SAMOA Pathway Comes to San Pedro
This afternoon in San Pedro, a regional preparatory meeting was commenced to review what is known as the SAMOA Pathway, short for Small Island Developing States Accelerated Modalities of Action. It is a ten-year program of action for Small Island Developing States, adopted in 2014 in Samoa. The regional preparatory meeting will provide an opportunity for Caribbean countries to evaluate progress achieved in the implementation. News Five’s Isani Cayetano has the following story.
Isani Cayetano, Reporting
Vulnerabilities and challenges faced by small island developing states, a distinct group of countries with several issues in common, are the result of their small size, isolation, limited resource and export base, as well as exposure to global environmental challenges. Those nations, particularly Caribbean countries, are in the process of reviewing progress and evaluating opportunities for sustainable development. Natural disasters are now more frequent and more destructive and are taking a toll on countries within the region.
Dean Barrow
Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“Our natural and planned defenses are no match for the super storms that are the new climatic norms. This underlines the sobering reality of the inadequacy of even our most ambitious actions. These threats to our sustainability as small islands and low-lying coastal states seem innumerable and they join myriad other dangerous represented by, for example, non-communicable diseases and the proliferation of small arms. The scourge of transnational organized crime is not only a citizen security issue, but is destabilizing of our indigenous financial systems and has helped to make us victims of de-risking so placing us in an economic and trade chokehold.”
Adopted by all members of the United Nations, the SAMOA Pathway provides a blueprint for small developing countries to achieve sustainable development.
Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“In 1994, Barbados Program of Action today serves as the foundational document defining the SIDS agenda for sustainable development and it has of course since been expanded with the Mauritius Strategy for implementation and now the SAMOA Pathway. As evidenced in the breadth of the SIDS Agenda twenty-five years since Barbados, the SIDS special case has had to be dynamic as our development challenges have become more and more acute. So the brief has been filed and continuing Caribbean advocacy is full bore.”
Reporting for News Five, I am Isani Cayetano.
