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Lessons from HURRICANE Dean
published: Sunday | August 26, 2007
IanBoyne
The wreckage caused by Hurricane Dean in some sections of the island and the widespread dislocation in its aftermath again expose the country's vulnerability to exogenous factors.
Just two columns ago, I lamented the fact that we were having high-profile debates between the two political parties and intense discussion in the island vis-à-vis the impending elections, yet no attention was being paid to external factors influencing the growth prospects for the country.
I confidently wrote after only one debate that none of the debaters would pay attention to global conditions and their constraint on the tiny Jamaican economy, and that none of the journalists on the panels would raise any such questions to those seeking public office. I could safely headline my article, even before the debates finished: "What the Debates Missed".
Hurricane Dean has simply reinforced my thesis in most a dramatic and unwelcome way. Suddenly, all the highfalutin plans and promises by the parties, all the confident and grand plans in their manifestos were in as much threat as were the lives and properties of Jamaicans.
Have we ever seriously considered just how much the so-called acts of God (really acts of nature) can constrain our development? The discussion over climate change, gobal warming and environmental degradation is not just a pastime of idle intellectuals in search of a cause. The call for the international community to have a fund to deal with the fallout from our rape of the environment, and especially the industrialised countries' mismanagement of resources, is a serious one.
The mercies of nature
It struck me that amidst all the campaigning and feverish plans for an August 27 election, with people ascribing power and glory to Portia Simpson Miller and Bruce Golding respectively, each of them was left to the mercies of nature (or the supernatural, as the religious would say) and none had any more assured answers or guaranteed comfort for us.
All at once, both were reduced to prayer and supplication to a higher power or to crossing their fingers and hoping for the best! Puny human leaders pulled back down to size by Mother Nature. Their seeming omnipotence was ripped apart just like the many roofs in Jamaica. Their mere mortality, their human fragility, their common vulnerability united them in powerlessness. But we can't run our lives like this every hurricane season, hoping for the best or just praying for God to spare us and to have mercy.
The impact of geography on development is an area of academic study which has been receiving attention, with scholars such as Jared Diamond and Jeffrey Sachs being leading exponents of what some call geographic determinism. A harsh and perhaps untrue characterisation, but these men have done studies to show how geography has historically influenced economic development. The fact that we in the Caribbean are in a hurricane zone must factor far more in our economic discussions than they, in fact, do.
I must commend the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Professor Nigel Harris, for ever since he took over the leadership of the UWI, that has been a big focus of his. This area has not received enough attention from our scholars.
A number of conferences have been held looking at the special challenges and problems of small island developing economies like Jamaica, but this discussion has not filtered down in the media so that the people as a whole, or even the intelligentsia, can be apprised of the issues.
Our journalists have a fascination with parochial issues and the sensational, but they don't do a good job in covering and analysing serious global issues. So a lot of nonsense is spewed out by politicians and no one is there to challenge the foolishness and myopia.
Adequate resources
The fact is that small states like Jamaica will never have adequate resources to deal with the challenges posed by natural disasters. So those who say let us simply concentrate on good governance, getting the economic fundamentals right and creating jobs are living in a fool's paradise. We must do all of those things certainly (and, thankfully, both the PNP and JLP are committed to responsible macroeconomic policies). But we have to press for changes in the global economic and political system so that funds are provided to deal with the special needs of countries like ourselves.
USAID's sending some shipments of a few things and some governments feeling kind enough to send us some relief supplies is just not enough. The global system must be such that funds are created to deal with these needs. A case can be made for pragmatic reasons for not as a moral imperative that the North should be concerned about the effects of natural disasters on countries like Jamaica. Social dislocation and instability in fragile states are a threat to rich countries like the United States.
Agriculture is still a significant part of our GDP. Tourism is pivotal. Both are vulnerable to natural disasters. Butch Stewart was on the radio wailing about losing a few tourists to his hotels here, but he would have much more to be concerned about if a Category Five hurricane made a direct hit over the island with devastating consequences.
No political party which ignores the need for a robust foreign policy centred on lobbying for changes at the global level is worthy of support. And the parties must tell us plainly that a lot of what they are promising is dependent on favourable global conditions.
There has been no discussion here about the likely impact on Jamaica of the rise of China and India, except for some to say naively that if China and India can grow robustly for decades why can't we. They have not focused on the growing light manufacturing exports of countries like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia or even of some of the Central American countries, except to say that if these countries are growing then it's only Omar's fault why we are not growing. Or like the PNP trying to score propaganda points about the JLP's touting these countries because they want to establish anti-worker policies here. (Which is quite strange, for if anything the PNP is closer to the neo-liberal Washington Consensus policies which Danny Roberts has blasted the JLP for allegedly promoting. Fact is that the JLP has a more state interventionist, developmentalist view. This is favoured by progressive economists.)
I find much of what passes for debate and dialogue in Jamaica more akin to a dialogue of the deaf and dumb. People are arguing as though research and facts are expendable and redundant things. So we have more heat than light, more sensationalism and histrionics than serious intellectual exchange.
And a major part of the corruption in Jamaica is not just moral corruption, but intellectual corruption. It is hard to have a serious discussion without it being tainted by partisan political trappings. So if one criticises a position that is judged in relationship to which position is held by which party.
I hear JLP spokespersons repeating-without any challenge from any journalist-that Jamaica is one of the few countries which have not grown much over the last few decades. This is not true. But that is irrelevant, for it makes for good political propaganda.
The 2005 UNDP Human Development Report says, "Economic stagnation has been a widespread feature of the globalization era. Most developing countries are falling behind, not catching up with rich countries".
The most widely-accepted work on long-term economic growth has been done by the famous Economic historian Angus Maddison. It shows that the annual growth rate of real global GDP has been falling since the Golden Era of 1950-1973. East Asia has been the one exception. Using a different measurement from Maddison's, the United Nations estimates that world GDP declined from an annual rate of 5.4 per cent in the 1960s, to 4.1 per cent in the 1970s, to 3 per cent in the 1980s and 2.3 per cent in the 1990s.
All of this means nothing to the propagandists in the political parties and the media. The World Bank, which was a bastion, along with the International Monetary Fund, of economic conservatism is now batting for the developing countries on trade and equity issues. In its Global Economic Prospects 2004 report titled Realising the Development Promise of the Doha Agenda, the bank makes a powerful case for global trade reforms. The developed countries subsidies their agricultural sectors to the tune of $365 billion a year-six times the amount given in aid to developing countries. Some 70 per cent of the world's poor live in rural areas. Pointing to example of the inequities of the global trading system, the World Bank says in the report: "Overall, such countries collect from developing countries about twice the tariff revenue per dollar of imports they collect from rich countries". Reductions in trade barriers in agriculture and food alone would result in additional income by developing countries of US$101 billion by 2015. What the developing world needs is more equitable trade, not aid, which, as the brilliant economist William Easterly has demonstrated, how not helped developing countries over the years.
The impact of the U.S. trade deficits and the surpluses of China; the instability of global financial markets; the impact of global financial liberalisation; the decline of protected trade and the failure of the Doha Development Round have far more impact on the Jamaican economy and our people's prospects for improved standards of living than any of the politicians is telling the people. But arguments will always have limited appeal. Humans are more affective than cerebral.
The brush with Dean - which was relatively mild - is an occasion to remind us of just how weak and vulnerable we all - PNP, JLP, No P - really are in this big wide world. It should give us some perspective.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
published: Sunday | August 26, 2007
IanBoyne
The wreckage caused by Hurricane Dean in some sections of the island and the widespread dislocation in its aftermath again expose the country's vulnerability to exogenous factors.
Just two columns ago, I lamented the fact that we were having high-profile debates between the two political parties and intense discussion in the island vis-à-vis the impending elections, yet no attention was being paid to external factors influencing the growth prospects for the country.
I confidently wrote after only one debate that none of the debaters would pay attention to global conditions and their constraint on the tiny Jamaican economy, and that none of the journalists on the panels would raise any such questions to those seeking public office. I could safely headline my article, even before the debates finished: "What the Debates Missed".
Hurricane Dean has simply reinforced my thesis in most a dramatic and unwelcome way. Suddenly, all the highfalutin plans and promises by the parties, all the confident and grand plans in their manifestos were in as much threat as were the lives and properties of Jamaicans.
Have we ever seriously considered just how much the so-called acts of God (really acts of nature) can constrain our development? The discussion over climate change, gobal warming and environmental degradation is not just a pastime of idle intellectuals in search of a cause. The call for the international community to have a fund to deal with the fallout from our rape of the environment, and especially the industrialised countries' mismanagement of resources, is a serious one.
The mercies of nature
It struck me that amidst all the campaigning and feverish plans for an August 27 election, with people ascribing power and glory to Portia Simpson Miller and Bruce Golding respectively, each of them was left to the mercies of nature (or the supernatural, as the religious would say) and none had any more assured answers or guaranteed comfort for us.
All at once, both were reduced to prayer and supplication to a higher power or to crossing their fingers and hoping for the best! Puny human leaders pulled back down to size by Mother Nature. Their seeming omnipotence was ripped apart just like the many roofs in Jamaica. Their mere mortality, their human fragility, their common vulnerability united them in powerlessness. But we can't run our lives like this every hurricane season, hoping for the best or just praying for God to spare us and to have mercy.
The impact of geography on development is an area of academic study which has been receiving attention, with scholars such as Jared Diamond and Jeffrey Sachs being leading exponents of what some call geographic determinism. A harsh and perhaps untrue characterisation, but these men have done studies to show how geography has historically influenced economic development. The fact that we in the Caribbean are in a hurricane zone must factor far more in our economic discussions than they, in fact, do.
I must commend the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Professor Nigel Harris, for ever since he took over the leadership of the UWI, that has been a big focus of his. This area has not received enough attention from our scholars.
A number of conferences have been held looking at the special challenges and problems of small island developing economies like Jamaica, but this discussion has not filtered down in the media so that the people as a whole, or even the intelligentsia, can be apprised of the issues.
Our journalists have a fascination with parochial issues and the sensational, but they don't do a good job in covering and analysing serious global issues. So a lot of nonsense is spewed out by politicians and no one is there to challenge the foolishness and myopia.
Adequate resources
The fact is that small states like Jamaica will never have adequate resources to deal with the challenges posed by natural disasters. So those who say let us simply concentrate on good governance, getting the economic fundamentals right and creating jobs are living in a fool's paradise. We must do all of those things certainly (and, thankfully, both the PNP and JLP are committed to responsible macroeconomic policies). But we have to press for changes in the global economic and political system so that funds are provided to deal with the special needs of countries like ourselves.
USAID's sending some shipments of a few things and some governments feeling kind enough to send us some relief supplies is just not enough. The global system must be such that funds are created to deal with these needs. A case can be made for pragmatic reasons for not as a moral imperative that the North should be concerned about the effects of natural disasters on countries like Jamaica. Social dislocation and instability in fragile states are a threat to rich countries like the United States.
Agriculture is still a significant part of our GDP. Tourism is pivotal. Both are vulnerable to natural disasters. Butch Stewart was on the radio wailing about losing a few tourists to his hotels here, but he would have much more to be concerned about if a Category Five hurricane made a direct hit over the island with devastating consequences.
No political party which ignores the need for a robust foreign policy centred on lobbying for changes at the global level is worthy of support. And the parties must tell us plainly that a lot of what they are promising is dependent on favourable global conditions.
There has been no discussion here about the likely impact on Jamaica of the rise of China and India, except for some to say naively that if China and India can grow robustly for decades why can't we. They have not focused on the growing light manufacturing exports of countries like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia or even of some of the Central American countries, except to say that if these countries are growing then it's only Omar's fault why we are not growing. Or like the PNP trying to score propaganda points about the JLP's touting these countries because they want to establish anti-worker policies here. (Which is quite strange, for if anything the PNP is closer to the neo-liberal Washington Consensus policies which Danny Roberts has blasted the JLP for allegedly promoting. Fact is that the JLP has a more state interventionist, developmentalist view. This is favoured by progressive economists.)
I find much of what passes for debate and dialogue in Jamaica more akin to a dialogue of the deaf and dumb. People are arguing as though research and facts are expendable and redundant things. So we have more heat than light, more sensationalism and histrionics than serious intellectual exchange.
And a major part of the corruption in Jamaica is not just moral corruption, but intellectual corruption. It is hard to have a serious discussion without it being tainted by partisan political trappings. So if one criticises a position that is judged in relationship to which position is held by which party.
I hear JLP spokespersons repeating-without any challenge from any journalist-that Jamaica is one of the few countries which have not grown much over the last few decades. This is not true. But that is irrelevant, for it makes for good political propaganda.
The 2005 UNDP Human Development Report says, "Economic stagnation has been a widespread feature of the globalization era. Most developing countries are falling behind, not catching up with rich countries".
The most widely-accepted work on long-term economic growth has been done by the famous Economic historian Angus Maddison. It shows that the annual growth rate of real global GDP has been falling since the Golden Era of 1950-1973. East Asia has been the one exception. Using a different measurement from Maddison's, the United Nations estimates that world GDP declined from an annual rate of 5.4 per cent in the 1960s, to 4.1 per cent in the 1970s, to 3 per cent in the 1980s and 2.3 per cent in the 1990s.
All of this means nothing to the propagandists in the political parties and the media. The World Bank, which was a bastion, along with the International Monetary Fund, of economic conservatism is now batting for the developing countries on trade and equity issues. In its Global Economic Prospects 2004 report titled Realising the Development Promise of the Doha Agenda, the bank makes a powerful case for global trade reforms. The developed countries subsidies their agricultural sectors to the tune of $365 billion a year-six times the amount given in aid to developing countries. Some 70 per cent of the world's poor live in rural areas. Pointing to example of the inequities of the global trading system, the World Bank says in the report: "Overall, such countries collect from developing countries about twice the tariff revenue per dollar of imports they collect from rich countries". Reductions in trade barriers in agriculture and food alone would result in additional income by developing countries of US$101 billion by 2015. What the developing world needs is more equitable trade, not aid, which, as the brilliant economist William Easterly has demonstrated, how not helped developing countries over the years.
The impact of the U.S. trade deficits and the surpluses of China; the instability of global financial markets; the impact of global financial liberalisation; the decline of protected trade and the failure of the Doha Development Round have far more impact on the Jamaican economy and our people's prospects for improved standards of living than any of the politicians is telling the people. But arguments will always have limited appeal. Humans are more affective than cerebral.
The brush with Dean - which was relatively mild - is an occasion to remind us of just how weak and vulnerable we all - PNP, JLP, No P - really are in this big wide world. It should give us some perspective.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
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