Alicia Nicholls
While cricket fans are glued to the upcoming International Cricket Council (ICC) Men’s T-20 World Cup, policy nerds like me have our sights set elsewhere. Over these next two weeks, the Caribbean will host two high-level international conferences gathering together delegates from across the world to discuss issues which are germane to Small Island Developing States (SIDS). In this piece, I discuss briefly what these two upcoming conferences and their themes mean for SIDS.
Global Supply Chain Forum
This week, May 21-24, the Government of Barbados will co-host with UN Trade & Development (formerly UNCTAD) the historic Global Supply Chain Forum. Its delegates from drawn from all over the world and include Heads of Government and other high-level political officials, experts, academics, practitioners and other stakeholders. Its high-level panels will encompass discussions on transport, logistics and trade facilitation for sustainable development.
Issues around logistics and supply chains occupy significant importance for SIDS which due to their high dependence on international trade. Their small size, geographic isolation and climate-vulnerability also generate particular logistics and transportation challenges. As such, these panels will discuss, inter alia, practicable solutions for helping these countries better integrate into global supply chains, and to improve the sustainability, efficiency and resilience of their transportation and logistics networks.
Among the anticipated outcomes will be the adoption of the Barbados Ministerial Declaration on Sustainable and Resilient Transport and Logistics in SIDS which will be presented at the upcoming Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS 4) conference.
SIDS4 Conference
From May 27-30, Antigua & Barbuda will host the UN Fourth International Conference on SIDS (SIDS4) under the theme “Charting the Course Toward Resilient Prosperity”. In addition to the conference, there will be a number of side events, including the SIDS Global Business Network Forum 2024 immediately preceding the conference.
In 1992, SIDS were declared a special case for environment and development at the UN Conference on Environment and Development. Barbados hosted the first Global SIDS conference in 1994. Subsequent SIDS conferences were held in Mauritius (2005) and Samoa (2014). As with each of these decennial conferences, the main outcome document will be a new Programme of Action for SIDS for the next ten years.
Topics on the agenda include climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean conservation, disaster risk reduction, access to finance, debt sustainability, and the overall sustainable development of SIDS, according to the host government of Antigua & Barbuda. As such, yet again, the Caribbean will play a pivotal role in shaping the SIDS agenda for the next decade.
Why it matters
The Caribbean’s role in hosting these conferences brings both practical benefits in terms of tourism arrivals and spend, and international recognition. It places the region at the heart of global discussions and decision-making on issues crucial to SIDS, giving us a hand in crafting our fate. With the UN SDG deadline just six years away and climate challenges intensifying, these discussions are even more urgent now than ever.
Exciting times await us! We at Caribbean Trade Law & Development will be in attendance at both and look forward to bringing you, our readers, updates from these two important events.
Alicia Nicholls, B.Sc., M.Sc., LL.B. is an international trade consultant and founder of the Caribbean Trade Law & Development Blog www.caribbeantradelaw.com.