From the economic impact of national shutdowns and political turbulence during COVID-19 to the implications of China’s investment in Latin America and the Caribbean, academics from The University of the West Indies and industry leaders have continued to interrogate issues that are critical to the developmental needs of the region.
Thought leaders were provided with another major platform to present the findings of studies and discuss the issues during the 22nd Annual SALISES Conference under the theme, Re-Imagining Development for Small Island Developing States (SIDS): Post-Pandemic Transformations. The 22nd annual conference of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) was held online in partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC).
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual conference was hosted by SALISES at Cave Hill, St. Augustine or Mona, in an in-person setting. The tone of the deliberations was set by leaders within and outside of the academy who addressed the opening ceremony.
Vice-Chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles said the SALISES was an excellent place to plan for the next Caribbean dispensation post-COVID, postcolonial and postmodernity. “Persistent poverty has to be answered with new and innovative insights. This is truly the era of the university, a time to rise and find solutions. The UWI would demonstrate, with even greater intensity, its caring, its commitment and its courage,” he said.
Pro Vice-Chancellor of the Board for Graduate Studies and Research, Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine emphasised that meaningful, forward-thinking, courageous, and interdisciplinary research was needed now more than ever. She said that while SALISES has been a leader relative to its publications and research outputs, this had sometimes waned, and there was a need for renewed commitment, energy and focus. One way of achieving this, she said, was to have a bottom up approach to research with the institution guided primarily by the community it serves.
“SALISES, like The UWI in general, must have its nose to the ground if we are to be on the cutting edge of our developmental needs and be able to feed into the region’s goals. This is the only way we can truly be relevant on the ground. There must be bottom-up research, not simply top-down fed by the donor funders and others. It must be research rooted in the community. Our research road map must be defined by The UWI, by our people. Of course, there is a place and room for externally driven research goals, and we must continue to embrace them in terms of research projects, for example. But they cannot displace our own understanding of what we need to redefine and elevate our own societies.”
Director of the ECLAC Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean Diane Quarless concurred. She said the crisis presents two choices: wait, with the expectation that things would eventually return to normal, or seize the opportunity to tackle issues that have persistently challenged the region.
She added that while there was need for greater cooperation among countries in the South and Small Island Developing States, SALISES “Persistent poverty has to be answered with new and innovative insights. This is truly the era of the university, a time to rise and find solutions. The UWI would demonstrate, with even greater intensity, its caring, its commitment and its courage,” also provided an intellectual platform for indigenous, creative problem-solving. “It is through your relentless research, critical thinking, through talented skills development and policy analysis that solutions oriented strategies, uniquely responsive to the challenges and the needs of the Caribbean, will emerge.”
