 Welcome to the studios of the Government Information Service, GIS, and the National Television Network, NTN, Tugane, in Kastri, St. Lucia, as you will see from our wonderful backdrop. And it's our second interview in as many years with Dr. Virginia Leon, the President of the Caribbean Development Bank. And today's conversation will be based on his presentation, the presentation of the President to the 53rd Annual General Meeting of the Caribbean Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank and its directors here in St. Lucia, and that meeting started on the 20th of June, and it was part of a series of events involving and revolving around the 53rd AGM, and welcome again, Mr. President. Thank you so much. And your presentation, the second that I had heard, like the first, was heavier on facts than figures, and therefore, in my view, much more understandable by being much easier to follow by those who, like me, are not that good at figures, but more at facts. And the address of the Caribbean in the current context in 2023, a year after, several years after the COVID pandemic at a time when climate change is changing worse, the effects are also worse. And the entire international movement does not flow in our direction, and your address asked for a new paradigm, a new thinking, a new set of approaches to all of the issues we mentioned. But you put it within the context of a new development paradigm, and you actually identified a tripod, three sets of definite proposals. So perhaps we could talk about, start up our conversation from that standpoint. Why do you think we need a new paradigm starting with a new definition of development? In fact, thank you, Carl. Maybe it's good to think about this as where we are today is, at the same time, a snapshot of where we were yesterday, and equally an opportunity of where we need to be in the future. And so that confluence for me is always the appropriate way to start thinking about things. Because as you say, today we have essentially three things of yesterday that is combining to tell us where we are now. I would say we had the structural legacy issues of all of our development problems and challenges before COVID. Then you had COVID that layered on top of that and added more. And then you had the Ukraine tension war that was layered on top of that. And so we are at the point where did we inherit, but we have added to our challenges and the reaction of the world, just our governments. The reaction of the world to the worsening, the layering I talked about, the worsening of our situation is not necessarily what it was at the time when each of those events occurred before COVID, immediately after COVID, for that matter, during COVID, post-Ukraine war. And so when we think of where we are today and the world talking about a geo or, if you want, poly crisis, with all of those layers, the reaction of governments is different because they themselves are equally in that very poly crisis that we talk about. And so our lens, since I spoke to you, in a sense, has changed. What has not changed is the challenge of tomorrow, where we need to be and where we need to be is clearly a function of what we can do based upon where we are today and the means at our disposal to get us to where we want to be tomorrow. But as I said, the landscape has changed both in intensity and in reaction today, where it was a few years back. And so the challenges we face are even greater than where we were when we last spoke. And so when I say we need a new paradigm, a new way of thinking, the question really is are the tools that are being discussed now, the tools that we believe we have adequate fit for purpose enough to get us to that point that we talk about. And so we start from that as the first position to say we need a change in paradigm. The paradigm for me boils down to one simple idea, which I talked about in my speech at the Board of Governors, and that paradigm is what exactly is development. And so while I think most people, informed academics, policy makers, international institutions, have agreed that development is very wide, they have sought to measure development by a proxy. And that proxy in general is GDP, a gross domestic product or gross national income of a country. And so all of our measures, all of our policies are definitely focused on how do you increase GDP. And it's a standard narrative of all governments. Every year they take great pride in saying by how much did they grow. But because you have linked GDP with development, and your focus is on GDP, then you keep making not only the mistake of saying you are developing because you are growing, but it also means you are equally making a mistake that the policies that you are driving or using to drive GDP clearly cannot be the appropriate policies for development. And so when I talk of this change in paradigm, it is to recognize that we need to, what I say in regular nice terms, measure better so that we can target better. How do we measure better? We need to now see how better to measure development. So if we have a better way of measuring development, then we can target that development better through the appropriate sets of policies. And so the tripod that we talk about at the bank that captures that process is one which says what exactly is the challenge that you're trying to establish? So that gives you the definition, a measurable definition of development. Take that into one, objectives that can be measured at certain points in time to indicate how you are advancing in that development space. And if you have those objectives, then you end up with three things. One, what investments you need to undertake to be able to make them fit for purpose and for the objectives you're trying to attain to get you to your development objectives. The second is how much do you need? What financing arrangements do you need that are not only adequate but at the same time affordable that will allow you to make those investments such that you can get to the objectives of question? And the third is even if you have the money and you know the investment, can you execute? And that tackles the issue of capacity, implementation capacity. And so it's when you bundle those three things together, then you end up with the ability to be able to get you to that point of development outcome that you'll be looking to measure. So that's the framework which we have distilled further to say everything we do, everything we do that meets that triangle to get you to those development outcomes in principle requires one of three things and that's the tripod that you refer to. The first is you need that paradigm shift, a different way of thinking, conceptualizing what development means and how you get there. The second is the policies. You need to have now a certain wider set of policies that tackle more than GDP but tackle all of the measures of development that you are talking about. And the third is because it is so big and there's so much to happen, you cannot do it on your own. So you need to anchor this on partnerships and the partnership side that we were pushing in a very big way at the annual meeting, we can capture by the phrase sharing to grow. Because that's the only way I think our mindset, our mindset is one where we can grow as it were, holding what we have, what you have. You restrict and constrain how much you can grow. Whereas if you are willing and open to share, as you engage in this process of growth, you will find that sharing allows everyone around you to grow and it will read down to your benefit and your growth potential will be so much more. And that happens at every stage in the process. So we capture that trilogy by the first part measure better, to target better. That's your paradigm shift. Having adequate and affordable finance which was the theme of the thesis in terms of having now the policies in the financial space, in the broader economic development space and then the partnerships through the sharing to grow concepts that will in principle then give you your best fighting chance of moving from where we are today to where we need to be in the future. But we don't have a point I have made many times and I'll repeat. We do not have the luxury of time and that is why we need to recognize the urgency. Because in the two years, two years that we, since we met, so much has changed that even what we were contemplating then and what we need to contemplate now has changed. But you cannot say you need to wait for another two, three, five years to begin the process. You have to start now. The key is to anchor that process on a framework that itself is not changing. That allows you to be nimble, to adapt, to embrace change, keeping your eye on the price and keeping your eye on the price is knowing what development means to you. That is your nofsta. We should not be allowed to lose sight of knowing what your development means to you. And it is not GDP growth. Because development is wider, it's a larger slice, an integrated slice that puts people first and foremost at the center. And it is certainly something that I contemplated while covering your speech, following it and taking my notes. You were in my case preaching to the converted. I have long held a similar view on GDP by virtue of other countries having raised it mainly at discussion level and not at the macro level. But we also have a reality where, for example, you have indicated that the message to foreign member countries is that we need to act now and together. But we're also dealing with, the CDB is an institution that represents mainly governments. Governments and institutions tend not to think the same way. And what I heard you saying was let's go back to school on the whole issue of GDP. Let's go back to the drawing board in terms of defining development. But you made another key point. We have to share to grow through partnerships, but we don't have the luxury of time. Do you think we have the luxury of time that will be required given the urgency of now to reexamine the issues that you have identified? That's what bothers me. The urgency of now and the availability of time. Reexamining does not mean let us review and review and review until we agree. But you're actually saying let's change our yardsticks. We are saying let's change our yardsticks today. And I think we are at a point in time where we, at least on the direction of change of that yardstick, and given the urgency of now, I think we have no other choice but to start the process. And I think I can say categorically that at the Board of Governors meeting, there was full support by Governors to allow CDB to continue that directional change of using and adopting a different yardstick. Now the yardstick that we are looking at is not to get rid of GDP. Let's be very clear on that. We are not saying jettison get rid of, forget GDP. What we are saying is GDP is not adequate for at least our purposes. I believe for every country, but at least for our purposes, and why? Because GDP as a measure, as it is developed and has been developed over the last, say 50 or so years, 60 years, focuses on the economic value under the system of national accounts, the economic value that is produced in a country. That is defined typically in terms of what is called your production boundary. And as we very well know, production boundary does not involve even for that matter certain elements that are not included, like your informal activities, it does not measure certain things that do not count in economic production, for example, the state of the country in terms of your social development, doesn't measure yet things like the impact of climate change and what does it mean, doesn't measure yet the state of your institutional capacity and so if all of those things are important for development, then the point we are making is focusing on GDP on its own does not come close to measuring the north star of development that we need because all of those need to be included in development. So we have advanced this by saying our countries clearly have two issues that are pertinent to our development in the future that need to be incorporated. The first is vulnerabilities. Now our vulnerabilities broadly are of two types. You have vulnerabilities to natural hazards, whether they be the hurricanes, the St. Vincent type volcanoes, even things like drought that may impact us. You've had the pandemic, for example, these are, as it were, natural hazards that impact us and so we are vulnerable. Vulnerability, let's say susceptibility. It is something that can happen, something we are prone to observing and so we can attach some degree of probability to it and say based upon the past there is a likelihood, a chance of being impacted by that and so we can measure it and say vulnerability today is high, especially at this time of the year, all of us are in the hurricane belt, but that is only one slice of the story and we need to add it because the fact that it's a likelihood means that the ability, and we know that to be for sure, the ability of countries to grow the GDP when you are in a vulnerable state at least means you will have the potential of volatility up down because we know it. Today you go forward, hurricane hits, the next day you fall back, 40%. Exactly. We say you need to add vulnerability on top of GDP, but we make an additional point that depending on the type of shock, and I've only talked of natural, there's also the economic shocks like your war on Ukraine or your global financial crisis or something happening in the US economy that causes us to see supply chain issues. When those happen, they equally disrupt our ability to manage that GDP that we are talking about so depending on the type of shock when it occurs, what matters in our opinion is not so much the vulnerability of yesterday because what was a probability yesterday becomes a reality when it occurs, the storm hits you or doesn't hit you, it crashes and damages everything in its path or partly, or the impact of the COVID decimates activity. So it's an event, but that event has impact and the impact which will vary in intensity depending on the type of shock and the severity of the shock will determine it takes you to recover. And so this principle of recovery after a shock is captured in what we call resilience measures. You can only be resilient if you have an ability to recover, get up after you've been struck down in a way that allows you to continue to advance to the end goal. Remember that's where we are, that's our nobster. So the only way you can get to an end goal is if you have resilience because that is what allows you to build back and go beyond and so in our mind that resilience is different from the probability, the susceptibility associated with the different ones we are talking about. And so we want to add that as an additional layer on top of vulnerability on top of GDP. And so when you add those three like three building blocks from GNI or GDP plus resilience we end up with the potential of making a mapping that to get to the nobster, to get to the nobster of development outcomes, we need a broader measure that includes all three things. And by extension the new paradigm that we talk about means I need policies that grow GDP, policies that reduce vulnerability and policies that enhance increased resilience so that combined and integrated I can get to my nobster of development outcomes. That is the eventual paradigm that we are talking about. So it is inadequate but not to be gotten rid of. We need to augment it and we have the framework to augment it but we can start now and we can start now not necessarily at its highest point of perfection but with adequate increments to be better than the GDP or GNI on its own so that we can have a better chance of getting to the nobster. So that is the beginning of when I say the urgency of now means we need to start but it is not constrained by the fact that you do not have to do the procurement on everything you get. As long as each of the blocks in vulnerability and resilience are over the GNI so that you are advancing up that step then your chances of getting to your nobster are definitely going to be better and with a greater chance of getting to where you need to be which is development. I think correct to say that quite a lot of that came across in the appealing aspect of your address where you had to ask your directors let us agree. Yes. Also you have the I think you put it across in my mind very well on the climate change issue and let me quote some of what you said. You said that in the past year the bank committed more towards climate change initiatives mainly in energy and infrastructure and has now adopted a climate finance target of 25 to 30 percent of its own resources towards climate change adaptation and mitigation by 2024 which is up from 11 percent, up 11 percent over 2021. Now that is impressive and inspiring but in the absence of the delivery pledges that have been made by the North particularly the G7 entities the countries that have been largely responsible for the acceleration of climate change invariably you will have attended in your long careers many conferences where pledges are made and a year or two or a decade later we're still waiting for delivery. On the issue of climate change our resilience and our ability to survive and to act and grow and share together largely on the climate change issue depends on our ability to convince donors to deliver on the outstanding debts for example I think the phrase we have used there's a particular phrase we have used in so far as calculating the environmental damage, loss of damage, climate justice etc. Again we are talking here about the need to move with time GDP replaced a previous yard stick we are at a stage where you have asked for agreement on the things that have changed between GDP and delivery on climate change promises and where does that leave us as a region in so far as other borrowing or borrowing member countries adopting the same approach as the CDB of increasing your national commitment to the various funds that will be required in that new definition of development. So you have to bear with me a little because you asked a lot is that in that space but maybe I want to make three points the first point is that something we've been making all along is that development development should never be viewed as a slice in fact the whole idea of the paradigm shift that I talked about where I said GDP was inadequate is in itself a manifestation of looking at development as a slice because you are focused on GDP as a good proxy whereas we know it is not adequate so we should be looking at development as a totality a holistic paradigm a ecosystem that says to be developing or to attain development you need not only the economic you need the social you need the environmental you need the institutional and you need those to be able to integrate in a way that preserves the definition of the system of development. I think you put it best when you said where no part is left behind and we are all a sum of different parts so that first point that first point and I want to link that to the concept of urgency that first point says because we need to address everything not necessarily all at the same time but because we need to address everything it is incumbent on all countries to do in my mind two things start you have the capacity and the ability to do right second thing that word is continue going forward those that have the means to help to help as much as possible to get you to do what you need to do the statement you made about countries not providing or making pledges presupposes that the first part of my start today to do what you can do and have the ability to do can only occur pledges are met the pledges in my mind assistance to be had from others but that should not prevent you from putting in every effort of what you have the means to do today okay there's a big distinction here and so urgency of now on the let's do do something we can all do something but second we can do it better more effectively to get a impact we can do better together we can do better together okay so for us to do now what we have the means to do and do it better if we can work together as a region first and foremost but continue to pile as much pressure as we can on those that have the ability to assist to assist us to get even further than what we can do on our own that's the second part I want to make and the third is when we say we want to increase our climate finance footprint it is not that we should see it strictly as pure climate now there are all ways of measuring how much finance is going specifically to climate but recall that climate is not again a slice climate is linked when a hurricane hits you it doesn't only hit your economy destroys livelihoods it causes displacement of communities it causes in some instances mental trauma it causes health hazards down to even potentially education stoppages like we had in COVID not that COVID was a hurricane but the point is that all and link together in this bigger construct of development the way I like to explain it is that small island states like ours the majority of your boring member countries we grew up knowing two seasons rain and sun right decades later we have what we used to be called tidal waves and our tsunamis and we have to cater for elements of environment and climate change and all of that whereas before we just had hurricanes yes rain and sun so within the context of that evolution in our having many different parts and not just rain and floods because today we have to also look at the other aspects which we never looked at like drought and explosions and so on so I thought I'd throw that in from the standpoint of people being able to to relate to these are experiences we've gone through and equally to add to the point you've made as you start to measure climate change it is eventually the accumulation it is not the one-off event because the fact that you've had multiple multiple hurricanes or impact of drought that has changed or the slow concept of let's say higher temperatures that have not only changed agricultural productivity and sea level rises increase in water temperatures changing even the viability of your fishing supplies all of those things in the name of climate have been added on an accumulated over time so when we say climate finance it is not just climate finance it embodies mitigation it embodies the adaptation it embodies the loss and damage impacts that we are talking about it embodies prevention disaster management both before and when an event occurs and so talking of the increasing effort of going funds even that may be a little on the conservative side when you measure when you measure all of the impacts we are looking at in the climate space and so what we like to do in fact is to point out that the focus of the bank and I'll give you a couple of examples has been to focus more on integrated development projects whereby a project that may not sound like climate has a climate component and so we might strip some of that out and add it for purposes of measurement and say this is related to climate finance but it's a bigger issue than that so and I'll give you the example of one of our largest projects now the St. Vincent port rehab they're building a new port in St. Vincent with the main goal of let's say improving overall efficiency of cargo and movements of goods and so on across St. Vincent with its trading neighbors but that was not just a port project it included a certain degree of renewable energy usage built into that particular not just building a new off includes climate resilience so that you now see what happens in the impact of future changes in climate entering that space but equally there were social livelihoods that were impacted because of now that were bringing in of the new port how do you now relocate those people make their lives better is all included in that project so at the one hand we are looking at renewable energy climate resilience social resilience and economic resilience all built into one single project so that that's sort of like one one example that we can we can talk about solutions will relate to that because this podcast series when it was developed in the post-1970 period it moved from being a wooden wharf with North Wharf and South Wharf one for cargo and young for bananas but as importing and exporting grew and will trade took a bigger role as we became independent the expansion of the port replaced communities like Conwy foie show etc those communities had to be relocated but in the absence of planning the communities were relocated just like they were right to other areas so you have moved one community of problems to another area what you're saying in terms of Saint Vincent is that it would take all of these experiences into consideration correct correct and so and I use that to say that the focus on integrated project design is a very important element of that very paradigm shift that we are talking about that it is not just only treating projects as a narrow slice but you look to widen the scope to capture as many elements of that development paradigm as you possibly can so another area for example is just looking at one of the things that are big to us food security as you know in the region we focused on looking at that but should it be just production and the answer to that has to be a categorical no because having planted as long as you have the London you can plant there has to be what is the educational element in terms of your research that can now help that process going forward in terms of being able to design certain varieties of grains or seeds that can withstand the new higher climate temperatures we will have tomorrow as we if we are stuck if we are stuck in yesterday's agricultural mode without bringing in that climate change impact we will find in another 10 20 years we will be stuck equally you can make the point storage how do we store the foods if we don't have the means to maintain appropriate temperatures we may be looking at again spoilage of significant quantities is there room to have an embody clean energy whether it is solar or in the case of a guy and I may be more gas so that is clean doesn't damage the atmosphere can that be wrapped into part of that value chain in agriculture that we are talking about third even if you have storage what types of standards are you going to use and it can be something simple as not just your fight or sanitary but your packaging when do we move away from plastics to some other bio degradable element and do we have the means to do that should we be waiting on an external power to tell us how to do this surely our universities must be able to start advancing that and create as it were economic industries at the same time to meet the very we started with food security remember but food security has knocked back to renewable energy has caught into education has looked at impact of climate change has talked about economic diversification and manufacturing advancements it hasn't even reached your supermarket shelf supermarket shelf will determine or be determined by the mindset of our people are they willing ready to let go of the natural preferences for overseas food to domestically grown food and we know that's an issue whether people prefer homegrown rice for example versus imported rice from Thailand and that's something that's there the mindset of our people we need to be able to change that we can all see this as part of that food security issue that we are talking about who controls that in terms of the firms large small MSMEs small farmers how do they get to choose what's your overall governance structure embedded within that one food security issue that needs to be brought together to get you there and then after you've grown it since every country cannot grow it do we have the ability transportation wise to move that good before it gets perished or inappropriate transportation facilities to the other countries that are not as blessed in terms of a land space now that tells you now transportation logistics or what I like to call connectivity becomes an important ingredient as well as the climate and the education and the social psyche and mindset and governance and all of the regulatory elements all to handle the one thing food security which that is in my mind how we should be looking at development and here again we're talking about the changing of the all having to do with the taste and the power of advertising the power of lobbying food security is the extension of food insecurity exactly and therefore I remember and I have written about it several times a session that you addressed with the then chairman of the board of the eastern Caribbean development banks and which is five minister and finance minister who was not yet had not yet assumed the chairmanship of the CDB but between then and now that has happened but back then a year ago you were appealing to youth and young people to look at the need to revisit with innovations in mind some of the things we have taken for granted the use of aloes in health foods the use of Caribbean products from coconuts to fruits in you know as an ingredient in elements and you were inviting young people to begin to be innovative in not just science and technology but to look at everything from the water we drink to the food we eat and the clothes we wear for your 53rd AGM there was another special session that brought together youth did you leave the AGM with a feeling I know you said that your directors you feel they agreed with what you asked them to agree to with the paradigm paradigm for the new paradigm and did you get a sense from the meeting with young people that they are prepared to shift their emphasis from seeking and education overseas to staying home and helping to build capacity resilience and all of that on the basis of the new paradigm of science and technology today allowing them to access information much easier than anybody else on planet Earth has ever had before yeah the youth fire forum we had was not specifically targeting that that question that you you raised but I think it is fair to say that there are as many young and young for me is not crown age young for me is in a particular area and so we've used the phrase not youth but future leaders because future leaders can be 40 and 50 as well as long as they they have the potential and are in a readiness state to assume leadership and there may be some at 20 that are ready to assume leadership so it is for me more how do we get those young future leaders ready ready and that readiness involves partly this mental shift and the mental shift I think should not be an us against them we should not be together we should not be inward and say we will only stay home because going out doesn't allow us to contribute and it should not be we need to go out equally to get the experience to come in because that world early history we live in our I think in my perspective in a in a global space that almost has no boundaries when it comes to knowledge acquisition knowledge discovery and knowledge transformation and I use that to say that is the outcome of the digital world that we are in there is no necessity as demonstrated by COVID why a solution in the diaspora living in New York cannot vision of a developing Saint Lucia and contribute sitting in the home in New York to that development of Saint Lucia IT allows it IT allows it there is no reason why you cannot be sitting in Saint Lucia developing in IT device and IT platform or software that can be used sold exported to somebody in Australia so the boundaries that we had one of space two of distance to move things and free of reach in terms of your capacity to reach and expand markets has almost disappeared so we cannot even again in my mind hold on to the idea that we have limited market size we don't that market size limited by our minds our what I bounded imagination bounded says I'm already putting limits our unbounded imagination can take us to anywhere we want in the current environment what I think we need to do is to recognize that that digital world but any shadow of doubt the digital world of tomorrow can only be used to great effect if we embrace it and embrace it fully and so from my vantage point every government should now see the benefit of embracing and going full steam ahead on digital platforms and not just digital platforms by way of backbones I'm talking now the use of digital transformation in every every aspect of our lives down to the education system that should allow us to see that the use of digital and let's just take it a little further even AI how do you embrace artificial intelligence to a luster quicker more nimbler in the production of digital products that can in principle allow you to grow and get rid of the constraints of small size equally small size as landmass should not be an impediment either it's an impediment it's an impediment if and only if you see production as being physical but what if production is not physical and you embrace digital production or let's call it digital services then it doesn't matter how big we are because everything is stored essentially in the cloud and everything is stored in the cloud and the cloud is unlimited and our imagination is equally unbounded then what is the necessity of embracing we are small in land size it doesn't matter one individual can have the intellectual might and power of one million people and if you embody that with the appropriate infrastructure there the sky essentially is the limit and if you then say let's harness all of that intellectual might of our people wherever they are in the world and focus that on helping develop and grow that particular segment there's no limit in my mind again of how far we can push the boundaries but it calls for you know I keep making that point cause for changing the way we see ourselves the way we the paradigm of what is product what is our advantage and what we should be pivoting on in a world of tomorrow not a world of today in a world of tomorrow but I want to I want to come in on a troublesome issue that has been troubling me in so far as the globalization of the digital age and its application of digitization to education I do not know whether in assuming that digitization can be applied across the board beyond boundaries across territories and horizons from this standpoint that it all has to do with from my experience and our experience in St. Lucia the capacity of everybody to access digitization now the two main service providers in St. Lucia carry out annual surveys and one of the latest ones I read and figures remained in my mind 18% and 20% I might use it interchangeably but we have let's say 20% of our persons who have access to broadband but out of that 20% who have access to broadband only 18% use it for information and for the uses we're talking about so in the delivery of your digitization approach to what extent are you able to measure the effect of the response to that I thought I should show that in because it worries me about where everybody said if you're not on Facebook then you know it is a fair question but we need to we need to distinguish two sides of the story the first is where it goes back to the question of knowing your noff star in development and in my mind without the shadow of doubt if I can use a hundred percent and use it tomorrow's world tomorrow's world embracing a digital space that's the first point I want to make now between where we are now and where we need to be which is the passage of time the development path and development trajectory we may very well be at 20% penetration but the mistake that we would make I don't want to say we are making the mistake that we would make is to assume that our capacity to become 100% compliant has to be left has to be left to the whims anything that is I think a mistake we should be turning it over on his head and say as a development objective if we are at 20% and we shouldn't say if we know that but our future is dependent on us being at the hundred percent then that urgency of now that we talked about at the beginning necessitates that we need to put in place the design the effort the funding to get ourselves ready in other words we need to make our capacity and dodging us we we start with it in the reverse way we say our capacity is fixed because it is fixed namely we are 18% 20% penetration I don't see how we can adopt a digital transformation as a goal but notice what I repeat that again because our capacity is 20% I don't see how we can adopt digital transformation as a goal that is the mistake I'm saying we should not be making we should not make that we should be saying given our goal is because of and because we are at 20% we have no choice but to but to implement the capacity whether it is in the establishment of broadband infrastructure of changing our education system to allow us on how to use this over the next 10 years so that kids who enter kindergarten by the time they leave secondary school into a level of college or CXE they will in principle be fully confersant equally that the workplace requirements 10 years down the road or to be such that our curricula our pedagogy should already have switched so that by the time we are there we can be not at 20% penetration but at 90% effectiveness not even penetration okay so that's the design of development policy now that is not your GDP policy it's not your GDP policy because your GDP will be how do I put your fiscal and your monetary to grow because I want to measure GDP so we need to broaden that space but with an eye on the price and abolish abolish the idea that our constraints our vision we need to say we need to say that every constraint we can establish need to be now reverse engineered as an element of policy to change our capacity and therefore get us to that promised land that we are talking about that's the fundamental shift in how we look at development certainly and in terms of taking that at a regional level within the context of the changes that have been taking place the effects of the change in geopolitical economic global world order on small island developing states and developing countries like you've pointed out is it's more accelerated as time goes by and therefore the region but also nations have to respond accordingly and earlier I was making the point about the way in which unfortunately nationalism can trump regionalism when push comes to shove at the regional level we need not go into the historical factors that have indicated that but certainly I feel that the current crop of political leaders in the region most of whom today went to the same school University of the West Indies have a greater level of a common denominator in understanding that we have to swim together or sink or drown together so is it a situation where for example Guyano in its new paradigm as a boring member country you can easily find yourself in a situation as a bank with a member country a boring member country that is more fluid than the bank itself but with the political directorate that is closer to the bank's thinking than under the colonial period. Guyano has for example yes they are the fourth largest non offshore is set to soon become the richest country in South America but as I often say to people these are projections like you were saying where they will be let's look at where they are now because there are people who still ask why is Guyano still borrowing money so all this to come to the thing of carbon credits carbon credits is a new approach that Guyano used to attract funding by selling its carbon credits to investors in energy not every small island can talk about selling its carbon credits but if the region as a region decides to get together and add up whatever it is adds up to the cost of carbon credits is that something that the bank would would would would see within the context of the new development paradigm in terms of a united approach to energy so there are two two things maybe we can touch on your question suggests and if I don't talk about to remind me the first I think is the principle again of partnerships and partnerships this time interpreted as regional cooperation and integration because that's that's a partnership based on based on the very notion the very idea that individually individually we can do well but if we work collaboratively together we can do better and so the very push that we've been talking about on making regionalism cooperation in the regional space alive is maybe the foundation of that very point that you are saying is there room for the specific application of carbon credits now it doesn't even necessarily need to be at the level where each country may have the ability to have carbon credits but what if we can develop knowledge develop expertise that can be such that we could say for all countries in the region that wish to explore because they have the means explore the idea of carbon credits they can have access to services provided by a common unit let's say the bank or whoever else so that they would not be negotiating not going into this new or without the relevant knowledge that that's sharing of information services that can help promote the carbon credits we talk a lot about the large ocean states which is the only one thing that is common across all of our countries in the region why can't we explore and spend the time now the ocean and carbon sink that's the case then it would surely make a lot of sense to bundle not only resources but the use of those resources and technical knowledge and know how to be able to say how can all of us benefit in unison in unison from say the deployment of this five ten times the size and mass of our countries that's water that we can use the Bahamas as we know is using seagrass because they have it but is that the only use of marine space or ocean elements that can be used as carbon if we are not as let's say endowed as your Gyanas in terms of landmass that have or Suriname that have dense forests that can act as carbon sinks what about the small islands that don't have that mass but maybe have oceans is there a way we can start thinking about that but it boils down to one phrase cooperation collaboration and seeing our joint destiny improving if we that's your sharing to grow element that I want to I want to bring back on the table but with one additional twist and you touched on it when you mentioned the various heads at least going to the UWI there's something that I think we need to think a little about and it's linked to the whole regional collaboration integration space and that's the principle of sovereignty and independence and you mentioned it says nationalism is typically trumps regionalism and the question in my mind is why it is it's quite clear you cannot have absolute nationalism in terms of pure sovereignty and at the same time talk about sharing regional ecosystem and at the same time say you want the regional good to be better than the individual parts something has to give way in the process and that I think is maybe the conversation we should be having what is the appropriate definition of sovereignty constraining ourselves by adopting definitions of sovereign states which if you recall what I talked about previously would have made a lot of sense in terms of physical mass and boundaries but when you don't have those boundaries anymore should we be rethinking what sovereignty should mean and by extension regionalism becomes an extension of your own boundary to embrace and compass the totality of the region what does that sovereignty mean relative to the national sovereignty how much do you give up in the betterment of the whole but that presupposes you are putting value on the whole that is larger than the value you would have had if you were on your own but that implies that the very principle of sovereignty the very principle of independence which carries individual responsibility and joint responsibility needs now to embrace that what I can say impossibility of squaring the circle of the three elements that we just talked about and so in very issue of mindset change development paradigm change where does regionalism rise where does it rise and when it rises to that level the question then becomes how much of the sovereignty that we know of and we all accept and every head should be proud of ought to be and I'll use a strong word sacrificed for the better good but we can only we can only embrace that if we know the noff star the noff star of development outcomes is going to be better through the principle of the whole the sharing to grow once we accept that then it becomes quite clear logically we need to work backwards what's the design that will enable that noff star so a large part of this for me and we say what do we mean by development has to embrace that very fundamental line of what is sovereignty and you know we we are there because unfortunately we have all embraced and we should the principle of independence what exactly is independence independence is is it gaining sovereignty control of your affairs control of your affairs that responsibility to deliver has the silver lining of how does that delivery change if I have to be working together call it a different interdependency but when we each of us I think went down the independence and the sovereignty and the constructs of those that we inherited from the noff and I wouldn't say did I know we did today have we stopped to think that those let's be blunt imports of structures that defy or define sovereignty and independence are those fit for purpose of the necessity of regional constructs that are even essential for delivery of the noff star the development outcomes and that brings me to the issue as we begin to get closer to summing up a question that I've always wanted to put forward particularly post-ukrain post-covid post-ukrain situation and that is reconstructing our revisiting of our education processes are we at the stage now we have to stop thinking north south at the stage where we have to continue thinking first world and third world richer and poorer so Arthur wrote in the 60s about the agony of the eight decades later is it the same agony that is facing affecting what used to be the eight which would be much more now if we look to add the non-independent territories that all fall within the definition of Caribbean which goes beyond Karecom which goes beyond the individual regional entities but for a wider purpose let's say all the countries washed by the Caribbean so do you think that our reeducation needs to take into consideration what you said earlier about not letting size be a small size be a limit yeah I definitely believe that is the case at two levels the first is if you think of how our education system is it is not necessarily geared towards learning I make a distinction it's not necessarily geared towards learning what we again inherited in terms of subject matter subject matter nation for it's just like the GDP vulnerability story while we issue of subject matter assimilation what I think will get us creation of where we ought to be is developing skills of inquiry skills of discovery and skills of problem-solving I use that to say for me that's the foundation that should be from kindergarten not to cxc or university but lifelong learning from literally cradle to the grave now if we if we take that as the foundation on which is going to occur and that will include not only the subject matter the execution through things like your problem solving but equally the adaptation from learning mistakes and successes to life that you are a perpetual mindset now of education which is very different from our let's learn the subject matter become an expert in one piece of something for a period of time work retire as opposed to learning foundations of knowledge foundations of knowledge which can be applied in whichever field that we want allows us to be almost nimble adaptable we can switch from one field to the next because the subject matter is not the beginning and end it is only an application all I need is to pivot but I would have learnt the fundamental foundations of inquiry discovery and problem-solving if we do that and change it and embrace the idea of lifelong learning we can change that whole education system that we talk about so that's one dimension the second I think is the fact that we continue to believe in single mono lingual expression I is equally clear let's just take our hemisphere is equally clear that again in today's day and age where I do not need to travel to be in a different way is being spoken there is nothing which says we should continue to be teaching in St. Lucia only English you've heard me say this why don't we embrace quail there's nothing preventing us from saying at least in St. Lucia and among quail speaking countries in the region that all of our kids from beginning to end not replace English but embrace learning quail in a common vernacular common syntax common let's say writing style that everyone can read the particular line and now can communicate across the quail speaking countries in quail that automatically gives you an expansion of market because all it takes me is the ability to write in Facebook a message in quail and something that I am working on now reaches the quail speaking world instantaneously I get around my narrow village market by just simply being able to do that why then can't we extend that wouldn't we be better off if we had the entire region and the region for me is starting let's say Mexico all the way down to the northern parts of South America your Colombians all the way let's say to Brazil northern shoulder what if we said this became a multi-lingual hemisphere sub hemisphere where every child school would be conversationally not necessarily certified conversationally fluent in at least let's say for languages English live quail for now that's maybe smaller English French Spanish Dutch maybe even Portuguese now you would argue well what are the requirements of that I would say not that much because you can have again with your digital connectivity you can have a Spanish speaking Dutch speaking Portuguese speaking master language programs wherever they are they can teach almost the entire region simultaneously at the same time and we are in the same time zone but if we take that a little further and say okay so now we can speak and we can all converse just think of the potential for trade for commerce for employment again in a digital space that opens up immediately because then I can write I can market I can advertise I can sell my knowledge my skills and what I'm doing in any of the languages but you can take it to the next level and say okay so now your conversational those who want can potentially be certified get a CXC type idea but then if you make it a simple line of saying universities in the region as part of the graduating requirements must teach one course a core course capstone course in at least two languages I think you last I heard has now embraced that idea of two languages but thereabouts but supposing you made that the requirement then every graduate of UWI automatically not only can converse day-to-day but has the ability at the professional level in their field communicate professionally in at least two free languages now it may take 10 15 years to get there if we start now do I have to start with that now but think of the Caribbean in 15 years time every child who entered school kindergarten can speak three languages not different five three every bachelors that would have come out I can speak economics marketing politics international relations whatever science chemistry in three languages sufficient to now say my market my domain is not my 180,000 people in St. Lucia but 15 and if you add the broader Latin American space 400 million people I just think of the transformation of a simple idea let's introduce it at school conversational doesn't add much because I invest in my broadband and every country has blanket broadband full stop I can get a native speaker teacher in any of those countries to teach all of my children natively doesn't add much okay yes you need some support in terms of one or two people helping but our AI systems can already once you deploy them help you with intonation pronunciation cross check what you're doing give you feedback and get you to where you need to be without having a physical body okay but you need the noff star and you need a starting point and you need a starting point now not tomorrow now that's the urgency of now that we are talking about and some of the things we can do today not waiting until you get the help and the pledges that we were talking about starting with what we have with what you have and what you can do now now my penultimate question before that I'd share with you that in my more recent discussions with fellow advocates for change Caribbean change whenever the issue of access to beaches it comes up which comes up every year everywhere my often say that I would rather our objective rather than access to beaches in front of hotels that's what we're talking about but I would rather know that we adopt a policy at the regional level that after 15 years we want to know that every single Caribbean person who's born can't swim that's a great point just can't swim that's a good point you know then you could talk about where you want to swim with us in front of a hotel but don't tell us we cannot and it is in that context I want to go into another issue that is very close to me and to the region and that is how do you quickly put this in place that every child or adult for that matter every citizen to learn to swim yeah it's not only is it a safety issue and the potential saving of lives and so on but that I don't think is a very big thing to do no why can't we agree to adopt that yeah because I'm most most mothers particularly first-time mothers in the Caribbean would walk at you telling them to drop the child in a pool of water but they'd be surprised to see the child trying to swim yeah almost instinctively it's like putting a telephone a cell phone before a one year old six months old baby they immediately push their fingers ahead with a smile or the little kid you see now two years old that knows how to tap an iPhone or an iPad without any knowledge or any education they kind of have that instinct yes my granddaughter never forgets to remind me that I have to make the transition to the digitized age but then I said since you have the micro trips in your blood I rather you know take it from you all the time but the issue I want to go to quickly is the issue of reparations which caricum governments agreed on in 2013 and in the 10 years since then the issue has globalized this is another issue that carry comrades and which has outgrown the region from the standpoint it is localized across continents Europe Africa America the Americas and the Caribbean and what we have is in that 10-year period the biggest problem we've had is to assess how much we're old end of the 10-year period a study group has come up with a figure of over 100 trillion dollars owed to the Caribbean and the Americas the Caribbean and the Americas in 1939 it's Arthur Lewis wrote his first seminal work called labor in the West Indies which has been adopted by caricum in 2020 as the blueprint to for what I like to call the the economic aspect of of reparations from the historical standpoint of Arthur's document blueprint template being adopted by caricum since 2020 and three years later we now have a figure by an international an international body and with King Charles who is saying he's willing to research the role of the royal family the king of the Netherlands is saying the same Belgium they're all saying let's talk reparations let's talk money even though we haven't apologized or agreed on any sum should reparations become achieved there will be an economic aspect is the bank involved in any way has it been called upon to offer suggestions as to how to approach this issue because apart from the political aspect of reparations there is the most important the economic aspect which would require as caricum has agreed that the money don't go to governments or to the pockets of individuals who can prove their their both right to Africa but that that money should go to the region and one sees the Caribbean Development Bank naturally placed to be a part of that mechanism so if you have could you tell us what the thinking is if you haven't the CBB been a proactive entity are you thinking of that possible reality down the road yeah no we we are not part of that broader conversation that you you have mentioned I guess partly it's been in the political stroke academic advocacy space and even measurement space trying to put a figure to it but at the same time I would think we are in the space let me draw the parallel for you we are not calling it reparations if you think for it well it aligns exactly to the thought leadership ideas we have been expounding let me the need for an off-star exactly is development with where you are today brought a framework if you think of reparations in the way at least I understand it there's the issue of let's go back to Serafa 200 years of I think that's the number that's the numbers that I remember a conversation with with Sir Henry some time ago 200 years yes 200 years of labor that was either unpaid or inadequately paid if you put a number of slaves across the space let's say I don't know how many you know that number better than me 2015 million that 200 years over 15 value and we can make the argument that that value that was denied to the colonial masters at the time and therefore buttressed the opportunity their wealth etc and so you can think of this as a pure economic value but I think the bigger issue which is maybe where I think Serafa's mind was because he did say if I recall correctly we know the colonial masters we did not pay that money I mean that was his his text and in fact now that I'm recalling it he made exactly the point I am making now let's we know they are not going to pay so let's do what we can do same clarity on call today I don't know almost a hundred years after but the bigger point was that because of that lost opportunity because of the non-payment as it were of value of services provided the opportunity for growth the empowerment that ought to have occurred did not occur and therefore where you are today much less than why and so we can argue now separate from the value proposition what are the alternatives that could be hard to redress that balance and as you equally know whether it is the issue of educational incentives or reforms that are being proposed to help change the landscape in application so that the goal of development however we define that will be better a achieved that's another area and so I think of it as yes there's a money issue which is always going to be I think a hot topic of debate but what else in that space that is non-monetary that can help change the today factor and change the trajectory of tomorrow that will get us to that development space of interest and so if you just simply remap that this is exactly everything I've been talking about except I'm not using the word reparations and I'm not using the context of slavery but the truth is where we are today as I said at the beginning consequence of consequence of where we were and what we didn't do or what we didn't have the opportunity to do but today and hence why we cannot necessarily wait on pledges those pledges are like the reparations money that we are all asking for it might come might not come it might come in part or in whole but should we be waiting until all of that happens to get us to our noff star and my answer is probably no no should we continue to push the answer is obviously yes how do we move along that pathway is where I think we need the strength to be able to sell the argument that while we all agree there was injustice while we all agree we deserve better while we all agree we need to end up in a different space should time be frozen should time be frozen while and I would want to argue no we cannot we cannot and so when I say the bank is in the space we are in the space in reframing the development dialogue but are we in the space of the specific space of talking exact reparations money wise no are we in the space of things like incentives reforms that can help us get to there the answer is yes even if we are not calling it that mr. president my ultimate question you answered very early and it was about whether you had any confidence after your 53rd AGM and since then the question was do you have confidence that your directors and their political directors are on board and you have indicated that from what you heard the not only are ready to agree that there's a need for a new paradigm but that they also recognize the urgency of now my final it's not a question but a request that is that in the same way like you in our first interview two years ago and in your 53rd AGM you did use another language that is widely spoken if we add Haiti it is the most widely spoken language within Karecom if we add Haiti as a member of Karecom but certainly beyond Saint Lucia Dominica and Haiti you have Tobago and so many other wider Caribbean territories where we all is also spoken including st. Martin and the so-called French overseas territories where you have lots of English-speaking Caribbean people as well so the question I wanted to come back to, which you touched on in the last question, or your last opening remark, is to do with the business of development. And it's part of the paradigm shift. We have for too long assumed that governments should drive development. I say that to say that government should not be driving. But governments, the sole driving force of development, and which is establishing what that NOFSTAR is. Once you've established that NOFSTAR, what should be the driving motive force for development is partnerships between public, private, and if you want civil society. Because it is about joint responsibility, sharing opportunities, sharing burdens, sharing the costs and sacrifices to get you to that NOFSTAR. So if we stick with the mindset that only governments need to drive, and only governments can provide, and we, meaning the non-governments, don't have that responsibility to do, the mindset will still be stuck in not getting to the NOFSTAR. And so we equally, at the bank, have been pushing for that partnership story between public and private, joining hands from conception to implementation, execution and monitoring. In everything we do, not just what I'm using residual financiers to say, well that is what the government is doing, and you now should do the rest and call it you are now driving development from the private sector. That's a very different idea. So I think we need to switch that mindset as well. From the standpoint that the good ship Caribbean doesn't only need a captain, but an entire crew. Exactly. Without that we will still stumble. And now to go to your last question. No more weak people. That is the way to make decisions, not satisfaction, not what they say, and not the way they do. Not satisfaction. In everything I have done, every five years, because if that is the case, I should be surprised at the government. People who don't have vision. We need it. Not for five years, but for 30 years, for five years. And then make decisions that are necessary for our country, together. The easiest way to do it before. To work, we need everyone. The government, the people who do the work, the people who work. We need the idea. We need a way to keep the way we are going. We need to know who we are going to do, who we are going to change, to understand what we are going to do before. So, we need to know how we are going to do it, not just by ourselves, but by connecting and not just by hope. Together. Secondly, we need to work together for the whole country. That's why I said that it's not just in St. Lucie, even in Sevesant or Babade, but the whole country needs to work together so that we can do it together. Together. Wherever we are going, like we say, to be able to work together, and everyone that is going to develop, and who is going to move forward at the same time. So, that's what I say to everyone. We need to work together. We need to work together in the best way possible. In time. But we need to work together only Mr. President of the Caribbean Development Bank, it has been another pleasure conversing with you and not necessarily interviewing. I think we have established that we are at two common points of understanding, even though at obviously different levels, but certainly one would hope that viewers today, tomorrow and thereafter will from this exchange have a better understanding of the current challenging situation facing the region. But as I always say, challenges always bring new opportunities, and everything President Leon has said in this exchange shows clearly that he not only is offering prescriptions for change, but also offering the encouragement to understand that these prescriptions are not things, prescriptions that we have choices over, but prescriptions that we have to take from the standpoint that we are in a region where we have learned by experience that medicine never tastes sweet. Thank you very much Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. This is the interview with CDB President Mr. Hygienus Leon from the Government Information Service NTN in Cassry's inclusion to the Caribbean and the world.