Arrival of the Acting Governor-General of St. Lucia, Mr. Cyril Errol-Charles. Please remain standing for the National Anthem, sang by Nashon Antony, a student of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College. Sons and daughters of St. Lucia, love the land that gave us birth. Land of beaches, hills and valleys, fairest I love all the earth. Wheresoever you may roam, love, oh love, our island home. Gone the times when nations battled for this Helen of the West. Gone the days when strife and discord deemed the children's oil and rest. Dawns at last, the brighter day stretches out a glad new way. May the good Lord bless our island, guard her sons from whole and harm. May our people live united, strong in soul and strong in arm. Justice, truth and charity, our ideal forever. We ask that you remain standing to observe a moment of silence for Sir Lytton F. Thomas, who passed away last week. Sir Lytton served as the first principal of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College from 1987 to 1995. He was an educator who served in various capacities, including Inspector of Schools, Chief Education Officer and Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Culture. He was also the composer of the National Anthem of St. Lucia. Let us remember him for a moment. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. You may be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, in observance of the celebration of the Nobel Laureate Festival, we present the 2024 Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Lecture. And now I invite your moderator, Dr. Marie Louise Felix Lecturer at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College. Please welcome her. Good evening everyone, celebrating excellence, inspiring our collective imagination, Austrian national pride. Good evening everyone. I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize and to welcome the following. His Excellency, Mr. Cyril Erel Charles, Acting Governor General of St. Lucia. I'm sorry that I'm making sure that we have all persons here. Mr. Claudius Francis, Speaker of the House. His Excellency Dame Paulette, Her Excellency Dame Paulette Louise, Governor General Emerita and Chairperson of the Nobel Laureate Festival Committee. Members of Parliament. Members of the Diplomatic Core. Dr. James Fletcher, our esteemed lecture speaker for today. Augusta DeGasso, Cabinet Secretary. Mr. Cletus Pringer, Chairperson, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and Members of the Board. Dr. Marjorie James, James St. Charles, Principal of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College. Linda Arnold, Deputy Director Operations Bank of St. Lucia. Managers, staff, students of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College. Our specially invited guests and we want to recognize the members of the Kiwanis Club. Ladies and gentlemen and our online audience. Welcome this evening to the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College Memorial Lecture. As you've been told, I am Mary Louise Felix. I'm a lecturer at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College. Tonight, it is my great pleasure to welcome all of you to celebrate the remarkable achievements. Of two sons of the soil. And there's something I especially want to say so I want to have with him. The Sir Arthur Lewis Community College is an institute of learning. A prominent educational institution that has served St. Lucia for many, many years. So tonight as we gather to celebrate the intellectual legacy of our distinguished laureates. Sir Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott. I invite everyone here today to embrace the spirit of knowledge, creativity and cultural enrichment that defines Nobel Laureate Week. It is our hope at Sir Arthur Lewis Community College that as we celebrate the achievements of our laureates. All St. Lucia's here, those listening and everywhere will be inspired to deepen their commitment to education, innovation and the pursuit of excellence. Once more, I want to thank all of you for joining us here today. I would now like to invite you to listen to a rendition from one of Sir Arthur Lewis Community College's lecturers. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Are you ready to celebrate excellence? Yes. Doing one of my compositions, you can be missed many years ago. And right now it's been used as a theme song for the laureates festival. It seems Dr. Fletcher is next. Good things come to those who wait. Oh yes, we come from smallness. Yes, yet still we achieve excellence. Just look, Lewis. Just look at Sir Derek Walcott. Oh yes, they set the example and showed, showed us it is possible for all St. Lucia's work to be deserving the highest, highest recognition. Time, time, time. Sir Arthur Lewis made us proud. A pioneer was he. Developing our small economy. Gave us the cure for poverty. No, it's not money. It's not that we'll elevate this car. Oh yes, we come from smallness. Yes, still we achieve greatness. Just look at Sir Arthur Lewis. Just look at Sir Derek Walcott. Oh yes, they set the example and showed, showed us it is possible for all St. Lucia's work to be deserving of the highest, highest recognition. Time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time. It wasn't the field of literature. Sir Derek Walcott made his mark. He's a great creator lover of the arts. Our rich history and our folk know. Our people and our culture. It's by the works of this accomplished author. Oh yes, we come from smallness. Yes, still we achieve greatness. Just look at Sir Arthur Lewis. Just look at Sir Derek Walcott. Oh yes, they set the example and showed, showed us it is possible for all St. Lucia's work to be deserving of the highest, highest recognition. Just look at Sir Derek Walcott. Oh yes, they set the example and showed, showed us it is possible for all St. Lucia's work to be deserving of the highest, highest recognition. Time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time. You can be next, even though you're now just a child You can be next, strive for excellence in all you do Yeah, next Novaloriates could be you You can be next, even though you're from a little aisle You can be next, even though you're now just a child You can be next, strive for excellence in all you do Yeah, it could be you You can be next. Thank you. You can be next. A message for us, but especially our young people in St. Lucia, and I'm looking around our students of Sir Arthur Lewis, you can be next. Thank you so much. We see the kind of talent that we have in St. Lucia, the talent that we are cultivating in our country. When I speak of talent and I speak of wealth of information and I speak of dedication and I look across at my friend, my colleague, someone who I have known for many years, it really is my great pleasure today to have Dr. Fletcher here with us and who's going to share some information. I was looking at his document and he says that he's not an economist, but he would need something about economics for dummies. So when I was asked to be there to introduce Dr. Fletcher, I was like, oh my goodness, how much time do I have? Because there's so much that we can say. And then my bubble was burst because I was told, no, you have to say nothing because in this modern world everything is going to be presented electronically. So I believe I'm looking for the thumbs up that our introduction to our esteemed presenter this evening is going to be shared on screen right now. If not, I'm going to start to talk and then you really don't want me to do this. And I did tell, I think that was my cue to sit. James Fletcher was the Minister for the Public Service Information Broadcasting Sustainable Development, Energy, Science, and Technology in St. Wilshire from 2011 to 2016. Under his leadership, the Caribbean's 1.5 to stay alive climate change civil society campaign was developed. During the negotiations on the Paris Agreement in COP 21, he was a member of a small group of ministers chosen to help achieve consensus on the Paris Agreement. In recognition of his work, James Fletcher was highlighted in Profiles of Paris as one of the people who played an important role in creating the Paris Agreement. During his tenure as a minister, James Fletcher led an aggressive modernization of the energy sector with new investments in renewable energy and the enactment of a new energy legislation. He commissioned modern information technology centers in several underserved communities, started a program for free island Wi-Fi, developed a 3-1-1 call center for the public service, initiated major water redevelopment projects, and established an employee assistance program for public offices. James Fletcher is the author of the book, In Governing in a Small Caribbean Island State. He offered the chapter, The Fight for Small Island Development States in the Cambridge University Press Publication, negotiating the Paris Agreement, the insider stories. And he edited and produced Where is the Justice, an anthology of Caribbean youth perspectives on the climate crisis. He also wrote the Regional Strategic Action Plan for Governance, and Building Climate Resilience in the Water Sector in the Caribbean. In 2019, he was selected by the United Kingdom's Chevenin Scholarship Programme as one of 35 global change makers. James Fletcher currently manages his own consulting company, Solaricon. In 2020, he launched the Caribbean Climate Justice Project, which is an initiative aimed at increasing civil society awareness of the impacts of climate change and ensuring that there are appropriate responses at the national, regional and international levels to issues of the climate justice and just transitions. James Fletcher is currently the chairman of the Executive Board of the Caribbean Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, C-C-R-E-E. My dear colleagues, there isn't much more that I can say. I would like to, first of all, thank Dr. Fletcher for making the time to be with us this evening. And I think I'm just going to hand you over, or hand him over to you. Thank you, Dr. Fletcher. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Maya Louise. Maya Louise and I sat on the same benches. That was then the St. Lucia A-Level College, so we've known each other for a long time. Governor-General, His Excellency, Harold Charles, in the book, whenever I see that I like to remind him that he was my first boss when I left A-Level, my daily revenue department. Speaker of the House of Assembly, Your Honourable Claudius Francis, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Civil Aviation, Honourable Alfa Baptiste, Governor-General Emeritus and Chairperson of the Nobel Laureate Festival Committee, Her Excellency, Dame Paulette-Louise. Monsignor, Your Honourable Patrick Pabber-Antony, Excellencies of the Diplomatic Corps, Chairman of the South Alois Committee College Board of Directors, Mr. Krita Springer, and other members of the Board, Principal of the South Alois Committee College, Dr. Marjorie Jameson-Charles, Faculty and Students of the South Alois Committee College, Distinguished Invited Guests, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Let's try that again. Distinguished Invited Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening. Thank you. I wish to thank the Nobel Laureate Committee and the South Alois Committee College for the honour of being invited to deliver the South Alois Memorial Lecture this year. I also want to thank the Impolette and the Hardworking Nobel Laureate Committee team for their unwavering commitment to excellence in not only ensuring the highest standard of activities to commemorate the lives of our two Nobel Laureates, but also presiding over the growth of this event to what is now an interesting, diversified, month-long celebration. You have single-handedly kept the legacy of arguably our two most famous sons of the soil alive in our country, and for this we owe you a debt of gratitude. I will return to the subject at the end of my lecture this evening. So for those of you who will be silently groaning to yourself at that point about the length of this lecture, that will be the sign that, mercifully, it is coming to an end. When I was invited to choose my topic for this lecture, there was an obvious temptation to speak about the subjects for which I have become known locally and internationally, that is climate change, renewable energy and sustainable development. These subjects, individually and collectively, have strong relevance to the work of the father of development economics, as they are so integral to the development prospects of our country and other small island developing states. However, as some of you may recall, six years ago in this very room, I delivered the Sarfalus Memorial Lecture with two other people, and I spoke on the subject, the economic impact of climate change in the Caribbean. Therefore, anything in or near the orbit of that subject was out of bounds, despite several new developments and dimensions to this topic in the intervening years. Instead, I decided to explore how the teachings and philosophies of William Arthur Lewis, some of which had been developed and articulated over 70 years ago, were still relevant and applicable to the development of Saint Lucia and the wider community of Caribbean small island developing states, so as we call them since. Therefore, I chose the topic, navigating the future, applying the teachings of Sir William Arthur Lewis to Saint Lucia's 21st century development challenges. Tonight, I will look at the main positions advanced by Sir Arthur Lewis and seek to determine how relevant are his recommendations to the problems that confront our country in the 21st century. How can we adapt Sir Arthur's philosophies so that they may help us navigate the complex challenges of the present and the future? Before I proceed, however, please allow me to issue one very important disclaimer. I am not a development economist. As most, if not all of you know, I am not even an economist. Therefore, I will not pretend to be one here tonight. During my years at St. Mary's College, and I see one or two of my SMC classmates in the room, I pretended to be a basketball player, despite my obvious vertical challenges. I got away with this charade because basketball was a relatively new sport at SMC in the 1970s. So competition for playing time on the court was not that intense. At Cambridge University in the mid-1980s, I pretended to be a cricketer and even played for my college as a batting all-rounder. I got away with that because this was a period of utter West Indian dominance in international cricket. So to have a West Indian, any West Indian on your team could only be a good thing. Also, my college, Wolfson, was a graduate college and had more overseas students than English students in this rank. So once again, the competition was not that fierce. A few years ago, some would say that I did a very good job for five years pretending to be a politician. However, like Clint Eastwood says in his role as Inspector Harry Callahan in the dirty Harry movies, a man's got to know his limitations. Fortunately, I know mine. So I will not pretend to be an economist tonight. Therefore, for those of you who came here tonight, hoping to get a better understanding of economic theory or an analysis of the economic principles that underpin the work of Sir William Arthur Lewis, please accept my apologies in advance. You will not. I do not have that capacity. Sir William Arthur Lewis, in addition to being one of the most widely published Caribbean economists, is also one of the most officially reviewed, analyzed and critiqued Caribbean intellectuals. Therefore, there is no shortage of published critiques and analyses of his work. Luminaries like the late Professor Norman Govan, the late Sir Alistair McIntyre, the late Professor Lloyd Best, the late William DeMas, the late Gerald Meyer, the late Professor Rex Nettleford, Professor Andrew Downes, who delivered the first Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Lecture in 1996, Joseph Stiglitz, Clive Y. Thomas, whose book, The Poor and the Powerless, Economic Policy and Change in the Caribbean, is one of the first non-biology texts I bought at Heffer's Bookstore in Cambridge in the late 1980s. On our own, Marius St. Rose and Dr. Tennyson Joseph have undertaken excellent insightful analyses and reviews of the work of Sir Arthur. I know that because I had to read most of them to prepare for this lecture, in addition to many of Sir Arthur's writings. There are not many people who can lay claim to having read all of Sir Arthur's writings. As told by Norman Govan in his paper, Lewis for the 21st century, at the time of receiving his Nobel Prize, Sir Arthur acknowledged publication of 10 books and about 80 other pieces. The late Dr. Patty Manuel produced a three-volume set of the writings of Sir Arthur, which includes 90 items that cover a wide variety of subjects. The good thing about preparing for a lecture on Sir Arthur Lewis is there is a tremendous amount of literature by and on Sir Arthur. The bad thing about preparing for a lecture on Sir Arthur Lewis is there is a tremendous amount of material by and on Sir Arthur. What I intend to do, and your reaction at the end of this presentation will determine whether I've succeeded, is to look at some of the main policy recommendations of Sir Arthur, from the perspective of a novice in economics, and examine the applicability to the problems currently confronting Sir Lucia and most Caribbean sins. If I were writing this lecture for an audience of one, myself, I would call it Sir Arthur Lewis for dummies, but I did not use that term for this audience. One of the criticisms that we often hear associated with Sir Arthur is that despite having produced one of this planet's greatest economists, Sir Lucia has not patterned its national development on his teachings and policies. In fact, the lament goes further to be more in the fact that while the development of countries like Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Botswana, and even China, with its shift from being an agrarian economy to a manufacturing, industrial, and now technological giant, have been patterned to varying degrees on the Lewis model, Sir Lucia, the birthplace of Sir Arthur, has not seen that interested in following the policy prescriptions of Sir Arthur. This is generally, but not absolutely true. The focus on light industrial development, which was an important feature of the economic development of Sir Lucia, and several other Caribbean countries in the 1970s, was influenced by Sir Arthur Lewis's position, articulated in the late 1940s and early 1950s, that primary commodity production agriculture, and it is important to make that distinction, had reached the limits of profitability due in part to what he saw as too high a worker to land ratio. In Sir Arthur Lewis's estimation, there were too many people for the land to support, so therefore there was a need to do something different. Therefore Sir Arthur recommended the growth of a manufacturing beast to absorb agricultural output and address the surplus labor problem in the agricultural sector. This dual sector model of economic development recommended the transformation of traditional agricultural economies into more diversified economies in which industrial development complemented agricultural development. However Sir Arthur noted that the challenge of setting up new manufacturing enterprises in Caribbean countries was, as he put it, a formidable problem, and again quoting him directly, a frightfully expensive business quite beyond the resources of the islands. Therefore governments needed to attract large multinational companies to set up shop in the islands and provide access to the markets in which they were already operating. Many Caribbean governments used this strategy to develop a policy environment and physical infrastructure that were conducive to the growth and development of light industries like textiles, garments, electronics, and assembly manufacturing. This involved offering generous tax incentives and infrastructure support, usually in the form of factory shells as we see today in view forth and in busy. The establishment of industrial development corporations like our own National Development Corporation were part of this deliberate policy to attract foreign direct investment through the process of quote industrialization by invitation unquote. This term by the way, although largely attributed to Sir Arthur was not his, it was coined by Lloyd Best. However as Figaro pointed out in his paper that academic economists as public teacher lessons from W Arthur Lewis and the Caribbean policy discourse. Even in this area, Caribbean governments were not faithful to Sir Arthur's policy advice. His recommendation was for a targeted approach that involved the use of statistical information based on censuses of production in the UK, USA, and elsewhere. He strongly advised that countries should specialize in manufacturers to which its resources are most appropriate and that the selection of industries should also be based on criteria such as requirements of power, capital, equipment, and specialized skills. He also identified an important role for regionalism or regional integration to ensure the success of this industry. In fact, Sir Arthur's belief in the importance of regional integration as a sine qua non of social and economic reconstruction, his words, was an important element of his thinking from his youth right through his adult years. It is important to note that Sir Arthur's insistence on the capacity of the islands in what was then known as the British West Indies to engage in export-led industrialization was at odds with the thinking and policies of the colonial power, which had not only resisted this concept but had insisted that the lack of mineral resources in the colonial territories, most notably coal and iron, and inherent deficiencies of the residents of these colonies, yes, inherent deficiencies of the residents, the people, our forefathers, made any thought of industrialization a non-starter. In fact, the Moin Commission, and those are the members of the Moin Commission taken from a photo in Sir Arthur's book Labor in the West Indies, to the West Indies, the Moin Commission to the West Indies in 1938 stated, and I quote, lacking mineral resources, it is hardly expected that small communities living in considerable isolation from the outside world and with climates and traditions that are perhaps uncongenial to regular industrial life would have developed manufacturing industries on an important scale. That's what the Moin Commission thought about us. The Commission went on to indicate that, and I quote, agriculture is the main basis of economic life of the West Indies and as will be evident from the survey of other activities, it must necessarily remain so. So in the eyes of our colonial masters, we were good only to be producers of primary agricultural commodities. Sir Arthur Lewis was a vociferous challenger of this notion and he would eventually find strong allies in Norman Manley and Eric Williams. When the People's National Movement, PNM, under the leadership of Eric Williams came to power in Trent Island, Tobago in 1956, Sir Arthur Lewis was invited to assist in the development of Trent Island, Tobago's first five-year development program. Sir Arthur Lewis was a very strong proponent of economic diversification. That is a premise behind his dual sector model, the diversification of the economy from an agrarian monoculture to one that is diversified with his emphasis then on manufacturing. This mandate is as much an imperative for solution now as it was when proposed by Sir Arthur over 70 years ago. It can be argued that our economy has transitioned from a banana, not an agriculture, a banana monoculture to a largely tourism monoculture. And let's look at the story of bananas. In 1990, agriculture's contribution to GDP was 14.5% and the contribution of bananas was a little over 10%. By 2020, these figures had dropped to 2.1% and 0.4% respectively. In 1990, tourism's contribution to GDP was 4.1%. By 2019, the year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it had risen to 20.2%. Therefore, we have effectively replaced one monoculture with another even more powerful one. It is very instructive to note, however, how we treated with the banana industry during the period of its decline. In 1990, St. Lucia exported 117,564 tons of bananas to the United Kingdom. This brought in foreign exchange, in revenue for an exchange to the value of $188.4 million. $188.4 million. Unfortunately, the formal establishment of the European Union via the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 caused the introduction of new trade rules which affected our banana trade to the UK. The establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995 and its promotion of free trade principles and the reduction and eventual removal of trade barriers meant that the preferential trade arrangements that St. Lucia had with the UK was systematically dismantled. Preferential access to the European Union market under the Lomé Convention gave way to a quota-based system after the successful WTO challenges in the 1990s which allowed windowed bananas to face competition from Latin American producers. This then evolved to a system of licenses under the Cortono Agreement to bring the trade regime into compliance with the WTO. Unfortunately, this increased the competition for our bananas in the UK market. So in much the same way that the advent of the North American free trade area NAFTA comprising the USA, Canada and Mexico resulted in the demise of the assembly manufacturing export sector in St. Lucia and the rest of the Caribbean by causing these countries to lose the advantage that they had in the USA market through the Caribbean Basin Initiative, CBI, the advent of the WTO and the liberalization of trade rules ushered in a period of uncertainty and loss of preferential access to the UK market which reduced the profitability of the windowed islands and Jamaican bananas and resulted in massive attrition of farmers. I provide you with this historical information to put into context the decisions that we made with respect to the industry during the period when the banana industry was in free fall. In 2019, remember, St. Lucia's exports of bananas to the UK had dropped to 7,229 tons. And the revenue derived from these exports was a mere 12.9 million EC dollars. The number of farmers involved in banana production had dwindled from 9,663 in 1993 to roughly 500 in 2015. However, between 1993 and 2017, the government of St. Lucia, I use the government of St. Lucia broadly to represent all the administrations between 1992 and 2017, injected over 222 million EC dollars in direct support into the banana industry through a wide range of interventions. Also during that period, the FOB free on board cost of a box of Wynwood Islands bananas, so that 14 US dollars, despite all efforts to reduce the cost of production, compared to less than 11 US dollars for a box of Colombian bananas, less than 10 US dollars for a box of bananas from Ecuador, and roughly nine US dollars for a box of bananas from Cameroon and Ghana. Many people don't know, but in the late 2000s, our competition was actually not South America. There's actually West African bananas. They were the ones producing the cheap bananas. Unfortunately, however, our romantic nostalgic attachment to the years of Gringole prevented us from making logical policy decisions in the banana industry. So instead of shifting the focus away from the production of bananas as a primary commodity, to a shift to the production of vegetables and value added products in the agricultural sector, we doubled down on commodity bananas. The growth of the tourism industry provided an excellent trigger for this transition. However, politics trumped logic. Although Trump is not a good word to use, but to this day, we continue to have pronouncements about the revival of the banana industry. To add insult to injury in the absence of a land use policy or plan, we have stood by and watched the area of agricultural holdings in St. Lucia, dwindled from 72,001 acres in 1974 to 30,204 acres at the last agriculture census in 2007. I believe judging from what has happened in cul-de-sac, Roseau and Barbano in the last 15 years, this figure must be close to 15,000 at present. An equally ominous situation exists with our water resources. Many of our country's 37 watersheds have been damaged from deforestation and poor land use practices. 10 of our 37 watersheds account for roughly 90% of the dry season flow of water. And 15 of our watersheds, less than half the total number, account for 99% of the dry season flow. Some of the watersheds that used to be productive no longer produce any water. These developments fly in the face of Sao Paulo's policy prescriptions on the need for efficient resource use and planning in economic development. Also, the replacement of agriculture by tourism as the dominant industry runs counter to the principles promoted by Sao Paulo's throughout his seminal work, The Theory of Economic Growth. In this book, Sao Paulo posits that, and I quote, the secret of most development problems is to maintain a proper balance between the sectors. Unquote. He goes on to say that if, quote, agriculture stagnates, the capitalist sector cannot grow. I repeat that. If agriculture stagnates, the capitalist sector cannot grow. And smooth economic development requires that industry and agriculture should grow together. Now, I accept that when Sao Paulo wrote this, the economies were largely agrarian, and his point had more to do with balanced economics than a specific need for agriculture to grow in lockstep, or as the economists would say, Paris-Passaud, I learned something, with industry. However, I believe we can agree that a society, particularly one like ours with agrarian roots, that allows itself through errors of omission to deliberately slip into a situation of food insecurity will find itself in a precarious situation with respect to the quality of health and the cost of healthcare, the leakage of foreign exchange, reduced productivity, the educational attainment of our children, and the general social stability of the country as inequalities are worsened. This cannot be consistent with the teachings of Sao Paulo. In his paper on the industrialization of the British West Indies, which was published in the Caribbean Economic Review in 1950, Sao Paulo indicated that industrial and agricultural development in the Caribbean were not alternatives, but had to proceed in tandem. In his Nobel Prize lecture, Sao Paulo has reinforced the importance of food security for less developed countries when he said, quote, LDCs, less developed countries, are capable of feeding themselves now if they adopt appropriate agrarian policies and as our 11 new International Tropical Agricultural Research Institutes gives us better varieties and improved technology, output should more than keep up with population. Sadly, almost 45 years later, we have not realized Sao Paulo's prescription of adopting appropriate agrarian policies and investing in the right mix of technologies in order to feed ourselves. So what is the solution? Well, first we must pay greater attention to food security. We must safeguard our land and water resources and undertake a comprehensive and sustained program to revitalize the agriculture sector in our country. We are seeing a resurgence of interest among our youth in food security. They understand the importance, they recognize the opportunity. This must be supported by sound government policy and timely responses. Secondly, our economy needs to be diversified and made more resilient. Although they did not exist as opportunities during the life of Sao Paulo, ecosystem-based services in the green and blue economy are obvious candidates as are strategic investments in the knowledge and creative sectors. The good thing about these sectors is that they are all very attractive to young people and can help us address the persistent vexing problem of youth unemployment. While an in-depth analysis of these opportunities would cause me to overstay my welcome here tonight, I would like to briefly touch on two. The first is the development of a nutraceutical industry. The opportunity to use our indigenous pharmacopoeia, and those of you who don't know what these plants are, ask Laura Jepier. He can tell you what's Grenabafé, what's Chappatier, what's Veven Lachewat, what's Kokomkuli. I did well, right, Laura? Yes. To use our indigenous pharmacopoeia to develop nutraceuticals is one that has been available to us for years. I'm yet to understand our reluctance to exploit this, particularly when we see how fast this industry is growing and how quickly the shelves of companies like Whole Foods, the Body Shop, and Holland and Barrett are filling with nutraceutical products. Many of them formulated using products that are indigenous to St. Lucia and the tropics. Developing this industry will provide a much needed boost to the agricultural sector, particularly because the selling price per weight of these products is very high. I want to add one caveat. The banana industry taught us a very important lesson, which again was consistent with the teachings of Sir Arthur and his insistence on the need for integration. We were able to maintain a presence in the UK market because we consolidated production across the four winnowed islands. We cannot penetrate and maintain our presence in any market in the United States of America, Canada, or the UK if we are depending only on production out of St. Lucia. First of all, where's the land that will serve as a substrate for this production? I just demonstrated that arable land is a rapidly vanishing commodity in this country. If we are serious about export agriculture, we must do it in conjunction with our neighbors in the winnowed islands. Unfortunately, we allowed the most valuable asset that we owned to facilitate export agriculture to be lost and sold, and that is Winfresh. We wasted the wisdom and the vision of Sir John Compton, Dame Eugenia Charles, Sir James Mitchell, and Nicholas Bradford, who saw the need and caused the creation of Webdeco, a company with fruit ripening and distribution facilities and a marketing presence in the United Kingdom, as well as a 50% stake in an international shipping company, Geese Industries, which allowed us, the governments and farmers of four small islands in the Caribbean to own and command all elements, and I want to repeat, to own and command all elements of the production, processing, distribution, and marketing of not just bananas, but any fruit we wish to export to the United Kingdom from the Caribbean, and not just to the United Kingdom, but through the United Kingdom to the European Union. This is a type of integration and creation of strategic marketing alliances and trading relationships that Sir Arthur Lewis repeatedly promoted in his vision for the economic development of the Caribbean. Sadly, a lack of strategic thinking on our part allowed this very lucrative asset to go into receivership and be sold for a lot of money by the way. The other sector that provides exciting prospects for the diversification and transformation of our economy is the renewable energy sector. Our energy prices in St. Lucia are high because we depend almost entirely on the importation of fossil fuels to generate electricity and to power our vehicles. Not only does this leave us very vulnerable to volatilities in the global oil market, as we have seen with the Russia-Ukraine War and the expanding conflict in the Middle East, but it also results in the loss of valuable foreign exchange as we have to buy oil from outside, oil and oil products from outside. High energy costs reduce the competitiveness of the tourism industry, the manufacturing industry, the telecommunications sector, and they make it difficult for the development of a value-added element in our agriculture and fishery sectors. Fortunately, we are blessed with a year-round abundance of solar and wind energy. And we have the potential to develop a geothermal sector. That's actually what the wind farm would have looked like. That's the... And that's the subject I really don't like talking about. For obvious reasons. And we have the potential to develop a geothermal sector. Transitioning our economy to a 100% renewable energy economy is possible with strong political will and decisive action. This can catalyze the structural transformation of our economy in ways not dreamed of by so often. We can convert our air and seaports to green energy ports, where Slasper can mandate that all air and seacrafts shut down their fossil fuel-powered engines when in port and plug into a domestic electricity supply that is powered entirely by renewable energy. Every cruise ship that boasts out-point seraphine or plus-carinage for a day uses between five and seven megawatts of energy. Three cruise ships, both in these ports, will use between 25 and 33% of Lusilex's daily peak demand for electricity. This means Lusilex can export energy to Royal Caribbean, Carnival, celebrity, Norwegian cruise lines, every cruise line that visits our port and significantly improve its bottom line and bring invaluable foreign exchange into the country. The positive impact on GDP of transitioning to green energy will be tremendous. And in addition to creating a new sub-sector, it will increase the competitiveness of existing sectors, thereby diversifying and strengthening our economy. So our focus would have endorsed an effort by government to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels because it takes several boxes. It reduces our dependence on external factors. It helps to diversify our economy. It improves the competitiveness of other sectors. And it lowers energy costs, which is identified by Sir Arthur as one of the criteria for selecting manufacturers during the period of industrialization. In addition, it creates jobs and it contributes to self-sustaining growth. When Sir Arthur Lewis proposed the diversification of our Caribbean economies from an agrarian beast to one that included manufacturing, he identified the need for an incentive regime to attract foreign companies. Our governments have kept these incentives regimes in place to attract investments, primarily in the tourism industry. However, Sir Arthur Lewis was clay on the terms and conditions under which we should woo multinational companies. He said, and I quote, I've never felt that LDC should hold back the diversification of the manufacturing sectors from fear of since in independent countries, they operate on the country's terms or not at all. I repeat, in independent countries, the multinationals operate on the country's terms or not at all. The most important control is the use of work permits to force the firms to hire and train local recruits at managerial and professorial levels. I'm still reading from Sir Arthur. I have received much criticism for this stand over the past 30 years, but the heat seems to be diminishing as third world governments gain confidence in their own bargaining skills, end of quote. I'm not sure that our governments have gained the confidence in the bargaining skills that Sir Arthur spoke of. Our governments continue to give sweeping blanket concessions to foreign investors in some cases at levels not available to local investors with no incentives for these investors to purchase local goods and services. In fact, there have been instances where the concessions have extended to the purchase of goods and services by these foreign investors from outside sources for goods and services that are readily available from local suppliers. This is inimical to the development of local industry. Our incentives regime should provide for a basic set of concessions that allow the investor to construct the physical plant and establish the operations in the country. However, the regime should be structured in such a way to reward the investor for purchasing local goods and services. For every quantum of local goods and services purchased, a percentage increase in the level of concessions can be added to the package for a finite period. It makes no sense that we are forgoing much needed government revenue to investors, particularly in the tourism and hospitality sector, to purchase everything from food and beverages to furniture outside the country. As Sir Arthur Lewis said, by now, we should have gained confidence in our bargaining skills. Throughout his writing, Sir Arthur Lewis repeatedly placed emphasis on the importance of knowledge and human capital in economic development. He posits in the first chapter after the introduction of the theory of economic growth that the three proximate causes of economic growth are economic activity, increasing knowledge and increasing capital. In the principles of economic planning, Sir Arthur writes at length about the importance of engaging in distribution of income before taxation, which he sees as being determined by two principal factors, the distribution of property and the distribution of skill. He states, quote, in order, therefore, to even out earnings from work before taxation, what we have to do is to increase equality of opportunity. The key to this is, of course, the educational system, end of quote. And I'm sure most of us are familiar with his position that the fundamental cure for poverty is not money, but knowledge. The question we must ask ourselves at this point in our development on the eve of our 45th anniversary as an independent nation is whether our human capital is optimally positioned to respond to the development challenges confronting our country. In responding to this question, I will look at the status of our human capital in slightly broader terms than just their level of education. If we are looking at the capacity of our human capital to navigate the challenges of these modern times, then you must also examine their health status. The world in which we live has changed dramatically from the one in which Sir Arthur Lewis lived. Unfortunately, as Tony Wagner puts it in the global achievement gap, why the global achievement gap, why even our best schools don't teach the new survival schools our children need and what can we do about it, schools haven't changed, the world has. And so our schools are not failing, rather they are obsolete, even the ones that score best on standardized tests. Kirsten Olson in a book Wounded by School describes it more dramatically when she says, if Rip Van Winkle were to return today after 100 years, the only institutions he would recognize are prisons and schools. Wagner explains the challenge perfectly when he opines that work, learning, and citizenship in the 21st century demand that we all know how to think, to reason, analyze, weigh evidence, problem solve, and to communicate effectively. Those are not, and I repeat, those are not the objectives of our present day education system. The late Gordon Moore, the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corporation and the developer of Moore's Law suggested that it is extremely unlikely that anyone coming out of school with a technical degree will go into one area and stay there. Today's students have to look forward to the excitement of probably having three or four careers. This scenario is not confined to students graduating with a technical degree. The rapid pace at which new knowledge is unfolding makes this a phenomenon that will probably impact almost all present day school leavers. Many of the top in demand jobs today did not exist 15 years ago. Artificial intelligence is dramatically changing the labor landscape. Therefore, in effect, our education system needs to facilitate the education of students to take up jobs that do not currently exist using technologies that probably have not yet been invented to solve problems that we do not even know currently are problems. It is as Alvin Toffler says in Rethinking the Future. The illiterate of the future are not those that cannot read or write. They are those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. And that's what our education system should be teaching us. It has to be nimble. It has to give us the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn because everything is changing so quickly. So what should our education system look like in order to transform the human capital that was a central feature of so much of the writings of Sir Arthur Lewis into the skilled, nimble workforce that can cause economic growth? Our education system must teach us how to deal with change, learn new concepts, and very importantly, preserve our mental balance in unfamiliar situations. I don't think we pay enough attention to that but there is a need to preserve our mental balance. I read somewhere that if you were to read The New York Times from cover to cover for one week, so if you were to sit in your home and read The New York Times from cover to cover for seven days, you would be exposed to more material than the average person in the 17th century was exposed to for the entire life. Have our brains evolve to the point where we can manage that excess information and those of us who go to bed with our cell phones next to us and every time we hear a ping and we pick it up and we look at us, that's even more overload. But that is, so that's why the importance of managing our mental health in this new environment is so important. Our education system must focus on critical thinking, education, and problem solving. It should not focus solely as it does currently on the one-way transmission of knowledge and facts. Our education system must prepare our young people for global, it must inculcate in them the seven 21st century survival skills that Tony Wagner identified in the Global Achievement Gap, namely critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration across networks. Think about that, our education system we thought to single-mindedly do assignments. You know, how much of sharing is here. There is some level of sharing on SBAs and some projects, but by and large, you are assessed for what you can do. Really what our education system is trying to determine is how well you can do it. Now this is not the world we're living in. The world we're living in is one where people are sharing, collaborating, working with each other. Is our education system adapting to that? Agility and adaptability. Initiative and entrepreneurialism. How I got through that word is amazing. Effective oral and written communication. Accessing and analyzing information. And importantly, curiosity and imagination. Our education system must nurture our curiosity. There is something unique about us in the Caribbean. We do not like to encourage curiosity along our, you know, it's behavior. That's what I tell you. Do it that way. That cannot be, if we want research and development, if we want to take that step, we have to cultivate curiosity and imagination. The latter is what will stimulate the research and innovation impulse that causes developing countries to graduate to sustain levels of growth. We need a complete reworking of our education system. Just think about it.  And this is the only time you ever mentioned climate change in this speech. It would make sense then that we should make conflict resolution, civics, ethics, and moral education. Personal finance management and budgeting. We need to teach people how to manage their finances. You know? Entrepreneurship and environmental education. Compulsory subjects from infant school all the way to perform. Have we? Have we? Are we orienting our tertiary education so that it helps to create the cadre of skilled citizens that can help us navigate our 21st century challenges? Have a look at the government of St. Lucia's list of areas for national training 2023 to 2026, otherwise known as the priority list. And let me know if you think we are getting it right. I'm going to stay silent and I'm just going to flash them on the screen. That's what we say our priorities for training in St. Lucia for the next three years. I've been in this thing for a while. This doesn't look any different to it. It looked five years ago, 10 years earlier. There were no two things that have come in, but this is the same length and there's very hardly any change to what the government has been putting out year after year as the priority list for training. How can that be the priority list for training that would cause us to have an optimized workforce that can take advantage or can respond to the challenges of the 21st century? Like the young people say, make it make sense for me. It doesn't. Recently, I had an in-depth conversation with the deputy registrar of the Caribbean Examination Council, CXC. And he told me of the plans by CXC to pilot a new program in 2024 that will involve a new skills and competencies framework while addressing issues like global citizenship, critical and innovative personal awareness and management of self, resilience, communication, collaboration and creativity. That conversation gave me hope. Before I end on this subject of knowledge, I want to return to Sao Paulo's, of course, is the reason I'm here this evening. I'm quote once again from the theory of economic growth. So Arthur on the subject of knowledge says, because each generation builds upon the knowledge of its forefathers, the most important invention which has helped the accumulation of knowledge is the invention of writing. Until the writing was invented, each generation could pass on only what they could remember in the head. And how little this is we can discover if we compare how much history, and how little this is we can discover if you compare how much history the illiterate historians have passed on in those primitive societies which have a specially appointed class of historians. Compare that with the history, the amount of history passed on in illiterate societies. He goes on to say, accordingly in considering growth of knowledge, one must distinguish three eras. The pre-literate, the era of writing without scientific method and the era of scientific method. In the same way we must distinguish between societies according to whether they are illiterate and according to whether their culture and philosophy are imbued with the scientific outlook. We need to do a better job of putting in writing that rich treasure of indigenous and traditional knowledge that was held by our forefathers and which has been passed on to us and of using scientific inquiry in our analysis and writings. If we don't do that, that means we stuck in those dark ages that Sarfalus wrote about. The health status of our human capital is not where it needs to be. The top causes of death among young people in St. Lucia and the Caribbean are assault and vehicle accidents. Both these numbers have been alarmingly high for our country for the past few years. But both these causes of death are preventable. Enduries are particularly deadly in the 15 to 19, 20 to 24 and 25 to 29 year demographics. I will return to the subject of assault and violent crime shortly, but it is instructive to note that St. Lucia has the highest level of alcohol consumption per capita in the Caribbean, according to data from the World Health Organization. Might there be a correlation there with the high levels of assault and vehicle accidents that we're seeing among our young people? We're pretending as if we do not have a problem in this country. Nobody wants to speak about the problem of alcohol abuse in this country. We saw it during the COVID pandemic where people were lining up outside rum shops, almost like the zombies you see in the living, what's the name of the thing, the living dead, begging for alcohol. Now I'm not ridiculing them, I'm not, but that is a social problem that we have. We have to address it because it is causing health problems, it is causing social problems, but nobody wants to talk about it. We sweep it under the rug as if it doesn't exist, but the data show very clearly that we have the highest per capita consumption of alcohol in the Caribbean. We have to do, that cannot be what we're famous for, what we take credit for, what we delight in. The top causes of death among adults in St. Lucia from the age of 35 years is not like hypertension, diabetes, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and cancers. Again, these are lifestyle diseases caused by poor dietary choices and a lack of sufficient exercise. We cannot continue to have our human capital, our labor force, debilitated, or struck down in its prime by conditions that are preventable. We are destroying ourselves, and it is starting at the adolescent level with the foods that we feed to our children. So, as a humorous anecdote and a bit of a mental wellness break for you from the barrage of facts that I've been throwing at you in this lecture, I'll show you the story of Angela's Devil. I'm sure some of you know about Michelangelo's David, right? Michelangelo's David has lived in Florence, Italy for over 500 years. That's Michelangelo's David. Some of you may have little sculptures of him. Those of you who visited Florence may have seen it. However, two years ago, David was sent to the United States, Italy to the United States. While in the United States, those were David's sponsors while he was in the United States. But guess what? Guess who also sponsored our children's meals? Many of us. The same people who sponsored David's stay in the United States of America. And the possible outcomes of shallow obesity, type 2 diabetes, asthma, sleep apnea, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, osteoarthritis, cancer, depression, and other psychosocial disorders. Like I said, ladies and gentlemen, we are killing ourselves. This is our population pyramid. The composition, this was our population pyramid in the 1960s. But the population, the composition of our population is changing. In the 1960s, when Sir Arthur was writing about surplus labor in the agriculture sector, we had a perfect population pyramid. What is known as an expansive population pyramid. That's when the bulk of the population is in the younger age cohorts. And each age cohort, each succeeding age cohort is slightly smaller than the one, sorry, each one going up is slightly smaller than the one immediately below it. At that time, our population is growing at a rate of 22%. Let's look at what has happened to our population in the intervening years. This is 1980. This is 1990. This is 2000. 2010. This is just now. It's our population pyramid now. This is data extracted from the statistics department in September. What we have now is a stationary pyramid with roughly equal percentages across all the age cohorts. Ignore the large number you see at the top. That's because again, we have data issues. We did not disaggregate the data in the older age cohorts. So if I was able to go from 75 to 80, 80 to 85, 85 to 90, then you'd have seen this almost like a bowling pin. That's what it would have looked like. But that's what our pyramid looks like. And that's typically characteristic of developed countries where birth rates are low and the quality of life is high. Well, our birth rate is definitely low. Our population is currently growing at a rate of 8% per annum. Now, I will not do like some prime ministers in the Caribbean have done until people go out and make children. That's an irresponsible statement for any prime minister to say to anyone. Because people have made conscious decisions why they have limited the size of their families.  But don't just tell people go and make children. I've heard two prime ministers do it and I've been absolutely shocked at that level of irresponsibility. I can say that. You know, particularly last year I hit a milestone age so I can say whatever I want now. When you juxtapose this, my wife is telling me really, when you juxtapose this of the fact that a larger percentage of our population is presenting with health problems caused by chronic noncommunicable diseases, you begin to understand the stress this will place on the national health systems and on our national insurance program. The simple response is that we need to implement universal healthcare as soon as possible. There are large numbers of people walking around this country with health conditions that are not being treated because they lack the financial means to get treated. So they're not going to the doctor. They don't want to be tested because they're afraid of what the doctor will say to them. They do not have the money, so they're just walking around with persistent headaches. They can't see too well. They know that they're urinating too often. They know all the things that they're experiencing but they dare not go to the doctor. And if you need proof of this, reflect on the large numbers of people who took part in the Miracle Eye program that was implemented a few years ago with the support of the Cuban and Venezuelan governments and the scores of people who visited the US Navy ship comfort when it visited St. Lucian 2019. Of course, we also need to improve the public health system and the provision of healthcare in St. Lucia via our wellness centers, polyclinics and hospitals. But I will stay clear of that subject tonight because I do not have the time to give this the treatment that it deserves. But my last word on this subject is a plea to all of us, myself included, because I've also put on a redidation, is to take better care of our health through regular exercise and better dietary choices. Cut out the fat, the salt, the sugar, the processed foods. I know they taste good, but they're killing us. And my final final word on the subject of our human capital will be on the subject of violent crime. We have a scary and serious crime problem in this country. However, national security is about more than just CCTV cameras and more police boots on the ground in communities. Effective national security must be rooted in strong social policy and early childhood development. We must invest heavily in parental skills training. All our children must receive the right psychosocial stimulation in the early childhood period. Both have been shown to have positive effects on school participation in the teenage years. There is also strong evidence that shows the more children, both boys and girls, the more children are connected to their school, the less likely they are of engaging in risk-taking behaviors like smoking, using alcohol, using illegal drugs, experiencing early sexual initiation and engaging in violence. There's data, there's evidence that supports this. The more our children are connected to school, the less likely they are to engage in antisocial behavior. And the more they receive good parental skills, sorry, the more they receive good psychosocial stimulation and their parents have good outcomes where parental skills training is considered, the more connected they are to school. So what do we do? We should spend more time on early, more time and effort on early childhood development. And there's a very simple reason for that. The period of most rapid brain development in the human being is between both and seven years. That is when the brain centers that manage binocular vision, emotional control, habitual ways of responding, pair social skills, language, symbols and cognitive skills are developed. However, we have not implemented universal early childhood education solution. And unfortunately the children who are falling through the cracks are those coming from families who cannot afford to pay for preschool and daycare. By the time we try addressing those problems in secondary school, that horse has bolted long ago. That is where we should be making those interventions. We must fix and improve our social safety net program. There are too many areas of exclusion where people who need to benefit are left out and just as badly costly areas of inclusion on the latter subject, our governments have to tighten and better target the provision of government support and subsidies, these blanket subsidies that are given by everybody. So you decide that you're subsidizing the cost of a 22 or 20 pound cylinder of gas, thinking that the rich people only use 100 pound cylinders and they don't use the 20 pound cylinders. All the rich people do is buy 20 pound cylinders and what's the inconvenience of shifting a cylinder is much less painful than the inconvenience of paying for 100 pound cylinder. When we give these blanket concessions, when we give bullsries or we say that every child who passes common entrance, the parent will get $500. That is madness. That is absolute madness because there are people who are going and collecting that money who should not be getting it. But the more of them who get it is the less money that can be given to those who really need it. But we give these blanket concessions because we lazy. It takes too much effort to fix the system. The more leakage there is of scarce financial resources by providing blanket subsidies that allow everybody, regardless of financial means of benefit, the less money there is to provide much needed support for those who desperately need it. It may sound simplistic, ladies and gentlemen, but if we want to develop long-term solutions to the crime situation that is confronting us, we must look to the social determinants of crime, such as education, community and peer influence, marginalization, and economic disparity. There must be a complete re-engineering of our society. We will not see results within five years. So I'm sorry, there's not something you could report at the end of a five-year cycle. However, the sooner we start, the closer we will get to positive and healthy outcomes. The role of planning and research. In 1949, Safa always set out to write a pamphlet for the Fabian Society, of which he was a member, on the economic perplexities of the movement. That pamphlet, Safa was just too much. You like to say it's too bright. It turned into a 120-page manuscript called The Principles of Economic Planning, which is described as a political statement rather than an academic study of theoretical principles. And this is what I've found so delightful about the work of Safa Lewis. Despite being underpinned by the most rigorous and sound economic theory and principles, the brilliance of Safa Lewis almost always allowed him to write in a way that appealed to the intellect of the economist and the common sense of the leaper. You could read any of Safa's books and you will not be caught up in formulae and different complex issues that you can't understand. You understand his work. He wrote because he understood that that work had to be translatable to the people and the solutions that he was trying to effect. Throughout the writings of Safa Lewis, once he's someone who examined the empirical and qualitative evidence before him, and used this to devise and formulate solutions to the challenges that confronted the regions he was studying, be they the Caribbean, West Africa, or Asia. Safa wrote on industrial economics. World trade, development planning, agricultural economics, dual economies, race and economic development. You saw that June Soma spoke about Safa and racism on one of the Safa Lewis lectures. Education and politics. He certainly did not contribute to the sin of which he spoke and I referenced earlier of not writing what he had in his head or writing without scientific method. What is most striking for me is his perspective on development and planning for development. While he was seized of the need to address the challenges posed by the urgent need for decolonization, his gaze was simultaneously firmly fixed on the type of Caribbean that needed to be built. The type of governance structure and democracy that was needed. The level of human capital development that was necessary and the means through which these goals could be achieved. It is only natural for the father of development economics to develop and sorry to devote significant scrutiny and scholarship to the practical application of development planning which is a natural succession of development economics. We can learn much from Safa Lewis in this regard. I may be wrong but for the last two decades so maybe even three decades, I've gotten the feeling that development planning has been relegated to the back burner of the stove that is government function. There is very little long term visioning and even less planning of the measures and the steps we intend to take to get us to where we want to go. You know the old saying that was paraphrased from the conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat and Lois Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. But I prefer a quote that was attributed to the king of Malaprops, American baseball player, Yogi Berra, who said if you don't know where you're going, you might wind up somewhere else. I think that's even better. And that's probably what's happening to us. We don't know where we're going so we wind up anywhere. The myriad complex interconnected challenges that confront our country demand that we set a vision of where we want to take this country and its people and set out a plan for how we will optimally mobilize and utilize all the resources at our disposal to get us there. There must be, this must be a vision and a plan that everyone buys into, irrespective of political affiliation. Our aspirations and goals cannot change and our national plans cannot start over every five years. This is what is happening. This is illogical and counterproductive. But that's what's been happening since 2006. Every five years. Every five years without fail. It is no wonder that we have not made the progress that is expected of us. In many instances, I dare say we have regressed. It is not the sort of thinking and behavior you expect from a country that boasts of Sa'afa Lewis as one of its heralded sons of the soil. However, for us to plan, we must adopt an ethic that espouses research and intellectual inquiry. We cannot plan in the absence of empirical evidence and detail. Here, the institution that bears Sa'afa's name has an important role to play. In its eulogy of Sir William Arthur Lewis, Sir Von Lewis stated that his uncle, Sa'afa, saw the study of economics not simply as an intellectual discipline to whose growth he should contribute, but as an integral relationship between analysis and search for practical solutions to existing problems as a means of rendering policy advice. Mark Figaro in his paper, The Academic Economist as Public Teacher, lessons from W. Arthur Lewis and the Caribbean Policy Discourse States that the academy referring to the university, the intellectual institution, must remain a semi-autonomous community of scholars. It cannot simply be a research arm of the state or commercial sector. If it has no independence, it will not produce the innovations that it might otherwise achieve. Both governments and the commercial sector are too narrowly focused to allow for pure curiosity-driven research for which there must always be a place. We cannot always see the utility of what we do. At the same time, if academics only talk to themselves, then what value do they have? Bridges are needed between the academy and the community it serves. In addition, there must be incentives for academics to participate in the process of connecting more closely with the community. Academics also need to embrace a common responsibility that goes beyond the differences that they have among themselves. That would involve identifying for the public the common policy threads that emerge from their discourse even where there may be differences. Rich for academics, our more fundamental nature. Various publics wish to benefit from the insights of the social sciences and should not be expected to learn what they need by deconstructing scholastic debates. At the launch of the Von Allen Lewis Institute of Research and Innovation, Valery of the South Hollywood Community College in 2016, the keynote speaker said, and I quote, one of the critical objectives for Valery must be to encourage a more evidence-based approach to policy formulation and decision-making. Valery must lead by example, by encouraging its researchers to publish their work, preferably in peer-reviewed journals. Unfortunately, the dearth of empirical data on many of the issues you will wish to research will prove a limiting factor in the beginning. But I am hopeful that your presence and your advocacy will cause the pendulum to shift finally in favor of evidence. Seven to eight years later, that does not happen. And I want to implore the college to take up this mandate. It is desperately needed. On a slightly somber note, you know you have spoken for too long when you start to quote yourself. I deliver that address. If we need further proof of the place of the importance of planning and research, and the role of the South Hollywood Community College in facilitating this, we need to look no further than the case of South Korea. In 1960, Brazil and South Korea had the same per capita income. However, by 2010, the per capita income of South Korea was 4.7 times that of Brazil. Some of that increase, a relatively small percentage, was caused by increases in the labor force and in capital. However, the primary reason for the appreciable separation of the growth curves between the two countries over the course of 50 years was South Korea's better use of knowledge, technical and policy knowledge. The effective use of knowledge, particularly with respect to innovation and the development of new skills had a significant impact on the growth performance of South Korea. Tertiary institutions must play an important role in facilitating the development of new knowledge and driving innovation. By the way, you might be interested to know that in 1980, St. Lucia, as you can see from that graph, St. Lucia and South Korea had roughly the same levels of GDP per capita. You could see what has happened since then. Which is perhaps a good segue to my penultimate topic, which is democracy and governance. A topic that was important to Sao Paulo's and he was very focused on democracy. Sao Paulo's thinking on this subject is refreshing and it's not steeped in orthodoxy, which is not unusual. Sao Paulo was a staunch believer in the need for unity and integration in the Caribbean. In 1965, he wrote, I quote, the maintenance now to read this one slowly. The maintenance of good government requires a federal structure. In a small island of 50,000 or 100,000 people dominated by a single political party, it is very difficult to prevent political abuse. Everybody depends on the government for something, however small. So most are reluctant to offend it. The civil servants live in fear, the police avoid unpleasantness, the trade unions are tied to the party, the newspaper depends on government advertisements and so on. This is true even if the political leaders are absolutely honest. In cases where they are also corrupt and playing with the public funds, the situation becomes intolerable. The only safeguard against this is federation. If the government in island C misbehaves, it will be criticized by the citizens of island E. The federal government must be responsible for law and order and for redress of financial or other abuses. End of quote. In his 1960 paper titled, Some Reference, Some Reflections on Economic Development, Sao Paulo conceded that while nobody has any formula that ensures a country will be governed well, a long-term objective must be, I quote, to create an independent public opinion which will force politicians to act and treat with relative sense if they wish to be supported. He went on to state that, quote, the way to do this in the short term is for good men to attain power, whether by charismatic appeal or party organization and imprint their attitudes upon the public mind. End of quote. Sao Paulo has felt that democracy as a polity in which access to decision-making was available to all persons, groups, and he felt that democracy as a polity in which access to decision-making was available to all persons, groups, and interests. He believed that it was the inherent right of the human person to participate in decisions affecting his or her life. According to Prem Dasan Sensee in the chapter titled, Sao Paulo is symbol of democracy, defender of human rights, friend of the poor. In the book they edited called, Sao Paulo is an economic and political portrait. Sao Paulo, I quote, loath the idea of domination either by a single person or a majority. He condemned what he called the divine right of the majority. He felt that opinions must not only be freely expressed in open systems, but in a culture of tolerance and give and take. Compromises must be beaten out representing the general will. Sao Paulo's in politics in West Africa stated that, I quote, the case for democracy is not that it prevents tension, but that open discussion creates a healthier society that is done, is achieved by suppression. The diffusion of responsibility diffuses conflict. Sao Paulo found that the reduction of politics towards zero sum game where what one person loses, the other one wins was, to use his words, repugnantly immoral. He wrote, I quote, it is necessary to get away from the idea that somebody is to prevail over somebody else from politics as a zero sum game. And I continue to quote directly from Sao Paulo. Words like winning and losing have to be banished from the political vocabulary of a political society, of a plural society. I offer these sentiments by Sao Paulo without much additional comment. Save to reflect on how refreshing they are in this highly politically charged and divided country of ours. And how much we can learn from them as we seek to navigate our future. We have reached the stage where the day after elections, the role of the opposition becomes to disagree with everything the government proposes and make life as difficult as possible for the government to implement its agenda. While the role of the government is to remind the opposition at every opportunity that it lost the election. And in so doing, it has lost the right to advise or instruct the government on how it should run the country. For a country of limited human resources and no mineral resources, dividing the human capital into intractable and disagreeable red and yellow camps does not sound like a strategy that conduces to sustainable growth and development. I have now reached the part of the lecture that I indicated at the beginning. You would welcome. I want to speak briefly on the recognition that we give to our two Nobel laureates and to the several other giants at the community and national levels on whose shoulders we stand. Preparing for this lecture was fascinating and enjoyable. In choosing the topic, I challenged myself to learn more about Sao Paulo's, to understand the circumstances at home in San Lucia in the Caribbean and in the UK that created and molded him into the person he became. I read as many of his works as I could find. And equally importantly, I studied the writings of those who had critiqued his work and praised his genius. What I learned during this process was eye-opening and inspiring. However, it made me sigh and critters will know what I've been talking about because we exchange sighs very often these days. And I've been doing that too often these days. At the paucity of information that is in the public domain on Sao Paulo's, a man who has written so much and who has changed or influenced the trajectory of economic thought and national development. In fact, in many countries across the world. The same holds for Sir Derek Walcott, another greats like Sir Leetan Thomas who we remembered today. Sir Denson Santoma, Sir Danly Alexander, Dr. Gaffes Santoma, Roddy Walcott, Dame Cessan Descartes, Charles Cadet, Dr. Owen King, Gregor Williams, Father Reginald John, George Theophilus, Dame Paulette herself, Gabriel Coco Charles, Agatha Japanel, Leonard Scrub Wellington, Augustin Panandro, Virgie Alexander, Gregory Shining Emmanuel, Eric Branford, Arthur Jacobs, Mendo Phillip, Joseph Quinton Charles, Annette Valmore, Amel Mathre, Vincent Joseph Yudovic, Guy Ellis, Earl Busque, Eve Rena, Theresa Mason, James Fletcher, James Senior and Esme Fletcher who happened to be my parents and who pioneered the taxi and ground transportation business in this country. Many people don't know that. David D. Mack, Horace Walters, Ama Ambrose, Lira Joseph, Edward Sheffari Joseph, Beryl Edwards, Haroldine Rock, too many solutions. These names mean nothing, absolutely nothing. Even our two national heroes, Sir George Charles and Sir John Compton, how much does the ordinary solution know about them? All of these and so many others that I do not have the time or the space to mention have made indelible marks on the local, regional and international landscapes. In a period when we commonly speak about carbon footprints, which is a bad thing, because it represents the bad impact of the fossil fuel economy, the bad impact that the fossil fuel economy is having on our social, economic and environmental landscapes. We need to look at the Lucian footprints that have been made by our greats and understand where they originated, how they were shaped and influenced, and influenced and the big marks that they have made and left on our planet. I know we have the annual orders and Lucian awards, but with the greatest respect to both our current and our former Governor-General, this is an activity that resides and is confined to government halls. Unfortunately, it does not have much resonance on either side of one fortune. We need a means of recognizing and celebrating our legends in a manner that allows our citizens, young and old, to appreciate them, learn about them, and want to emulate them. We do not have to wait for the long anticipated museum to make this happen. We can and should start by naming our public streets, public buildings, bridges, schools and health centers after them. Let us start a program to rename our public infrastructure after the people who have contributed at the community and national level store development. Why should we be referring to the fish landing facility in Denri as the Daito? Daito was a Japanese construction engineering firm that worked on the construction of the facility. Surely, there's a prominent fisher from Denri or someone associated with the marine conservation in Denri after whom that facility can be named. This is just one small example. We can also add a QR code for those of you who are tech savvy and Richmond here can help with that. We can add a QR code to the nameplate we attached to any public building so that anyone can scan that code and get detailed information on the giant who is being recognized. Technology also makes it possible for us to establish a virtual museum before we have the physical brick and mortar museum. In fact, the virtual one might be even better because our young people are much more likely to use an app and explore that virtual museum and see who is who. Whether the lives of these people can be chronicle. Please, let's make this a goal for our 45th anniversary. Something that can unite us rather than the constant, depressing, internecine political warfare that rages every day on the talk shows and social media. Norman Govan in his 2005 people, Lewis for the 24th century stated that William Arthur Lewis grew up in the knowledge instilled by his mother that, I quote, anything they can do, we can do. We must make our solution youth understand and believe this. They are just as good and can be even better than anything or anyone the international village has to offer. I fully believe that. Ladies and gentlemen, it has been my absolute pleasure to share with you this evening my reflections on the teachings of Sir William Arthur Lewis and the relevance to the 24th century challenges that confront us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Very much, Dr. Fletcher, for I can't describe the detail and the thought-provoking measures that you have delivered here tonight. I am very much aware of the though I am going to now open the floor to questions. I believe that one who wishes to ask questions or comment, you could probably, because I'm looking, we have, you have a mic. All we need. Thank you very much. Yes. So are there any questions? Yes, we have in the back. Dr. Fletcher, let me commend you for such a titanic presentation. Of course I didn't expect any less. But you made the effort not to talk about climate change. But I've been listening to your postures for a few, for some time. And one of those, that's you that I remember, the fact that you said, with the advent of sea level rise, VA-4, on the port out there, will be underwater. I'm sure you remember making that statement. How we could prevent this from happening? I don't know. But based on what's happening out there, all the crops that we have in, it doesn't seem that there'd be any change in that trend of sea level rise, et cetera. The question is, do how could we continue talking about development with that kind of negative area over our heads? Thank you. Thank you, Larry. It's a very important question. We refer to climate change, sorry folks, as the existential threat to small island developing states like St. Lucia. And you're right, some of the data we have suggests that with a four degree, anything approaching a three or four degree Celsius rise in temperature. If you thought that peninsula of you thought will be separated from the rest of the island and that the airport will be completely submerged. We have to do very many things. We have to put pressure on the international community, which is something again, going back to SAAF, he was very strong on strategic alliances and recognizing our place in the world. One of the things SAAF was criticized for, you know, many people said that he was an Englishman. You know that he didn't behave like a Caribbean man. And people like Lloyd Best, for example, criticized him for this. But SAAF always felt that to be the system, you have to understand it and you have to be in it. You could put up your own, and then create your own space and think that you could stay on the earth. It's always the same that you're talking too much when your mic was up. But you have to understand, you have to understand what you're dealing with. I think you have to do, Hilary. We, our leaders unfortunately only talk, our leaders only talk about climate change around the cops.  But climate change affects everything. It affects every single aspect of our lives. And as I said in a meeting that the Karakoff Secretary General had last Friday of Heads of Regional Organizations to discuss the post-Cop 28 landscape, we have to cause climate change to be discussed in every single, I'm happy our Minister of Foreign Affairs is there because I know he understands that. But when the WTO meets, when the WHO meets, every single organization, regional or international, has to have climate change on its agenda because climate change impacts international trade. It impacts tourism. It impacts health. It impacts water security. It impacts food security. You see, it's very easy for the international community to forget about this because we know that important. The same ones who promised that they would give us $100 billion in climate finance every year and have not given us anywhere near that. Last year subsidized the fossil fuel sector to the tune of seven trillion US dollars. But he can't find $100 billion to give us. So that shows you the unfairness. And again, this is something that's awful. It's fought against for his entire life. We have to go back to using those systems. I've lost faith in the cops. I don't attend cops anymore because I find the multilateral process has really, it's accepting incremental progress that's not in step with the explosion of climate impacts around us. So we have to work outside that. You know, the way, the only time the tobacco industry took cognizance of the pleas of people who were claiming that smoking causes cancer was when people started litigating. They fought back against it all. We have to start litigating. We have to use every single means at our disposal and say to them, if you're causing our country to disappear, then there is a price that you must be for that. I mean, not that you can ever compensate me for my country disappearing, but you have to pay for that. They're not that inconvenience, but that calamity you're visiting upon me. So, you know, without going into a long treatise on climate change, I think that's how we deal with it. Thank you very much. Yep, nope. Any other questions, comments? Yes, please go ahead. Good evening, everybody. One thing I want to comment about based off of what our education system and schools teach us and what the government hopes to give us for our future. I like the comments on how I think it's not necessarily that we're as young people are curious. It's that we're not curious about the right things for example, I can be curious about a certain form of school like a university that I really want to go to and then I want to work hard towards it, whereas another student or somebody else can be curious about how they can get this girl to like them, how they can get this. It's just the different priorities by which us young people can take. Very good, yes. Thanks everyone. The current nursing students at this Alpha Lewis Community College, what caught my attention the most was when you spoke about the health sector, right? But you skipped that quite fast for my liking, but I believe that's where our country can benefit from a lot. We have a lot of brain drain coming from our health sector and I think that's not, it's something that's not talked about enough, right? And there's also nothing really for the nursing students here. It is a lot of work, it is four years and the tuition may be cheaper than the rest of the world, but it is still expensive for us and when you think about when we go to the clinical areas, et cetera, et cetera, we spend money from our own pockets trying to give ourselves better working conditions because currently I'm at the St. Lucy's home and we have to try and put money together to get something as simple as towels to care for our elderly people, whereas these things can be donated from our government because these homes, that's our elderly people, they give to us once and we should be able to give back to them, right? Our next is, as soon as we finish school, the first thing we think about is, when can I leave? We don't want to stay here because the conditions are not great and we feel left out, like everything around us is evolving but nothing is evolving for the medical care here I think people don't want to go to hospital because I'm sure almost everybody here has sat at the hospital in emergency for over two hours for something as simple as a cut, a bruise, something but there are not nurses there to care for you in the first place, okay? Because everybody wants to leave and as nursing students, we sit around and we talk, we're like, people give, you barely find scholarships for nursing students and we say like, what if the government has to give scholarships and we put a, okay, so let's say, yes, so we give you a scholarship but you have to stay here for 10 years, right? So many people, we would want to go because we do not want to be paying all that money for nursing school and we will stay because we have something keeping us here so I think that's something our government would really think about, yeah. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for the lecture tonight but it was, I think, to God the polymer from India who was also a Nobel Prize winner he says, truth levelized in the opposing forces but the reconciliation of the two and in another place Koko Chals, I could go first how we reconcile all the tension that exists among ourselves and I'll go back to that in a little while but Koko Chals say we live in a different dispensation today is no longer, it's post Darwinian is no longer survival of the fittest but survival of the slickest and so, and we're in a rat race right now in St. Lucia so some of the problems that you articulate is because in my lifetime and I'm becoming an old man now you know, at a certain age and I've realized it's a survival of the slickest for truth is a rat race going on in this country and then we blame the youth but the problem is us the older ones we create a society get what you can, carnate and sit on it it's all about us and then all young people, they are very smart they're observing us our behavior but they're doing it every man for himself is a rat race going on there the young people understand that and that's where the part of the problem lies in the hypocrisy, in the way we treat one another in the way we deal with one another and that's a serious problem and that is why I'm looking for some kind of a way where we can reconcile this problem and you speak about food security I say food insecurity we can feed ourselves with all that land that we have on the island and it's shrinking our land bank is shrinking that's another subject in itself and we have a number of estates that follow follow day and nothing is happening Pranams, Luvet and many others and all of these lands we need to put young people to work in these places fellas can't even think of ISO they get on stage, they get women they get popular they get on TV bring young people into agriculture give them appropriate technology deal with the situation so that we can produce food food prices too heavy in these countries too much and you can't even get what you want they're not even healthy a lot of important stuff on our ship there's so many things little things that we need to do but we need to reflect and we need to come together as a people to solve our problems one of the problems we have say doggy dog pardon me, may I say a few words? thank you, thank you any other comments or questions? oh, yes okay yes, writer, thank you good evening I must commend you for a very edifying lecture I was interested in speaking to the education of our young and you sort of spoke to the manner in which we have developed our education system I have a 13-year-old who is born at school he's an A student at college St. Mary's College but he finds school boring it's not challenging enough because he believes our focus on education is about cramming and regurgitating how do you propose we could transform the education system to make it more interesting and more challenging for you Andy, there are people in this room who are so much better at answering that question than I am that I won't even attempt to but you're absolutely right I think part of the problem is our schools as I said that quote by Kirsten is a little harsh but it's true our schools have not evolved in the last 100, 150 years they still look the same we cause our children who are digital natives to disconnect when they get into school instead of teaching them how they can use this is one of the most powerful things ever invented I have on this everything that I had in world book encyclopedia and all of these other things it's in this now with my phone I have access you can ask me a question now I can go in there and look for a response and if I don't know I'll use chat GPT and it'll give me a response which is not good but we have to cause our children to interact better with the tools that are around them our education system needs to change its priorities it cannot just be the one-way transmission the reason your 13-year-old is bored is because it's a one-way transmission of information I dropped geography at St. Mary's College something I regret to this day because my geography teacher brother O'Connor blessed soul felt that the only way to test your knowledge of geography was by your regurgitating everything that he taught and I don't learn that way I don't learn by regurgitation I learn by understanding and reproducing in my words how I have appreciated a subject and I found that no matter how hard I tried the best I could get with brother O'Connor was 70 I figured you know okay 70 is not a bad mark but I can't be working so hard for a 70 and how do I try I'll get 71, 72 but I can't pass that threshold and you know and that's been going on for a while now we've changed our other countries are doing it but in the Caribbean there's a reluctance for us to change we just figure boy to change that that's so much trouble so we keep the incentives regime as it is because it's too much trouble to change it we keep the social safety net program as it is knowing that we're leaking money you know everybody getting concessions on rice flour on sugar everybody getting concessions that shouldn't be but it's too difficult to change we have to get past this thing about it being too difficult we have to change it because we are losing out the opportunities that are being lost and I think there's a there's a boldness that's needed from our leadership that we're not seeing and maybe it's because they're so preoccupied dealing with all the firefighting around them but they need to be able to step back one of my biggest criticisms when I became cabinet secretary and it became amplified when I became a minister was to see what the cabinet of ministers the most powerful group of people in this country because they will determine how you live what laws are passed every week they sit down in a cabinet and for five hours they go over things like who gets study leave would pay who gets concessions who gets incentives the items that get deferred are the weighty items so a new policy position on mangroves or a new policy position on social safety nets boy that there's too much work in that it'll get deferred and deferred until the line minister will be asked okay minister give me a summary of what's there and then by that minister's summary I'm sorry I'm telling tales out of school that's cabinet secretary I'm really sorry I'm doing it but that is what happens and that's not peculiar of this cabinet that's all the cabinets before you cannot have the most influential and powerful group of men and women in this country coming together once a week if this was I know we always scoff when you talk about comparing government to business but if this was a group of directors imagine a company they'd be fired because you can be you can be wasting your time dealing with this issue but that is what they deal with every week you know and they don't even deal with matters so the cabinet will not sit back and say okay you know what we have a serious violent crime problem in this country and that's boy I heard Fletcher talk some nonsense there about social determinants of crime but are there really social determinants of crime I want a policy paper of equity and the ministry of of national security and the ministry of education to come together to produce something so that we can that doesn't happen cabinet looks at papers that a permanent secretary in his or her wisdom has decided is of import to send to cabinet and cabinet will then look at it that's how cabinet operates we have to change that until that happens we will not see that boldness of action that will cause your 13 year old to be less bored in school we will not see the things that need to happen to address and discuss here tonight I'm sorry I can be more optimistic and encouraging than this but that's the reality that we face hello good evening so I want to ask a question about universal healthcare I think you kind of talked about it a bit and my question is realistically what are the actionable steps that we can take to realize universal healthcare in the Caribbean I mean we have models in the United Kingdom the national health system and in Canada for instance and in some parts of the US but what is this achievable and how long should we be waiting or expecting something to happen especially in St. Lucia or the Caribbean in the OECS what I mean it's a buzzword universal healthcare but what can we do on a national level to kind of realize that change 20 years ago I was permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and a gentleman who's in this room tonight Dr. Stephen King made a presentation in that conference room of the Ministry of Agriculture on what universal healthcare would look like us 20 years ago I think it was Stephen around that 20 years ago really there are two things you have to look at and Stephen is the person who should be answering this question but I will if I can speak about South Hollywood I can speak about anything there are two things that you have to look at first of all how do you finance universal healthcare and I think that is something quite extensively there are many options you could have an addition on your VAT like a 2.5% or whatever that you aim at that goes towards it there are the things that you could put in you could put a tax on sin food so on things pardon thank you Master that's another thing you could do but yeah there is revenue that you can collect and you have a blend of public finance and private finance but the other important thing you have to decide is what is the basket of services that universal healthcare will provide because universal healthcare can't provide everything it can be that you fall ill and you have a serious problem and universal healthcare will cover it you determine what is the basket of services that universal healthcare will provide and what is the cost of those services and how do you finance those services extensive work has been done by Dr. King and many others on this subject the same way I said for energy and us moving towards renewable energy the problem is political will and decisiveness I think it's the same thing with universal healthcare it's not for lack of a road map it's not for lack of information on how it should be financed and what it should look like it's for somebody to say you know what we're doing this and again that is part of how for me cabinet should operate the prime minister should say to every single one of his ministers what are your what are your targets for this year what are your key performance indicators what are the things that okay so the minister of health I want you to do two things for me I want you to deliver universal healthcare and deliver St. Jude's Hospital I went there the minister of agriculture I want you to look at how do we cause a land use plan to be brought to parliament so that we can safeguard those 30,000 acres that are still there and ensure that they are not used for anything else I also want a plan for the resuscitation of the 15 watersheds you have two years to do that you will be judged on that that doesn't happen so if you're not setting targets then you can't measure the performance of your people and you also can't ensure that there's any progress so the short answer to your question is that that work has been done has been worked out it just takes somebody now to say we're doing it don't change the name from universal healthcare to universal health coverage too they've changed the name but nobody wants to do it and a pilot project was done you know for diabetes and hypertension am I not right I'm Dr. King and it worked very well you know showed how it could be financed but we abandoned it and that's what happens you know we have this thing in St. Lucia have you ever seen the movie Fifty First Dates okay in Fifty First Dates this girl loses her memory every time she wakes up and her partner has to remind her who she is and record her every day that's what happens in St. Lucia every five years it's Fifty First Dates we have to go through this process all over again we have to start all over again and restart and some of the things we started we have to push them away or we have to call them something different you cannot run a country that way you cannot plan your long-term development that way if we wouldn't if we would do something different we would have universal healthcare a long time ago thank you everyone Dr. Fletcher thank you so much always a pleasure listening always live with something I was looking at your statistics here and it struck me I spent yeah statistics on alcohol consumption for the 19th century the last 20 years of the 19th century are very close to what you're showing here we were looking for a rum export we couldn't find exports mostly rum being consumed in St. Lucia produced in St. Lucia was being consumed in St. Lucia and we knew that because the taxes were being paid on rum there was more so we decided okay what okay fine what happens in archives you get lost because you get interested in different things the rum was going a little bit was going to the French islands but then I start to find whiskey coming in bear coming in lots of alcohol coming in and if you would do the statistics and you added alcohol consumption imports versus taxes being paid it would look something just like that I'm wondering what about St. Lucia requires the population to be high all the time the spirit of St. Lucia good evening I really wish I could give you a serious answer to that question I can but it is very troubling and it is something that our sociologists and our government needs to pay attention to let's not pretend like we do not have an alcohol problem in this country we do and that alcohol problem is manifesting itself in very many ways you talk about a problem with domestic violence how many of these domestic violence incidents are linked to alcohol alcohol consumption how many of these accidents we see on the road vehicle accidents are linked to alcohol consumption we cannot sweep it under this under the rug we have to deal with it because it is causing problems so I'm happy that that work has started but we need now to see it elevated so that all of our social partners come together and devise a solution to this problem yes, Hitler okay yes so we are going to allow two more so please go ahead good night everyone and thank you Dr. Fletcher for a very, very much a development economist type presentation notwithstanding your initial statement so I quite like the presentation but I have two points one really just a comment and the second is a question I'm hoping you can answer I certainly give some thoughts your thoughts on it this one really I support the idea of as a development economist myself there being a greater focus on social development because a lot of the issues that we have in terms of you know our ability to compete on a global stage can be linked back to the inefficiencies we have in the social sector and I think you touch on that quite well and it would be nice to see a greater focus especially around budget time when you determine you have a dollar how we allocate that dollar where do we put the dollar you know more of the dollar go into the social one would be surprised that economists would say that because all the times all the issues about balancing budget but in truth and in fact especially if you think back for instance when countries were faced with structural adjustment problems we had to go back to the whole notion of structural adjustment programs for human heart a human face and that speaks to the need for this level of focus on the social development but that's just my comment the question I want to ask you every time we speak about the challenges of development one speaks about why is development difficult to achieve the P the P keeps coming out I won't say the full term but I'm sure you picked up already how do we address the inhibiting issues surrounding development around politics like very good question we have to play a more active role in politics we cannot leave politics is too important to be left to politicians actually I have it as a quote in my book but that really and that's no knock on politicians especially my good friend here Aldo but you are politicians and you are politicians and unfortunately we have a situation not just in Seleucia but in many countries that winning a popularity contest the following day puts you in charge of the levers of power of a country that's what you do you win a popularity contest called a general election more one more person likes you the other person and the next day you are controlling the development that everybody is not capable of what everybody is unfortunately the way the the way the politics is practiced in our region that I would very much like to see a separation of the legislation from the executive but I believe in paying the people who have been elected as much money as you the people who are in the cabinet because the electorate has come together and decided that they want and I'm really sorry I'm going to do this because I know that's the last thing but they decided they want Cleeter Springer to be their representative okay the member parliament for particular and he's scratching the last real thing but they decided that they want Cleeter Springer to be their representative Cleeter Springer has been given a very awesome responsibility for the people of that country but you know Cleeter Springer exercises that responsibility once a week during the week he sets out a day for his constituents where he goes in his constituency and he sees a whole range of people maybe 15 or 20 in one day and then poor fellow maybe on the weekend and I will tell you that weekend his weekend is different so if he doesn't have to travel if he doesn't have other work to seeing those constituents but the bulk of his time is for you as a minister that should not be a parliamentarian should have the bulk of his or her time dealing with the challenges of the people who elected him or her into office and sitting in parliament and passing proper laws that they have read because too many of our MPs present company excluded because I know him have laws in front of them that they take into power that they haven't read and that's why you see the kind of problems that you know we need parliamentary the role of the parliament is to keep the executive in check but how can the parliament keep the executive in check but the parliament is the executive why you think we have a public accounts committee that doesn't work because the public accounts committee very often is chaired by the leader of the opposition but because our accounts are so much in a rest that the public accounts that the leader of the opposition is reviewing are the accounts of his government so of course he doesn't want to subject them to any scrutiny you need a situation where you separate the legislature from the executive and the MPs are paid the same salary that you pay the cabinet ministers the MPs deal with the matters of the constituency and the passing of laws and the approval of budgets and providing scrutiny to the executive and you select the best people to be your ministers of A, B, C and D and they will you will hold them to account and if they're not doing their work the prime minister can fire them because he doesn't have to worry that boy if I fire him or her there will be an uprising in that constituency no he can fire and the MPs can now hold the feet of that cabinet minister to the fire and say but you're making us look bad bro what's going on here I'm getting endless talk in my in my constituency about the performance of the minister of infrastructure and all the holes and the roads that are collapsing so and I didn't say that to cast us positions on anyone I'm sorry I just chose that is the easiest is the easiest scenario and the easiest tree for me to climb but that's how you deal with that situation and going back to something that you said you didn't touch on it but economists are always preoccupied with productivity but we never understand that there's a social dimension to productivity it's as if we can appoint a productivity council and learn we will put prescriptions on how people's productivity can be but if that person is having a bad time at home if that person is unhealthy if that person is living in an environment that is not conducive we saw that in the public service when we set up the employee assistance program I was shocked at how quickly that program was over subscribed with public servants presenting with a multitude of problems that were militating against their proper performance in the service on their job so there's a social dimension to everything that we do that we don't pay attention to and that's one of the great things about Saafa is that we understood that social dimension and that's why we have to go back to a system of development planning in this country where we look at the totality you have the Ministry of Economic Planning no I want the Ministry of Planning the same major as the Planning Institute that looks at economic, social and environmental planning that's what we should be doing here because we can't be talking about sustainable development which is the environmental, the economic and the social but we're only focusing on economic development that doesn't make sense I wish everyone lucky for me in plastic I'm happy we're waiting to talk about Dr. Fisher but he didn't participate in the conference excuse me if I don't speak English we can't do anything and you didn't participate in the conference in Paris the climate change congratulations but now if we go to the conference I'm missing I wanted to give all these statistics this time but I didn't give anything because I have to do it is it because we don't know is it because we don't want to work because the climate change problem So, together for our work the alcohol problem is it because I'm not sure that in the scientific statistics I think it's a pity that 5 or 6 of us are higher, because Martinique, we can do it. And we can bring the Martinique home. There are young people and young people who die. Every 5 days, you have a death on the road. Not only people who are in accidents, but there are young people who die because of alcohol. That's why I think it's a pity, because Martinique is still alive. I'm happy for that, I can applaud for that. But I'm not sure that it's a pity that it's higher in alcohol. In any case, I'm very happy with the confidence. Thank you very much. I don't want to talk about Martinique today, because I just want to thank you for being here. I want to thank Martinique, Guadalupe, Guyana, Stéves, all the people who came here. So, I don't know if all these types of people have the same problem, but all of them have the same problem. Some of them have the same problem as Piti, others have the same problem as Guadalupe, but all of them have the same problem. So, I don't want to talk too much about this. We can't come here. The type of people who come here, I don't want to talk about them. We all have the same problem, and we all have the same problem. We all have the same problem, and we all have the same problem. So, Teddy? I want to say I've got a thumbs up. Very important. Could you keep it to 30 seconds? Okay. Can I exercise my presenter privilege and say Teddy and then keep it? Keep it and you'll have the last one. Good evening, everyone. I want to congratulate Jimmy, of course, on feeling excellent. We expected no less from you, Jimmy. Congrats on a good lecture. But I want to say that I just found Jimmy in explaining and going through his presentation, of course, government and authority, agencies and institutions. But I thought we were all guilty tonight of government centric and government and cabinet. What's Glitter Springer doing? What's Omer? Where are the community leaders? At every institution, we have the bottom of the barrel. We all at Bonsai and Capestit looking down on the theater of commerce, of our Jabal and our children in Canada and Miami. Where are we? But where are we? About cabinet and government and... But where are we? Institutions? We could go on forever. I think that's a serious omission. Cabinet and government and institutions. But where are we? We are all in our little cocoons in our vacuum and expecting it to unravel. Secondly, folks, Glitter Springer, the man I admire and respect a lot, do not underestimate... I see youngsters in there somewhere really thought. And this time, he spoke recently, the feelings on the system tonight, the impolite which is excellence, that is not insignificant. If talking excellence to Asla and the world, folks to Asla get it right. Excellence starts there. It's unforgivable that the sound system will fall tree tonight. Get it right. The little boys sitting next to the otters. That's the signal, that's the excellence we ask them to aspire to. Start there, folks. You celebrate it in Asla, get the sound system right. These simple things are not insignificant. They're not. Don't think they are. Okay? And let us get involved. Let us get involved. Not government, not Alva and Stephen King and Shafny and Guy Joseph. It's us. Where are we in the leaders? How many clubs are ASI involved in? Who is in the club so soon? Everywhere is the bottom of the barrel. We're all retreating. Not so clean as? Clean as, clean as.  Are you right? I wonder that. Government and Alva and Shafny and... But where are we? Where are we? Where are we? Franck, Franck Myers, were you in table tennis at one time? I'm from Kieflin. And I think the we, there's not too many of, we young people around, because most of us here, I think would be over 40. And we need to have in the schools, Dr. Fletcher, we would like to invite you to go to your Alma Mater, all of the other schools, secondary schools, and invigorate these young people and let them know about these issues. Because most of us here are too tired at the end of the day to go out and revolutionize the system. So we have to revolutionize the minds of the young people for the change that we want to see. Kieflin Karoo? Good evening, Dr. Fletcher. Thank you so much. Presentation as usual was fantastic. But I think one of the areas that, well, I wanted to bring up was social entrepreneurship. As a social entrepreneur, I just feel like every single day trying to implement social interventions in St. Lucia as an independent organization that is non-partisan, is like a wrestling match every day. And similar to the nursing students, I started in St. Lucia maybe in 2017 and I feel like I'm at the point where I'm looking at other regions like West Africa that where there's more opportunities, there's more possibility for impact and so forth. And while you mentioned this really fantastic roadmap, but I think one of the biggest issues is that we require mindset shift in St. Lucia and probably the wider Caribbean when it comes to social interventions. And it's a mindset shift, not only at the individual level, but societal and governmental. So how can you encourage a social entrepreneur to stay? Because I think we are the ones that are bringing new forms of impact investment, new innovations to the region. Yet, for example, with Helen's daughters, 100% of our funding comes from outside of the region. So how truly can we foster that development and that innovation, that social entrepreneurship? Thank you. Did you agree with everything you said? You're right. We need a complete change in mindset. We need a re-engineering of this country. If we continue at the rate at which we're going, it's not just food and water insecurity that we'll have. We'll have some serious insecurity. We already see a lot of the social fabric being torn apart. And we can't keep that social fabric in place by policemen and CCTV cameras. That will not stop it from praying. We need some serious social interventions in this country. And it has to start with our young people. But it has to be sustained. It cannot be we just do it for two days or three days and then you move on. We have to commit to this. And it has to be something that continues, whether it's this administration or another administration of another color or another person in charge. That's why I said this question of long-term planning has to be what we focus on. If we do not know where we want to go, we'll get anywhere. And that's the problem that we're experiencing in this country. Thank you very much, Dr. Fletcher. And I will exercise a couple seconds of my role as moderator. Actually, I'm sorry I was a moderator tonight because I really had so much I wanted to say. The one thing I just want us, and it touches a little bit on what Mr. Francis Elotetti was saying, in St. Lucia, Nobel laureate week, in St. Lucia we have a lot of educated but put education aside. We have a lot of intelligent people. We have a lot of persons who have gone. Everybody has masters, doctorate, second doctorate, third doctorate. And then they are placed in positions where they could make a change. And I see where we are making decisions in education, in health. And it boggles the mind because I know that the persons who agree in and push in certain things no better. They know this will not work. We are repeating mistakes. And I often ask myself, why? Why are we doing things which we know are not going to work? And then I started to ask, is it because we are getting financing from overseas and therefore we are leaning to what the financiers want, what the funders want? As a consultant sometimes I have certain conservation organizations. We are going to fund this. This is what we are going to fund. So even if I know it's not going to work in my country, I'm still going to do it because we are getting financing. And so I just want to leave it because as Teddy said, we can make a change. And we know when we are working in organizations where we are doing things that we know are not going to work and yet we do it. And you know, Dr. Fetcher said it's up to the young people but you know what, it's not. It's up to which would be those of us in management positions, those of us who are directors, those of us who are proven scholarships, those of us who are teaching and we are teaching using a model that we know doesn't work but we are still doing it. So having said my two cents, I want to thank her but I also with great pleasure want to invite the principal. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Please permit me to adopt the protocol already established in the interest of time. And for my closing remarks I have to encapsulate given the time that we have left. So I still, although I want to adopt the protocol already established, I want to recognize among us the impolite, the president of the Senate, our diplomats for our chair. No volume. Okay, so what I'm going to do today is this afternoon this evening is to encapsulate the closing remarks. So ladies and gentlemen in the indomitable ways several people and organizations have contributed to the success of this session today, this lecture today. It's against this backdrop I want to draw on the following quote that I love from an unknown author that says him, your blessings with thanks given so they won't unravel. So therefore on behalf of South Carolina University College family, it is time that we ensure that our blessings do not unravel. So we are going to express heartfelt thanks to everyone here and to many organizations who have played instrumental roles in making this event a reality. First and foremost, I want to thank the dedicated members of the Nobel Laureate Festival Organizing Committee, a number of them are here. I would like you to stand and take a bow because of you who are here. I could see a number of you here, so please stand. Yeah, and let's just give a round of applause. Because of your meticulous planning, your impeccable execution of the event, we could see we have a very, very successful time. Special thanks to my Board of Governors. I see two members here. The college staff, students, your unwavering and continued support has been the bedrock of our endeavor. You see our students here. They sang, they did all kinds of things. So Athelibus Community College family has been very, very instrumental in whatever is happening with us for this week. We want to sincerely thank our distinguished keynote speaker for sharing your profound insights and enriching our understanding of today's topic. You have paid tribute to Athelibus Legacy and have left an indelible mark on our hearts and minds. Your insightful words have eliminated our minds and inspired us. Thank you for sharing your expertise and enriching our events with your presence. Thank you. I want to call our chair in a while to give you a token of our appreciation. Your profound historical insights and reflections on the application of the teaching of Sir William Arthur Lewis in St. Lucia's 21st Century Development Challenges reminds us that we are living in the best of times and we are also living in the worst of times. And navigating the future is a collective effort where we must make logical policy decisions. So it is a collective effort. We have to collaborate to make these policy decisions. He articulated that we must focus on food security. He also reminds us that the renewable energy sector must be considered to ensure the viability of our economy. He recommended that we revisit our incentives to attract investors where we, St. Lucia, have the bargain in power. Many times realize that we do not have that power. He asked us to reflect on the status of our human capital to navigate the challenges of our times. Most importantly, he spoke about ensuring the holistic development of our people, which is very, very important for us. He also articulated that our education system was focused on 21st Century survival skills that facilitate our transition in the dynamic global environment. And I want to say to you, Dr. Fletcher, that we at the Lewis Community College, we have started this where we are working on a life skill course and compulsory life skills course for all students before they graduate, they must complete it. It is a non-credit course and we have started it. My vice principal of academic, Dr. Winston Spillgens, is here in the audience and he sent me the first draft so we're looking at it and for us to start it in September. Thank you very much. We hope that so he also touched the vexing issue of citizen security. We all know that it is vexing for us not just in St. Lucia but in the Caribbean and globally. He spoke about, he recommended that we focus on early childhood education to address the challenges of human development. He also touched on the importance of evidence-based decision making to enact social change. With respect to governance, he opined that we must learn from Sir Arthur Lewis' writings on democracy to facilitate sustainability. He also reminded us to look at our St. Lucia footprints and remember our legends who have made major contributions to nation-building. Thank you for this thought-provoking presentation. A round of applause to our moderator, Dr. Marie Louise Felix, who's guidance ensured a smooth and engaging session throughout the lecture. We thank you for your sterling performance. Thank you, thank you. We also thank our talented staff and students. We have Phoebe Dover here, Nasshawn Anthony and Mrs. Elra Ome Glasgow for adding this musical touch to our event. Our comments truly showcase the incredible talents within our college and we are immensely proud. A deep on heartfelt gratitude to our sponsor, the Bank of St. Lucia for the generous support in making this lecture possible. We also thank NTN for the technical support and coverage. Last and by no means least, the sincere thank you to all of you who are here. You came out to support the event and some of you brave the weather, the traffic. Your presence has added great value. We appreciate your commitment to the ideals of the unlegacy of Sir Arthur Lewis. Ladies and gentlemen, as we conclude this memorable lecture, let us carry forward the knowledge and inspiration gained today. May the spirit of Sir Arthur Lewis continue to guide us in our pursuit of knowledge and excellence. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, we express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone and may God bless you all. I want to now call on our chair, Mr. Springer, to present the token of appreciation to our keynote. Okay, so Dr. Fletcher, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Principal, for your closing remarks. And once again, thank you, Dr. Fletcher, for being with us today and really inspiring us and giving us lots to think about. So there's nothing more for me to say. I believe that we can declare our lecture over and there are refreshments, I believe. Ladies and gentlemen, before you leave, please stand for the exit of the Acting Governor General of St. Lucia. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Safe travels, but before you leave, please enjoy some light refreshments just as you step forward.