Later this year Guyana will host the 38th session of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean. This is the first time that the forum will be held in Guyana and it comes at a time when the country is experiencing an expanding international profile, a function of the attention that it has drawn to itself on account of its relatively new-found status as an oil-producing country. Guyana, of course, is already at the centre of the ongoing regional discourse on the need for the Caribbean to significantly shore up its food security bona fides and at whatever juncture the FAO forum is held here the deliberations and their outcomes will draw even greater to the critical role that Guyana will have to play, going forward, as a cog in the regional food security wheel.
When the forum gets underway, Guyana will be playing to a gallery that goes beyond the group of Caribbean Community member countries so that the outcome of the FAO forum becomes important in the context of how the country is seen outside of the English-speaking Caribbean. Among the discourses that are likely to arise at the forthcoming FAO meeting is how the Caribbean is faring in its own push to strengthen its own food security bona fides and, needless to say, any such discourse will bring Guyana firmly into the picture. Whether or not we are prepared to take on that role, the international promotion that Guyana has attracted in recent years, as a major oil-producing country, will bring with it some corresponding responsibilities as both a key cog in the wider CARICOM wheel as well as a likely emerging lead player in the FAO during a period when the wider hemispheric focus is on the strengthening of food security bona fides.
Here, one of the measuring rods that will be used to make a case for the raising of its profile as a member of the FAO is how it fares in the execution of the regional assignment of playing a lead role in the creation of a Food Security Terminal, and by extension, significantly strengthening the Caribbean’s food security bona fides. The most recent portents would appear to suggest that there may be some amount of lagging in keeping to timelines with regard to issues relating to the creation of the Food Terminal. What this has done is to raise some questions as to whether or not the work that is being done on the creation of the Terminal is anywhere close to keeping pace with what we are told is the extent of the food security emergency in the region. Here it has to be said that whatever the challenges associated with the creation of the Terminal, there is no good reason why the people of the region have not been so advised up to this time and why, if the lag has been unavoidable, why the people of the region who are looking to the Food Terminal to help turn their food security bona fides around, have not been alerted.
Here the available evidence suggests that opportunities to provide such an update have been missed and that there can be no good reason (as far as we can tell) why nothing in the way of reassurance has been provided up to this time. To return to the disclosure that the forthcoming hemispheric meeting of the FAO will be staged in Guyana, it should be stated that there will probably be no better opportunity, going forward, to parade the Caribbean’s credentials as a region that is desirous about the strengthening of its food security bona fides. This should strengthen the Caribbean’s bona fides as a region of substance, one which is capable of raising its game to respond to critical challenges, one of which, at this time, is its food security credentials.
Part of the whole process of moving ahead with our regional food security plans has to do with providing timely briefings and updates on key and critical issues as and when the need arises. We should not have to press our governments for such briefings. With the FAO forum reportedly around the proverbial corner, the people of the region should be fully apprised of the status of the food security plan now. This is not the time for evasion and excuses.
