2022 had a virtual public conversation with Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Energy and Energy Industries Stuart Young to discuss the US-Caribbean energy cooperation. Watch the conversation here.
The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) is hosting a webinar called “Making Community Resilience Equitable and Inclusive” on September 8, 2022 at 10am-12noon (Eastern Caribbean time). Register here.
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.
We aim for the JCU to be an informational tool, as well as a space for connection between Caribbean experts, policy-makers, activists and organizations. If you would like to post an event or opportunity on the JCU, we invite you to send the information to justcaribbeanupdates@gmail.com. Please put in the following format: date -- title of event -- organizer -- registration link OR title of opportunity -- institution -- link to more information.
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