LAST week’s article dealt with putting the issue in perspective and highlighting how it impacts on the lives of citizens and governments. Building on this, the Green Economy, while in the making for a number of years, the nation and region have experienced a number of elements that today, when put together, seek to realise the required vision. In Guyana, during the Forbes Burnham administration, there was Sustainable Development targeted towards the nation feeding, clothing and housing itself by harnessing its indigenous resources. This programme was embraced by CARICOM to the point where this country was seen as the food basket for its member countries.

FOUR PILLARS
A major plank of the Green Economy is the issue of establishing new industries, but this must be done consistent with international standards and be grounded in the ILO conventions, led by the Core Labour Standards which are considered significant. These standards stand on four pillars: discrimination, freedom of association and collective bargaining, forced and compulsory labour, and child labour.

Over the years, the integration movement has been developed and guided by these tenets emanating from the ILO standards. An examination of the movement of skills and capital in the Region will show that the Core Labour Standards are being used as the base in guiding legitimate actions of states and treatment of citizens when they move from their country to a receiving one. CARICOM has also developed generic laws out of this framework. Some of our own local laws have been developed from these standards.

CARICOM nations have, on some occasions, not benefited from international programmes aimed at enhancing workplace rights, which are human rights, simply because the region is seen as relatively more democratic and inclined to embrace international principles and conventions.

Within CARICOM, there exist a number of regional institutions that are set up either to protect fundamental principles or environmental or natural resources. Among them are Caribbean Public Health Agency, Caribbean Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality, Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute.

Conscious of this development, the current, and any future government, needs to take on board governance in an all-inclusive manner. Already, we have seen establishment of the Ministry of Communities, but while it is welcomed, it must not remain a ministry by name, but must be defined, refined, and developed to meet the needs in pursuit of building communities, rather than handing out house lots and distributing water.
For this ministry to realise its true potential, it requires working with a strong national planning unit which takes into consideration every facet in the society, and it must be able to put together an implementing programme wherein it can guide each ministry in putting the strands together in realising the national goal.

PEOPLE-CENTRED

The shift towards the Green Economy is clearly a people-centred programme. As such, it requires rules and laws established on universal principles, which must be adhered to at all times. Guyana has two pieces of progressive legislation in the form of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Trade Union Recognition Act. In both cases, these laws are there to protect workers from being exploited by unscrupulous employers.

The former Act seeks to protect the physical wellbeing of the worker, and the latter guarantees the worker the exercise of his/her fundamental freedom and right to a trade union of choice and to collective bargaining. Having seen these pieces of legislation at work, it requires constant State intervention to ensure adherence and respect by both the employer and employee, since final responsibility of answering for the conduct of business rests with the State.

It should be said that while government is a country’s largest employer, it shoulders a greater responsibility for upholding laws, since, in doing so, government not only sets the tone for how other employers will uphold their responsibility and treat with workers, but shows recognition that such is an important prerequisite for a stable industrial climate, the success, trade and development of society. This is an area where the Government of Guyana must treat with seriousness, and of which members of the society must accept no less.

Unlike past economic models, the Green Economy is premised and guided intensively by laws, rules, international conventions, charters and commitment. And whereas the recently-concluded Climate Change Summit may not have come out with binding agreements, the commitments given for saving the planet, even though self-regulatory by countries, are to be upheld. Such commitments are based on the understanding that scientific evidence having given rise to concerns about the state of the planet, saving it means it is about saving the people.
To be continued….