China opens Blue Silk Road to Caribbean

The Caribbean’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in Chi­na’s Blue Silk Road ini­tia­tive may be the key to un­lock­ing new as­pects of tourism, trade, and cli­mate-change re­silience.

The need for strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Chi­na and Trinidad and To­ba­go, in par­tic­u­lar with re­gard to de­vel­op­ing deep-wa­ter re­sources, emerged as a cen­tral top­ic of dis­cus­sion dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the event “Chi­na Caribbean Co­op­er­a­tion Amid a Chang­ing World” held at the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness in Mount Hope, last month.

Dr Char Yu, gen­er­al di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of Latin Amer­i­ca Stud­ies at the Chi­nese Acad­e­my of So­cial Sci­ence, prompt­ed the dis­cus­sion on ma­rine pos­si­bil­i­ties that could be ex­plored.

“Both sides, Chi­na and the Caribbean coun­tries, can ad­vance the con­struc­tion of the port and the lo­gis­tic in­fra­struc­ture to help build a trade loop be­tween the At­lantic and the Pa­cif­ic Oceans. You know, in the past, as a ma­jor re­searcher in Chi­na, as in the Latin Amer­i­can stud­ies, we thought a lot about how to con­nect the At­lantic Ocean and al­so the Pa­cif­ic Ocean. So, if we achieve the in­fra­struc­ture and al­so the in­sti­tu­tion­al build­ing, we can ex­pand our eco­nom­ic achieve­ments a lot,” said Yu in her speech.

She added that Chi­na was in­ter­est­ed in help­ing small is­land de­vel­op­ing states de­vel­op these re­sources while al­so strength­en­ing the re­gion’s cli­mate adap­ta­tion and dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

Dr Yu con­tin­ued, “Mean­while, the co­op­er­a­tion in ma­rine re­source pro­tec­tion, off­shore aqua­cul­ture and sea­wa­ter de­sali­na­tion aligns with the con­cept of the Blue Silk Road, of­fer­ing new de­vel­op­ment path­ways for re­source-con­strained coun­tries. If you look at the num­ber, the da­ta from Chi­na, you will find it’s a big num­ber. It’s just be­hind the Unit­ed States. But if you di­vide it by the pop­u­la­tion of Chi­na, it’s a small num­ber. So that’s why we pay so much at­ten­tion to green de­vel­op­ment, be­cause the nat­ur­al re­sources are al­ways very lim­it­ed. The Caribbean is a key re­gion for im­ple­ment­ing the glob­al ini­tia­tives.”

This sug­ges­tion was of spe­cial in­ter­est to ma­rine sci­en­tist and chair of the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre, Dr Ju­dith Gob­in, who said there were sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion in deep-sea ex­plo­ration, an area in which Caribbean coun­tries pos­sess lim­it­ed ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“Quite right­ly, we need to build ca­pac­i­ty,” Gob­in said, “We do have a fair amount of ca­pac­i­ty. We have in­sti­tu­tions like the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs and Fish­eries, UWI. We’ve been do­ing a lot of re­search, but the new fron­tier is the deep sea, and we need as­sis­tance in go­ing out in­to the deep sea.”

Gob­in ex­plained that deep-sea ex­plo­ration has been be­yond the reach of Caribbean na­tions due to its cost.

“As you know, it’s quite ex­pen­sive, and I’m very aware that Chi­na has its own deep-sea ves­sels, re­search ves­sels. We don’t. His­tor­i­cal­ly, we do not,” she said.

Gob­in ex­plained she par­tic­i­pat­ed in re­search ex­pe­di­tions con­duct­ed in T&Ts wa­ters in 2013 and 2014 aboard the ex­plo­ration ves­sel Nau­tilus, which pro­vid­ed a glimpse in­to a large­ly un­known ecosys­tem ex­ist­ing be­neath the sur­face of the Caribbean Sea.

She ex­plained that in­ter­est in the deep sea ex­tends be­yond sci­en­tif­ic cu­rios­i­ty and in­cludes grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing ma­rine ge­net­ic re­sources and po­ten­tial fu­ture deep-sea min­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to Gob­in, very lit­tle of the world’s deep ocean has been stud­ied.

“We don’t know much about the deep-sea en­vi­ron­ment. It’s just 0.001 per cent of the glob­al deep sea that is known glob­al­ly, and let alone in our back­yard. We don’t know a lot,” she said.

“From that ex­plo­ration ves­sel, the trips in 2013 and 14, just one col­lect­ing over 72 hours in T&T, we col­lect­ed over a 150 new species, that is species of or­gan­isms that are new to sci­ence.”

Econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan ar­gued that the blue econ­o­my could be­come a cen­tral pil­lar of fu­ture Caribbean de­vel­op­ment strate­gies, but al­so stressed there would be oth­er av­enues that could be de­vel­oped apart from in­fra­struc­ture, as she sug­gest­ed Caribbean des­ti­na­tions could at­tract a greater share of Chi­nese trav­ellers.

“Chi­na is one of the largest coun­tries in terms of pop­u­la­tion. We’re talk­ing about peo­ple-to-peo­ple. Tourism is im­por­tant in the re­gion. How do we bring more Chi­nese tourists to the re­gion? A sim­ple one is that if we could just bring a tiny per­cent­age of what your trav­ellers are, you go to the Unit­ed States and you see so many Chi­nese vis­i­tors, how do we bring you here?” she asked,”What do we need to do in or­der to in­crease the num­bers that we are hav­ing? We al­ready have some in­fra­struc­ture. How do we grow that and ex­pand that ex­po­nen­tial­ly?”

Tourism ad­vis­er at the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States, Shanell Suther­land, fur­ther ex­plored the top­ic of tourism, but ac­knowl­edged that aware­ness and con­nec­tiv­i­ty re­main ma­jor chal­lenges for the Caribbean.

“I would say, first­ly, it’s about com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the point. It’s about cre­at­ing aware­ness. There are mul­ti­tudes of peo­ple in the world who still don’t know some of the is­lands in the Caribbean, some of the is­lands in the coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca. So it’s about cre­at­ing that con­duit. We live in a world where we’re more con­nect­ed than ever, but some­how it’s the flip­side, we are more dis­con­nect­ed than ever,” said Suther­land, who hoped that Chi­na’s ex­per­tise on dig­i­tal process­es could be quick­ly adopt­ed.

Suther­land said many po­ten­tial trav­ellers still know lit­tle about the Caribbean de­spite the in­creas­ing avail­abil­i­ty of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools.

“Util­is­ing those dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion chan­nels to open a con­duit, mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, pub­lic re­la­tion cam­paigns where we can cre­ate that ger­mane aware­ness first­ly,” said Suther­land, who al­so hoped that Chi­na could help bol­ster the Caribbean’s warn­ing sys­tems in the face of cli­mate change.

“Us­ing the ocean as a re­source, we are with­in this re­gion, and we ex­pe­ri­ence in­tense cli­mat­ic events. As we’ve seen just last year with Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa and there’s a mul­ti­tude that take place in the re­gion. So build­ing on the point of ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, one of the ar­eas that I think is a clear route for col­lab­o­ra­tion would be in terms of in­vest­ments in ear­ly morn­ing sys­tems and the train­ing and the hu­man ca­pac­i­ty and de­vel­op­ment to work those sys­tems, to un­der­stand those sys­tems and to utilise those so that we move from just re­act­ing to the dis­as­ters but be­ing very proac­tive, be­ing able to iden­ti­fy when and then cre­ate sys­tems,” she said.

The pan­el, which al­so fea­tured for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Pro­fes­sor Win­ston Dook­er­an as well as Chi­nese schol­ars Dr Xing Guangcheng and Dr Jing Lin­bo, al­so dis­cussed po­ten­tial trade routes be­tween T&T and Chi­na.