Search results

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the issues associated with the use of modern energy statistics and information management (ESIM) constructs as information sharing and decision-making mechanisms in the Caribbean community (CARICOM). The study focuses on the strategies required for advancing accepted regional goals of the creation and utilization of ESIM systems in the CARICOM energy sector, a vital precursor to national and regional generation and integration of energy information.

Primary and secondary data from CARICOM countries were analyzed, supported by an assessment methodology which examines the impact of the current state of the environment, and the policy imperatives on the data.

The research findings suggest that the creation and usage of energy statistics and information in the region is minimal. Several issues impact negatively on utilization, including political, visibility, awareness, resource, and cultural factors.

There are several possible alternatives for improving the state of ESIM in the region, and better understanding the peoples of the region, and the approaches to regional integration and development are instructive in deciding on the best approach. The solutions articulated in this paper are intended to achieve more inclusive high-value modalities of operation, optimize skills development and knowledge transfer, and positively impact the decision-making processes at both regional and state levels.

Dependence on foreign energy supplies have resulted in some islands successfully harnessing alternative and renewable energy (RE) sources in order to provide a small degree of self-sufficiency. However, the development of Trinidad and Tobago's (T&T's) RE industry has stagnated largely due to the existence of substantial energy subsidies, which present cheap fuel and electricity prices thus providing a disincentive to RE investment. The purpose of this paper is to seek to re-enforce the necessity for an indissoluble government intervention in the establishment of well-designed, coordinated and innovative public-private partnerships for a successful RE industry in T&T.

This paper is based on a review of relevant social and economic literary sources; the research topic has been meticulously investigated.

Initial outcomes indicate that the principal facilitators of RE proliferation in the Caribbean, and more so T&T, will require: gradual reduction of the energy subsidy; declining project costs via fiscal incentives and grant financing; expectation of beneficial rates of return on investment through the guarantee of optimal prices for renewable electricity or the revenue gained from the sale of carbon credits; and capacity building, institutional strengthening and implementation of appropriate legislative and regulatory instruments which provide open access to the national grid.

With the exception of T&T, Caribbean nations are heavily dependent on oil and gas imports to meet their primary energy requirements. The investigation conducted has limited documentation on cases of a similar nature within the region. The outcome of the steps identified above are based on conjecture using information gained from international situations.

The study helps clarify the crucial role of T&T's government in the successful development of the RE industry. Resources and earnings should be used to develop T&T's infant RE industry and hence reduce the carbon footprint of the nation.

Past attempts by the government to promote RE an energy efficiency in T&T have been passive and prevaricated. In addition to outlining the existing fiscal initiatives available to the population, this paper provides short-, medium- and long-term recommendations for the sustainability of RE in T&T. While subsidy reform, among others, poses a challenge it is nonetheless imperative if T&T is to move forward. With the abundance of solar, wind and waste-to-energy resources there is great potential for a successful RE industry in T&T. More than just policy will be required to drive change; greater commitment by the government to ensure the sustainability and economic viability of T&T while also attempting to alter the mindset of the citizenry to act as effective stewards of the island's resources for the well-being of future generations.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had major ramifications for the small developing countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) as 3 of the then 13 countries experimented with strands of socialism, festering political fragmentation/ideological pluralism regionally. As the rivets of the Iron Curtain came unfastened, the emerging markets of CARICOM were forced to rethink their geopolitical positions while reforming their national educational systems. This chapter examines how the dissolution of socialism in the former socialist countries of Southeast/Central Europe and the former Soviet Union created a reform atmosphere across CARICOM countries. CARICOM's response to the impact of 1989 lies in how it spent the 1980s dealing with the 1973–1974 oil crises, ideological pluralism, and the subsequent imposition of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) under the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The successive degeneration of ideological pluralism within CARICOM countries caused by the simultaneous collapse of cooperative socialism in Guyana, revolutionary socialism in Grenada, and democratic socialism in Jamaica paved the way for post-socialist transformations regionally. This chapter considers how the policy process of functional cooperation – the non-economic policy mechanism upon which CARICOM seeks to integrate its members – facilitates the policy tool of lesson-drawing to take place between member states while laying the foundation for post-socialist change across CARICOM. Using data from the educational policies of 10 countries, this chapter illustrates how CARICOM members used the global policy alterations of 1989 as a reference point to reform their educational systems. Educational reforms occurred as member states drew lessons from each other – in the form of cross-national consultations – guided by the policy process of functional cooperation.

Drawing on assemblage theory (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; DeLanda, 2006), this conceptual chapter seeks to provide an analytical lens for examining the power and capacity of Big Data analytics to exercise territorializing and deterritorializing effects on compound polities and supranational organizations. More specifically, the modern massive agglomeration of data streams and the accelerated computational power available to sort and channel them in effecting actions, decisions, and reconfigurations in contemporary assemblages, necessitate new exploratory tools to examine the impact of such trends on educational phenomena from a comparative perspective. In the first part, the chapter builds an analytical instrumentarium useful in theoretically elucidating the effects of Big Data on complex assemblages and serves as a methodological extension in investigating the ramifications of these effects on educational systems, spaces, and policyscapes. The second part sets out to illustrate how assemblage theory can explain the tension between the formal use of large official statistical data sets as a type of “regulated” Big Data, and the informal use of social media, as a type of “unregulated” Big Data, to construct or deconstruct, respectively, interlacing/interlocking components of assemblages, such as supranational organizations or compound polities. The European Union (EU) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are taken as examples of complex assemblages in which the long-standing utilization of EU’s Eurostat and CARICOM’s Regional Statistical Database have served as territorializing forces in consolidating policy logics and in legitimizing decision-making at the supranational level, while the emergence of “loose” social networking technologies appears to have deterritorializing effects when employed deliberately to delegitimize or subvert socio-political processes across supranational polities.

The phenomenon of growth spillover occurs because of domestic shocks, global shocks and shocks to a foreign country or region, and these are transmitted through specific channels. This study investigates the strength of the economic linkages between Caribbean Community (CARICOM) economies and its main traditional partners, including the European Union (EU-27), and emerging trading partners, such as China, with a view to determining the presence and extent of spillover growth which results from the interdependence among these economies. The paper hypothesizes that the presence of these spillovers can be leveraged to chart the future for the region's integration in the global sphere.

Based on the existing theoretical and empirical literature, a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model was developed and employed to examine the strength of the economic linkages between CARICOM economies and its main trading partners, such as the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and the EU-27, alongside some of the non-traditional partners such as China. This method has been widely used by institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, to profile economic linkages between economies. To this end, the methodology was formulated based on the IMF Spillover Reports which were produced from 2011 to 2015.

The model suggests that positive spillovers are likely to occur from continued deepened integration with the US, EU-27 and the UK, as traditional trade partners, but that opportunities also exist from a deliberate deepening of relations with non-traditional trade partners, for example, China. This becomes even more apparent when CARICOM is separated into categories consisting of more developed countries (MDCs) and less developed countries (LDCs). In addition, from the perspective of any trading partner, such as those in the EU-27, this research is relevant and timely as it contributes to the landscape of literature, which can be utilized for the purpose of negotiating parameters of trade and integration arrangements.

This study adds to the literature on evaluating the direction for deepened integration of CARICOM economies, both with selected traditional and non-traditional trade partners as the region pilots recovery in a post-pandemic global space.

Policymakers can use the results of this study to leverage economic spillovers as a basis for determining which trade partners offer the most significant growth benefits as the region recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic and it will also assist in steering regional integration. This result also implies that over time, the comparative advantage structure of CARICOM member countries' export profile should change to reflect the import profile of its trade partners. To this end, this study can be used to inform and better position the respective trade and industrial development policies of countries in the Caribbean region as they attempt to deepen integration regionally and internationally. From the perspective of the partner, traditional trading relationships such as those which exist with European countries, such as the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement, can be more deliberately utilized given the geographic benefits on offer with deepened relationships with economies in the Caribbean. Further, this research can also be a point of departure for future research.

This study is among the few empirical works that examine spillover effects as a strategy for rebuilding economic growth in the post-COVID 19 era. This study adds to the literature on evaluating the direction for deepened integration of CARICOM economies, both with selected traditional and non-traditional trade partners as the region navigates recovery in a post-pandemic global space.

Accounting for over 90% of goods traded globally, Maritime Transport is undeniably the main mode of international transport for goods throughout the world. Despite the global financial crisis in 2008, growth in international seaborne trade continued, albeit at a slower rate of 3.6% in 2008 as compared with 4.5% in 2007. The volume of global sea‐borne trade for 2008 totaled 8.17 billion tons as estimated by UNCTAD (2009). Maritime transport is more critical to the development of the small Caribbean states than for most other regions because they exist as islands in the Caribbean Sea, and consequently are heavily reliant on foreign trade. However, despite the advancement in the area of maritime transport globally, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) continue to be plagued with high transport costs, inadequate port and transport infrastructure and a lack of coordinated maritime transport policies among others. It can, therefore, be widely appreciated that in order for LAC to achieve sustained economic development there is need for improved maritime transport cooperation in the region. This paper seeks to use the examples of Trinidad and Tobago from the Caribbean and Venezuela from Latin America to examine the ways in which Maritime Transport Cooperation can be enhanced in order to encourage development and growth in the Greater Caribbean region

A growing body of research has identified many barriers (such as education, identification of appropriate technologies, research and development in the indigenous environments and, perhaps most importantly, public policy) to the implementation of renewable energy (RE) programmes in small island developing states (SIDS). This paper seeks to examine the proposition that lack of an integrated RE policy, necessary non‐technical infrastructure and insufficient investment continues to limit the development and commercialization of RE technologies.

The study surveyed literature, focusing on policies for supporting RE and the issues of competition and regulation. Caribbean policies for supporting RE were compared with those in selected countries.

The findings indicate that while undertaking a series of policy, economic, market and research and development (R&D) measures will advance the RE technologies and their deployment, it is also the case that regulatory mandates and financial incentives can lead to the same result.

The study represents a starting‐point for further research into the complicated interplay between competition and regulations in the development and commercialization of renewable technologies.

As we face fundamental issues of alternative energy use across the Caribbean region, the lack of an integrated RE policy, necessary non‐technical infrastructure and insufficient investment continues to limit the development and commercialization of RE technologies. Deeper understandings of this may help governments build a compelling case.

During the period 1962-2001 (9/11), the author identified 25 terrorist acts in the English-speaking Caribbean. Apart from US action in Grenada in 1983, the extra-regional response to these acts was minimal. However, in the aftermath of 9/11, the US has introduced a number of counter-terrorist measures into the region from Washington through such agencies as Southcom, the FBI, the DEA, and the Department of Homeland Security, now including the Coast Guard, to forestall future acts of terrorism. Also the UN, the OAS, and the CARICOM, at the instigation of the US, have encouraged Caribbean nations to adopt resolutions and pass anti-terrorist legislation at the local level in the fight against terrorism. US policy toward the region is based on its own self-interest since it considers the Caribbean its “Third Border,” one that is difficult to close to security threats. In all of this, the Caribbean nations welcome the security, more so because of the incidental protection it offers to their fragile tourist-dependent economies that are sensitive to political and other threats. This coincidence of interest has seen the US merge drug-trafficking and terrorism into one consolidated threat. Traditionally, the Caribbean region has not allocated a large part of its budget to security concerns, but with external assistance, particularly from the US, the region's police and military forces have been called upon to adapt to the global threats of the post-9/11 era by strengthening operational capacity, mission readiness, and intensify regional cooperation. This new thrust also includes making border tightening security measures more comprehensive and robust as well as the sharing of information, including intelligence. As long as the US perceives the terrorist threat a priority, Caribbean security policy will continue apace.

Existing research in firm internationalization tends to adopt the perspective of relatively fixed country specific advantages and disadvantages. However, firms operating from small developing countries may experience rapidly shifting country-specific advantages due to industrial policy interventions. These changes influence the internal configuration and, ultimately, the internationalization paths of firms, a factor that is not captured by current theory. Using a combination of a country case study and nested multiple firm cases, data were collected on how organizations internationalized from Trinidad and Tobago, a small developing country. Unlike the relatively deterministic outward patterns predicted by existing theories, analysis revealed both evolutionary and co-evolutionary trajectories of development. These outcomes suggest that as a country moves to more open economic environment, network connections in the form of supplier and institutional relationships are of increased value for firms seeking to enter external markets.