THE 43rd CARICOM Summit in Suriname on July 4 and 5 will be the first face-to-face meeting among the region’s leaders since the COVID-19 pandemic and it will address all the usual revolving-door matters of regional concern and interest, such as agriculture, border issues, climate change, community governance, engagement with stakeholders, food security, health, security and trade.

But this also being the first summit since February’s Ukraine War, the ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and the 26th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Kigali, there will also be several items not on the official Paramaribo agenda that will surely cloud discussions on the 11-item agenda.

CARICOM citizens who have never bothered to follow the annual July summits will today and tomorrow be as eager as keen observers of developments among them, to hear and see what the region’s leaders will say and do about addressing the immediate problems of escalating food and fuel prices caused by the continuing global COVID-inspired supply-chain problem, and the universal effects of sanctions and responses on access to essential grain and protein supplies for millions in poor and developing countries.

Every leader heading a CARICOM Prime Ministerial Subcommittee (PMSC) on a designated regional subject of import will report in Paramaribo on developments since the 2021 virtual summit hosted by Belize, and Guyana’s President, Dr Irfaan Ali is ready to report on the CARICOM Agri-Food Agenda, and latest developments in the ongoing struggle to lower the region’s US$5+ billion food-import bill by 25 per cent by 2025.

With Belize, Haiti and Guyana identified by Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) President Dr. Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon as the only three CARICOM nations already producing over half their food needs, he also feels the region’s leaders should up the ante and revisit and upgrade (possibly at this summit) the reduction target, from 25 per cent in 2020, to 50 per cent by 2030.

The leaders will be expected to find, even invent ways to ensure that the region produces more food to possibly eventually lower prices and ensure regional food security in the (possible but hopefully avoided) event that imported food supplies simply stop landing at Caribbean ports.

Regional developments since the Summit of the Americas, including results of the Colombia elections and interesting geopolitical outreaches occasioned by the ongoing effects of the constantly changing global situation on national social and economic realities, will also require that the leaders dig deeper and wider than ever, to search for and find solutions, as well as the best ways and means, to message the seriousness of today’s challenges, alongside the myriad opportunities accompanying them.

Guyana has, since August 2020, done most of all it can to demonstrate this administration’s seriousness about ensuring the nation’s new wealth is not squandered or wasted, but instead shared across counties, regions and communities, irrespective of political representation.

Caribbean neighbours have also become more convinced, since 2020, that President Ali means what his government says when it assures the region that it will work with all persons to better improve national cohesion and regional cooperation, the latter already being experienced by Barbados, Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago, with their early investments in various aspects of public and private-sector cooperation.

But most of all — and now more than ever — the leaders will be expected to leave Paramaribo next week after two short days of long discussions, offering light on new and impending initiatives, as the community continues to grasp with and adapt to the challenges of ensuring survival, while battling to live and fight on with every new global challenge not of its doing but continuing to land on its doorsteps.