Almost 100 years ago, an army convoy travelled from the White House to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, a distance of nearly 2500 miles. Post WWI, a clutch of American generals, nervous at Japan’s growing territorial ambitions, wanted to test how quickly they could mobilise troops from their eastern bases to defend the west. According to one account, “it took the convoy 58 wrenching, wretched, miserable days to cross the country ‒ for the simple reason that beyond the Missouri river, there were essentially no roads at all. Tanks got stuck in sand, bridges collapsed; armoured cars rolled down hills and into ditches… there were accidents, injuries and near-mutinies. They crossed the country at an average speed of less than 6 mph.” Accompanying the convoy was a young army major charged with observing their progress and keeping a diary. The experience left an indelible impression on him. In the 1950s, as President, Dwight Eisenhower would launch the interstate highway system which in turn built on a detailed network of 200,000 miles of interconnected primary highways ‒ the Pershing Map ‒ submitted by another famous general.
America’s road network took over half a century to plan and implement. Somewhat earlier in England, with a rapidly urbanising workforce in mind, the Victorians built networks of railways and sewers. Trains introduce a quite different dynamic in transport (compared to vehicles) with the potential for greater speed, greater economies of scale in the conveyance of goods and passengers and the structure of scheduled services. Guyana’s infrastructure pays testament, in part, to our chequered colonial past. Some aspects of our coastal infrastructure such as the wide main roads in Georgetown’s town centre and the Dutch kokers for drainage date back several centuries. Others, such as the railway service from Georgetown to Plaisance (1848) and the one to Parika (1912) were more short-lived and perhaps echoed similar initiatives in England. At its zenith, the colonial transport network was a sophisticated system of scheduled and inter-linked services geared to maximising the extraction of raw materials and crops from parts of the colony. Yet, historically, our transport networks have often had a slightly provisional feel to them, as if they were constructed for short-term use rather than long-term gains. For example, we have had trains, ferries, trams and buses and lost the will or the means to sustain them.
Consequently, Georgetown may be one of the few capital cities in the world to have endured a marked shrinkage in the quality and variety of its transport network in the last 150 years. Today there is no publicly funded system of transport left in the capital and, in terms of infrastructure, it is an object lesson in what to avoid rather than what to emulate. In fact, it is possible to conceive a retreat en masse from the flood-prone garbage-strewn parking lot that our capital city has become to the urban settlements of the hinterland. On current form though Lethem could easily develop into an equally dysfunctional city, with many of the flaws of Georgetown and fewer attributes. Warning signs in Lethem include an insipid infrastructure, a lack of basic facilities and services and a flood of imported goods on sale in the large stores there.
Let’s shift our focus from the pitched battles of the moment to contemplate the future. Not next year, not the next election, but a generation hence. What sort of public facilities will be required in 25 years or 50 years? What legacies, what public goods, should we try to bequeath to our grandchildren? The pitched battles of the moment ‒ Amaila Falls, Muri and the Parabara road, the Marriott ‒ stem from three main sources. First, a signal failure to reach a consensus on the nation’s long-term prospects and interests. Second, a lack of transparency in government policy and process. Third, a failure to adopt a workable formula or set of core principles to safeguard the nation’s interests when negotiating public-private infrastructure initiatives. What type of economy do we envisage a generation hence? Will it continue to be based on the extraction of resources and mass production of traditional crops or will it focus more on adding value to our raw materials, diversifying our products and the provision of services? If we cannot conceive the general direction of travel, we will never agree on the particular routes.
Nowhere is this ambivalence more obvious than in the hinterland where, it seems, anything goes. Some hinterland communities use (as a source of food and water) rivers polluted and terrain pock-marked by mining. A 1000 acre rice farm using large quantities of pesticides abuts Moco Moco, a small indigenous community struggling to establish viable agricultural projects (a mere 30 acres of rice) of its own. The Moco Moco Falls hydro-electric plant languishes and rots a decade after its collapse; promises to repair it have evaporated. Even as Lethem enjoys an upsurge in business from the influx of miners, the Takutu Bridge and the Linden-Lethem trail, it still lacks reliable electricity and water supplies, all-weather roads or refuse collection covering the entire town. Its Chamber of Commerce pleads, repeatedly, for the laterite trail to Linden to be repaired and upgraded. A talking point for decades, the trail was cut several years ago. Talks to upgrade to a tarmac-surfaced road are, apparently, still underway. The trail runs partly through virgin forest ‒ now vulnerable to activities such as hunting, illegal logging and squatting.
In any calculations of infrastructure and transportation networks, a shared vision of social and economic development is essential because the former underpin, in large measure, the possibilities for the latter. Railways, roads, airports, water and sewerage systems, broadband and energy transmission systems provide the context for ‘growth’. If the nation does not share a vision for the future, decisions proceed on a case-by-case basis. And, as an Oxford economist remarked recently, “Case-by-case too often turns out to be ditch-by-ditch… Ask a politician whether an extra runway at Heathrow or Gatwick is a good idea and they reach for the political map. Ask them what sort of infrastructure the economy will need in 2050 and there is a greater chance of agreement.” Eighteen months ago the IMF organised a regional meeting in Trinidad to address this topic. The keynote speaker pointed out that “the most successful countries in economic terms are almost invariably those that have adopted a long-term strategy on a consensual basis and stuck to it.”
Poundbury, a 400 acre site on the edge of a town in Dorset, England is an example of holistic long-term planning. The local council allocated land for a housing development. In 1988, Prince Charles engaged an architect and a property developer to devise a master plan and to include artisan-style small businesses in the equation. Construction began in October 1993 and continues 20 years later with the same architect and developer overseeing the project. Poundbury looks like a traditional English town with winding cobbled streets, stone cottages and Georgian townhouses, yet it represents a revolution in planning and beckons an era where small communities are, once again, not designed around cars. Social housing has been integrated into the design (and it looks exactly the same as the private houses). An anaerobic digester provides enough bio-gas to supply 4000 homes in winter and 56,000 homes in summer. There are 150 acres of open space and 140 businesses, employing 1660 people, currently trade. When completed in 2025, Poundbury will house about 5000 people. Further additions will include a supermarket, apartment buildings, a tower, a hotel and restaurants, to form the long-term heart of the settlement. The juxtaposition of small businesses and houses and the retreat from car-dependent planning have proven so successful that ‘mixed-use’ schemes in two recently regenerated areas of London, Kings Cross and Whitechapel, have imitated this design.
There are two clear paths for the hinterland. In the first, we allow many more mega-farms and large-scale mining and further sideline local communities. In the other, we embrace a pace, tone and scale of change set by those communities. In this alternative vision, Lethem in a couple of decades might be a cultural and a commercial hub with a thriving service economy and scheduled bus or train services to outlying villages, Linden and Georgetown. Given its proximity to Brazil, it might boast language schools (to teach English to Brazilians, Portuguese to Guyanese and to revive some Amerindian dialects), a cluster of village-run shops and micro-businesses (to market local handicrafts and to sell tours, guided walks and village stays to Brazilian tourists), a cultural centre where Amerindian music and dance groups perform, an art gallery and art school, world-class research facilities in archaeology and biodiversity and an agricultural research unit where local farmers learn about new crops, new uses for current crops and alternatives to pesticides.
We are not short of (low carbon, national and other) strategies, plans and projects in Guyana. There is also some evidence of long-term planning even among the private sector such as the recently announced partnership between Iwokrama and a local firm to harvest timber on a 60 year cycle. What our plans lack is coherence ‒ a single meta-narrative that binds them ‒ and continuous cross-party commitment and support. We lack a clear idea of and agreement over what steps are necessary, what facilities are required, to create conditions for a stable and prosperous future for all Guyanese. How do we reconcile the damage (to the environment and public health) caused by extractive industries (such as mining for bauxite, gold, minerals) with sustainable long-term development? Are mega-farms a desirable part of the country’s long-term agrarian policy? How can we better configure our public-private partnerships? How far should a community’s views and preferences influence policy? These are the sorts of questions on which we need consensus, clear thinking and a consistent policy of action.
