• Latest
Electricity Supply Bill: National Consultation

Coronavirus: The caribbean is the first domino to fall, but there is hope

2 years ago
NDC signals a fresh start

PM Hon. Dickon Mitchell to attend 43rd Caricom Heads meeting in Suriname

11 hours ago
Docked salaries of teachers to be repaid

Docked salaries of teachers to be repaid

1 day ago

Cabinet of Ministers as of 30 June 2022

1 day ago
Auto Draft

8th Chinese Bridge Competition

1 day ago
28 & 29 August RGPF Live Ammunition Training

Live ammunition training 2 July 2022

1 day ago
International Day of Co-operatives 2 July

International Day of Co-operatives 2 July

1 day ago
Traffic Notice: River Road limited access

Traffic Advisory: Oil Spill, vicinity of “1910”

1 day ago
NDC announces 7 candidates

PM Dickon Mitchell’s first overseas trip is to 43rd Caricom Heads meeting

1 day ago
Buy more shares in GRENLEC

New majority shareholder for Grenlec priority

1 day ago
Claims of coronavirus at SGU designed to create fear and panic

Covid-19 update: Grenada Dashboard 30 June 2022

2 days ago
Mighty Sparrow to be honoured with special day in Grenada

Mighty Sparrow to be honoured with special day in Grenada

3 days ago

Update: NAWASA’s water systems

3 days ago
NOW Grenada
  • Front Page
  • Categories
    • General News
      • All
      • Agriculture & Fisheries
      • Arts & Culture
      • Business
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Health
      • History
      • Lifestyle
      • Law
      • Politics
      • Technology
      • Travel & Tourism
      • Weather
      • Youth
    • Sports
      • All
      • Athletics
      • Cricket
      • Football
      • Watersports
    • Community
      • All
      • Tribute
    • Crime
    • Features
      • All
      • Today in History
    • Opinion/Commentary
    • Press Releases
      • All
      • Advertisements
      • Notices
  • Video
  • Notices & Vacancies
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
  • Front Page
  • Categories
    • General News
      • All
      • Agriculture & Fisheries
      • Arts & Culture
      • Business
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Health
      • History
      • Lifestyle
      • Law
      • Politics
      • Technology
      • Travel & Tourism
      • Weather
      • Youth
    • Sports
      • All
      • Athletics
      • Cricket
      • Football
      • Watersports
    • Community
      • All
      • Tribute
    • Crime
    • Features
      • All
      • Today in History
    • Opinion/Commentary
    • Press Releases
      • All
      • Advertisements
      • Notices
  • Video
  • Notices & Vacancies
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
NOW Grenada
No Result
View All Result

Coronavirus: The caribbean is the first domino to fall, but there is hope

This story was posted 2 years ago
28 April 2020
in Business, Environment, OPINION/COMMENTARY
4 min. read
Share

by David Gumbs, James Fletcher & Justin Locke

The global economy is on lockdown and the predictions are staggering. And, there is one regional economy where the long-term realities of the coronavirus are already clear: The Caribbean.

Over the past 3 decades, nearly every economy in the region transformed to depend on tourism, and today the Caribbean economy is primarily reliant on this single sector. The region is also subject to repeated crises, with 10 Category 5 hurricanes hitting the region in the last 15 years, and five of those occurring in the last 3 years.

The coronavirus has caused a complete collapse in the tourism industry and significant contractions in both the agricultural and the distributive trades sectors across the Caribbean. As a result, the region’s economy is collapsing and will likely not recover for some time.

Because of the Caribbean’s focus on a single, volatile sector, it is likely to be the first domino to fall in the post-Covid-19 world. When this is all over, the region cannot go back to business as usual. The Caribbean will have to fast-track its journey toward the twin goals that many of its countries embarked on as a result of the impacts of climate change as well as frequent natural disasters: sustainability and resilience.

As such, any multilateral stimulus should be designed to help the Caribbean transition to a new resilient economy that is anchored in sustainable development. The foundation of the future is clean energy, and on top of this, new diverse industries such as modern agriculture, information technology, financial services, and manufacturing can be built. And there is a clear pathway.

Rocky Mountain Institute commissioned a study to understand the costs and benefits to transition all 31 countries in the Caribbean to 90% clean energy by 2030. If a major capital investment is made, the Caribbean region would save an estimated $9 billion in fuel costs and replace more than 24 billion litres of imported diesel fuel with renewable energy each year. This would translate into valuable savings in foreign exchange for all countries in the region.

It is no secret that Caribbean governments face significant fiscal constraints, and with the impact of Covid-19 that these constraints will become increasingly insurmountable. It only makes sense that the international community and philanthropic sector use this opportunity to inject global public investment initiatives to accelerate project development in the clean energy sector at a pace and scale never seen before. Economic stimulus investments into the clean energy sector therefore present Caribbean countries with an opportunity to:

  • Create urgently required new jobs
  • Reduce electricity costs to attract new industries
  • Improve the competitiveness of agro-processing and other manufacturing sectors
  • Shrink the region’s carbon footprint
  • Decrease leakage of foreign exchange
  • Diminish dependence on imported fuels

In order to achieve this, the international community and philanthropy must support Caribbean governments to:

  • Focus on retooling workers to give them skills needed in the clean energy sector, modern agriculture, manufacturing, and information technology
  • Boost incentives for electric vehicles (EVs) and design policy measures to unlock EV supply chains as well as investment in EV charging infrastructure
  • Forgive overdue electricity bill payments for the poor and local businesses affected by the shutdown
  • Backstop electric utility credit and access to low-interest credit while providing liquidity to government-owned utilities to shore up their finances
  • Create clean energy lines of credit designed to backstop power purchase agreements and capital leases to crowd-in investment in renewable generation
  • Put people to work immediately in the construction sector by undergrounding overhead transmission lines so that they will not be knocked down by the next storm

Collectively, these actions will help create thousands of jobs, reduce regional emissions, and reduce long-term dependence on imported diesel, helping the Caribbean to create a new foundation for a diverse, resilient, and sustainable economy. This may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to demonstrate a new vision for the region’s climate future and become an example for the world — transforming its citizens into controllers of their destiny and leaders of the clean energy era.

The Caribbean may be the first economic domino to fall from the coronavirus pandemic. It can also emerge once the crisis is over with a more resilient future through smart utilization of stimulus funding to unlock rapid, intensified investments to help these important islands on the frontlines of climate change make a full transition to become clean energy economies.

NOW Grenada is not responsible for the opinions, statements or media content presented by contributors. In case of abuse, click here to report.
Tags: coronaviruscovid-19david gumbsdieseleconomyelectricityenergyfossil fuelgrenlechurricaneinvestmentjames fletcherjustin lockephotovoltaicpvrenewableresiliencerocky mountain institutetourismweather
Next Post
Commodity boards say members getting unfair treatment

Commodity boards say members getting unfair treatment

Comments 4

  1. Asa Johansson says:
    2 years ago

    Well written indeed. I agree fully. In addition, this development urges for a modern innovative thinking leadership. A leadership directing at the willingness to change and think differently, and leave behind the business as usual approach. It demands political leadership with a post COVID bottom up of ” we are in this together” approach. Corruption is one key factor to make this development successful (or possible). As (if!) large grants are to be provided in the Caribbean region for this kind of development, it is important that tools are in place to safeguard that these funds are used efficiently. This could be a challenging process in many ways. True leadership is king.

    Reply
    • Anthony Fraser says:
      2 years ago

      I totally agree with both the original post and the first comment made as to the way forward after Covid-19 and to add already to what is said about transparency and accountability have to be paramount in any future new development because for too ofter we are told that we have friends in the international money lending arena wjo will come to our assistance but sad to say when these money do come it is always embedded in total secrecy by thoes who is receiving it and it is not always clear as to what or what projects if any this monies is spent on and therefore as a nation and as a people we are left in the dark simply because transparency and accountability is always not available to the public to hold those in charge to accountability.

      Reply
  2. Thomas Welch says:
    2 years ago

    Your article is very timely but it needed to pay more attention to agriculture. I believe we need to pay attention to organic farming and also to revive the family culture of agriculture.
    I am not sure what you mean by modern agriculture. There are multinational predators waiting to take over our food production.

    Reply
    • The Grand Poobah says:
      2 years ago

      What “multinational predators” (waiting to take over Grenada’s Food Production)? You are absolutely correct that Grenada needs to focus on Agriculture, where it already has all the necessary ingredients for success, except for the progression of woefully incompetent and miss-directed Governments. In view of the woefully inadequate supply, severely limited availability and quality of what now exists in Grenada (just visit the archaic Marketing Board), there is ample opportunity to make a major impact. Recognizing existing attitudes in Grenada to almost any sort of efficient production, why would any “multinational predators” want to inflict it on themselves? BTW All this nonsense about “Clean power” is a pure canard.

      Reply

Comment on post Cancel reply

Please enter your valid email address.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

© NOW Grenada. All Rights Reserved. Published by Aqua Design Inc. | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

No Result
View All Result
  • Front Page
  • Categories
    • General News
      • All
      • Agriculture & Fisheries
      • Arts & Culture
      • Business
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Health
      • History
      • Lifestyle
      • Law
      • Politics
      • Technology
      • Travel & Tourism
      • Weather
      • Youth
    • Sports
      • All
      • Athletics
      • Cricket
      • Football
      • Watersports
    • Community
      • All
      • Tribute
    • Crime
    • Features
      • All
      • Today in History
    • Opinion/Commentary
    • Press Releases
      • All
      • Advertisements
      • Notices
  • Video
  • Notices & Vacancies
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us

Copyright NOW Grenada

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings. Visit our Privacy Policy | Terms of Use.

Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. Visit our Privacy Policy | Terms of Use.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.