of both private and public lands

nice6boyt7

By Dr Edsel Edmunds Enormous international attention is being given to the subject of food security. The Caribbean has joined this chorus while millions of dollars are spent on food importation. At the same time, one cannot help observing in many of our countries, vast acreages of land which are underutilised, growing grass, shrubs, and trees in abundance, in most cases with no use at all to fulfill human needs.In the past, our planners have failed to recognise and give priority to a fundamental tenet of development based upon land capability (of both private and public lands). As a result, large land acreages, our valuable national asset, appear abandoned and are categorised as waste lands.In many Caribbean countries, there appears to be uncoordinated development where lands are left undeveloped or underdeveloped or converted into different types of development unrelated to land capabilities. Some lands ideally suited for agricultural development – plant and animal production – are abandoned or are converted into industrial or tourism/hotel development sectors without a functional integrated national plan.The time has come when we must take a hard look at our development policies and convert our limited land mass into strategic sustainable plans to meet the local and regional needs of our people and to place us in a position to compete in the global marketplace. In so doing, we could drastically reduce our food import bill while at the same time participate in an orderly development of our land resources, particularly in our small island states.Perhaps one of our strategies could be the formation of a national land use/land capability permanent council to include the public and private sectors with inputs from local, regional, and international institutions. All of the above would be in keeping with the basic elements of a participatory democracy and good governance. It would ferment and encapsulate the articulation and formulation of enabling policies, policy planning, and the management of sustainable planes. This would require the understanding and inputs of economic and development institutions and agencies which would be vital to facilitate the process. The participatory role of the elected majority and elected minority (unfortunately referred to as the opposition) representatives of a government, together with the sectors mentioned above would be necessary for success of this proposition.It has been put to me by my skeptical colleagues that, most times countries are guided by the realities of geo-politics and geo-economics, “the urgency of now”, their stages of development and development needs, the survival of political parties and other factors which could make my submission a mirage.This is further exacerbated by the blunt survival mode of the more developed countries which provide enormous subsidies and take aggressive actions (sometimes to the detriment of the less developed countries), in order to sustain their vested interests at home and in the global marketplace.Caribbean countries therefore need to take a hard look at the conversion of waste lands onto productive sectors in an arena of participatory democracy with the application of modern management systems and with the injection of appropriate technologies. The role of technology in development is another area which requires separate focused attention.It is therefore suggested that the formation of a national land use/land capability permanent council or such a functional structure involving the afore mentioned stakeholders in the context of participatory democracy and good governance may be the answer in the short, medium, and long term development strategies of our countries.Dr Edsel Edmunds is a former Senior Research Fellow, University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, Director of Research and Development of the Windward Islands Banana Research and Development Centre and Ambassador of St Lucia to the UN, OAS, and US.