LAST week, in the second such event in the past four months, Exxon made yet another discovery of oil in Guyana’s territory, the fifth by the company overall.  One online article captures the excitement caused by the discovery, focusing on an industry analyst firm, Woodmac’s reaction:
“Worth noting, in a podcast shared by Woodmac, Medina, said the whole Exxon-Guyana story was one of the most interesting, at least when it comes to the deep-water segment, given the number of discoveries in a small portion of the giant block.  Also, Medina said that the 2 – 2.5 billion barrel mark estimated by Woodmac comes only from oil. If available gas is taken into consideration, the barrel of oil equivalent number could rise to 3-4 billion barrels.”

There are two perspectives on this.  The first is that Guyana is finally destined to move up the economic ladder with the infusion of revenue from our natural resource.  The problem here is that we have always had an abundance of resources that could have easily translated into wealth decades ago.
When President Granger spoke recently about the curse of the six sisters, our traditional sectors, that particular hex that has faced us has been a combination of hyper-dependency on these sectors with little attention paid towards diversification, accompanied by the dysfunction generated by our ethno-political divisions.

This dynamic continues to pose a far greater threat to our development than the new buzzword term, “Dutch disease,” that has risen in the wake of the oil discovery.
Where the discovery of oil becomes even more complex with regard to our strategy for national development, regards our integration of the black economy as it were into the government’s green-state development initiative.  A key example of the potential conflict would be the recent situation wherein some US $80 million in Norway International Climate and Forest Initiative funding was held back by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) due to Guyana’s inclusion of natural gas, sourced from our oil fields, into government’s green energy transition plan.

In this complex discourse surrounding black (the oil sector) and green (environmentally sustainable economic development), too little attention continues to be paid to another colour – orange; meaning the orange economy, the collective title for economic activities that primarily involve cultural activities and the creative arts.
For example, Guyana’s plans for “achieving green and inclusive structural transformation,” according to the Green State Development Strategy, rests upon four main pillars: resource extraction for sustainable development; sustainable, productive, climate-resilient and diversified agriculture; green, inclusive, high value-adding industrial development; and [an] enabling business environment.  There is nothing there that speaks to creative and cultural economic activity.

This is an unfortunate exclusion on several fronts.  The first is that in economic terms, the orange economy is a burgeoning sector, with growth of 134% between 2002 and 2011, globally.  According to the IDB, “While oil exports as reported by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) contracted 40% in 2009, creative goods and services only suffered a reduction of 12%… The supply of creative goods and services – particularly the latter – isn’t subject to the same natural scarcity restrictions of oil.  Price volatility is not a major concern for Orange Economy growth.”
Moreover, the orange economy is one in which there are no significant intrinsic conflicts with the green economy.  Indeed, planned well, a creative economy lends itself easily to environmentally sustainable development efforts.  Some territories, for example, promote low environmental impact film-making as a strategy to both create revenue streams as well as to promote eco-tourism.
Perhaps, most importantly, the creative industry sector offers self-sustaining solutions for social cohesion, the absence of which has been the main hurdle to our development.  Books, films, dance, the visual arts, photography and, increasingly, videogames do not simply work as economic products, but are in themselves critical tools in engendering dialogue and healing divisions, as well as promoting respect for the environment.  Whether it is Picasso’s graphic and disturbing representation of the horrors of war in his masterpiece Guernica or the film Arrivals examination of the complex interplay between communication and conflict, creativity has always played a central role in healing societies.
In the past five years, stretching across political administrations, but particularly under the APNU+AFC government, there have been literally dozens of consultations on the oil industry.    In contrast, there has been no government-funded or initiated consultation on creative industries development.  Under the previous administration, within the period in consideration, there were two, both externally funded, creative industry workshops for which there was no follow-up.  Copyright legislation, the basic pillar of the creative sector, remains unchanged 10 years after artistes were clamouring for its upgrade as we prepared for Carifesta X in 2008.

There needs to be stronger political will and concrete action when it comes to true, comprehensive economic diversification in Guyana.  It makes no sense identifying the curse of dependency on existing sectors and then creating a hyper-dependency on another, while ignoring another vibrant and contextually relevant avenue.
It doesn’t matter the number of barrels we discover – oil is a finite and volatile resource; creativity, however, isn’t; indeed, the IDB document report on the potential for the orange economy is subtitled, ‘An Infinite Opportunity.’  Going forward, the political machinery in general has to undergo a critical paradigm shift when it comes to mainstreaming culture and the creative arts into sustainable socio-economic development.  If we’re going to be serious about uplifting our economy and creating a functional, cohesive, green society, orange has to be seen as the new black.