The Courier

View over Port-au-Prince from Bottiliers.

© Debra Percival

Our key focus in this issue of The Courier is climate change in the Pacific. Promisingly, the message is not completely pessimistic.Indeed, Tuvalu, a small country determined to protect itself in any and every way against the threat of climate change whilst holding on to its sheer joy of living, is a real lesson in optimism.

Another reason for optimism is cooperation between the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Group and the European Union in preventing natural disasters. The European Development Days in Lisbon at the end of last year saw the European Union committing itself fully to a loan to aid developing countries in the face of climate change challenges. A loan that will lend much needed strength to the strategies already adopted by the EU Council and the ACP-EU Council of Ministers.

The new EU-Africa strategic partnership concluded in Lisbon at the end of last year, also wrestles with various sources of disaster. Its 20 priority actions not only include climate change but peace and security, democratic governance and human rights, as well as other protective barriers against social, political and economic disturbances. The initialling – even “geographic patchwork” and even if some were eventually concluded without much celebration – of a number of economic partnership agreements between the EU and ACP regions - or individual countries - before the end of last year, showed a realistic attitude by both sides in protecting ACP nations from being cast off from world trade dealings. 

Then, came the crisis in Kenya; a picture postcard country where children filled the museums and whose Nairobi Stock Exchange offered some of the highest returns for investors— to cite just two of its distinctions. Obviously, the finger of accusation has been pointed at certain irregularities in politics and governance as the cause of the conflict. But while this could have triggered clashes, they do not alone go to explain the dreadful violence that has been witnessed by the rest of the world.

The major oversight of building a workable democracy in many countries has resurfaced: the tribe. In reality, there is no tribal problem. The problem is simply in forgetting the tribe. European-style democracy, including that practised by the United States, took account of the “tribal” element from the outset. Not necessarily in the ethnic sense – are Hutus and Tutsis different ethnic groups in biological terms? – but in the sense of belonging to a group. This system provided a counterbalance to the basic democratic ethos of “one man one vote” by creating bodies like the Senate where the minority and majority groups carry more or less the same weight, guaranteeing the protection of the vital interests of the former. If not, the minority would be forever reluctant to vote for a member of another group, whatever the respective merits.

ACP-EU co-operation undoubtedly has the means to reflect more deeply on these matters and to act against other disasters, both natural and man-made.