REGIONAL academics have been drawn together to add valuable input to the recently launched and inaugural working paper series: “Disruption or Development? Exploring the potential impact of oil exploration in Guyana”.

This working paper series comes from the Department of Government, Sociology, Social Work, and Psychology under the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI)- Cavehill Campus, in Barbados.

The paper was launched via an online forum, on Thursday, and featured short presentations from the academics who would be contributing to the series on Guyana. These academics were: Political Scientist, Ralph Premdas; Trinidadian Economist, Dr. Roger Hosein; Political Scientist, Dr. David Hinds; Economist, Tarron Khemraj; Sociologist, Dr. Duane Edwards; and Economist, Dr. Samuel Braithewaite.

According to the Head of Department, Dr. Wendy Grenade, this working paper series forms part of the department’s larger vision to engage in academic discourse that would contribute to research and outreach efforts.

“We know that Guyana is a very interesting place, it’s rich for study, it’s a minefield for those of us who do work in politics, economics, and sociology,” Dr. Grenade said. “It lends itself to deep interdisciplinary discourse.”

The 96 viewers (at peak viewership) of the virtual launch, mostly consisting of tertiary students and other regional academics, were able to get a preview of some of the research and findings submitted by the contributors.

All of the contributors agreed that, fundamentally, there is a damaging and multifaceted ethnic conflict in Guyana which impacts development in the country. This conflict, Professor Premdas contended, encompasses a continuing struggle for the distribution of resources among the ‘ethnic split’.

This resource-driven conflict was echoed by Professor Khemraj, who advanced that the current constitution needs to be amended, or even outright re-written, to allow for some power-sharing mechanism. In this vein, Dr. Braithewaite posited that the decentralisation of governance and the devolution of decision-making should be prerequisites for the system of shared governance.

While many of the contributors argued that there is an interplay with the new oil and gas industry and the ethnic conflicts (which transcend to political conflicts) in Guyana, Dr. David Hinds posited that oil has not created any new scenario for the country, as far as development and disruption are concerned.

“We have always heard that Guyana is full of resources and oil is just another resource… the underdevelopment we see in Guyana has to do with the inability to arrive at a national consensus and national solution.”

Dr. Hinds also agreed that there is some amount of resource-driven conflicts, but also there is a continuous struggle for the preservation of dignity and the renouncement of dispossession by the major ethnic groups- the African Guyanese, the Indian Guyanese, and Indigenous People. These tenets, Dr. Edwards highlighted, however, are among the factors of the wider cleavages- structurally and institutionally- in Guyana that lead to the separation of the groups. And, the separation, he posited, allows for political, cultural, or economic elites to easily mobilise these groups.

Meanwhile, Dr. Hosein kept his presentation grounded in the economic implications of oil for the Guyanese economy- with lessons from the failure of Trinidad and Tobago. This is an area in which he has done extensive work in and urged that Guyana pay keen attention to its inherent deficiencies and be very wary of the volatility of the petroleum sector.

Beyond the discussions had during the two-hour virtual session, the papers submitted will be published on the Department’s page on the UWI Cavehill’s website.

“We really look forward to rich discussions as we seek to understand the problematic of Guyana, which is part of the problematic of the Caribbean itself though with its own Guyanese flavour,” Dr. Grenade said.