Georgetown : President David Granger will be serving as the Co-Chairman of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) when the CARICOM Heads of Governments Summit meets in Guyana in July.
“Well the most important aspect of CARICOM is that we are a collection of small states and my main concern is the security of small states … particularly, in terms of climate change; the danger of rising sea levels because although Guyana is not an island, we have a low coastland and we are susceptible to rising sea levels,” President Granger said.
The President made this disclosure during a brief exchange with media operatives, earlier today, after the Opening Ceremony of the Annual Police Officers’ Conference at Eve Leary.
President Granger will be sharing chairmanship with current CARICOM Chairman, Prime Minister of Belize, Mr. Dean Barrow, since Dominica, which was next in line to assume chairmanship via the rotating chairmanship mechanism among Member States, cannot, at this time, assume those responsibilities.
The tiny Caribbean island suffered massive losses after Tropical Storm Erika battered it for five hours last August. Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit had declared a disaster and appealed for international aid after noting the loss of 20 lives and physical damage to the island that he estimated “could set the country’s development back two decades.”
President Granger said while the safety and security of small states has always been a central focus, environmental security and disaster management will also come under the microscope.
“The Americans, as you know, are heavily involved in the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative and I too, am concerned because the reason why we have to have the CARICOM Summit here in Guyana in July is largely because of the damage done to Dominica last year. We can’t prevent the storm, but we can respond more quickly and more efficiently….We want to see the Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Management Agency … empowered to respond more quickly to those disasters in the island states, so those are my main concerns. So small states, environmental security, food security and also the ability to respond to environmental threats will be my focus,” President Granger said.
The President recently returned from the Twenty-seventh Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, which was held in Placencia, Belize, where he lobbied for the security of small states and for the Caribbean to remain a zone of peace.
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