UNCTAD conference here to make case for aiding island nations

A strong message is to be sent to advanced economies and multilateral institutions about the kinds of challenges that continue to bedevil small island developing states and how they can work together to help address them when the 15th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is hosted here later this year, diplomats said Thursday.

During a media briefing, officials expressed dissatisfaction with developed nations and multilateral organisations for not doing enough to address major challenges linked to climate change, debt, inequality, structural development, poverty, health and education, which they said were affecting small island developing states disproportionately.

Ambassador Chad Blackman, Permanent Representative of Barbados to the United Nations in Geneva, insisted that small island developing states continued to face “a range of structural challenges and geophysical constraints” that were linked to their small size and vulnerability to economic shocks.

He argued that the Caribbean region continued to grapple with the impact of the climate crisis and a range of natural hazards.

But he quickly pointed out that while UNCTAD can continue to play a critical role by helping small island developing states build resilience and productive capacity, it will take advanced economies and international organizations to also play a major role.

He singled out areas such as maritime transport, climate change and environmental sustainability, debt vulnerability and debt suspension, structural transformation and economic diversification and threats to multilateralism and the multilateral trading system, as some of the areas to focus on during the conference.

Another official, Richard Kozul Wright, Director of the Division of Globalisation and Development Strategies in UNCTAD, said there were some reasons to be optimistic that progress was being made in achieving some of the UN Development Goals and addressing issues that affect developing nations.

But he was less optimistic that advanced nations were likely to work closely with developing nations coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said: “Are we going to build back together and better or are we going to build back separately or not at all? The chances at the moment are in favour of the latter.

“If we look at the kinds of pressures that developing countries have faced since, and as a consequence of COVID-19 – the squeezing of fiscal space, the failure to distribute vaccines on a sufficient scale, the lack of policy space to address the kinds of shocks that Chad [Blackman] talked about – I think there are real concerns that we need to discuss and share with each other, and that will be the aim of UNCTAD 15.”

He said while the G7 and G20 group of nations have “promised a lot” they were yet to deliver on some of those promises, and some of those delivered were at best “pitiful”.

“So there are real concerns that the multilateral systems that will be necessary if we are going to build back better has neither the ambition nor the mechanisms to deal with the kinds of problems that many developing countries are currently facing,” he said.

“So there is a whole set of issues of reforming the international architecture that UNCTAD has been dealing with for a long time that need to be on the table. That is particularly true of the debt issue. I think the need for some kind of new principles; new mechanisms to deal with sovereign debt problems is more urgent than it has ever been.”

Wright argued that in order for developing countries to achieve the first four SDGs by 2030 – no poverty, zero hunger, quality education, good health – they would “either have to borrow on a scale that would shift their debt to GDP ratios well into the triple-figure and for some countries over 200 per cent of GDP”.

He added: “Or, they have to grow at something in the region of 10 to 11 per cent per year to mobilise domestic resources. That is not going to happen either in most developing countries under the current arrangements. So without a significant amount of debt relief over the coming years, the SDGs are simply not deliverable for most developing countries.”

Postponed from 2020, the UNCTAD 15 conference, which will run from October 4 to 7 will consist of formal and informal sessions, and provide a platform for dialogue between nations about economic and developmental challenges and global policy options, among others.

There will be a general debate for representatives to register their country positions and a series of high-level sessions and ministerial roundtables on priority themes.

UNCTAD’s Acting Secretary-General Isabelle Durant said there was an urgent need for a “spirit” of international and multilateral collaboration.

Briefly praising the host country for its efforts in sourcing COVID-19 vaccines, she lamented that the distribution of, and access to vaccines have been “highly uneven”.

Durant said: “I hope for some optimism even if the situation is really difficult. We have also to address specific vulnerabilities not only for your region, which is very specific but also for less developed countries, middle-income countries and specific problems in different parts of the developing world.” (marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb)