Kingstown, St. Vincent – Minister of Tourism, Civil Aviation, Sustainable Development and Culture, Honourable Carlos James, has called for mature diplomacy and a must-do list of reforms to address the challenges confronting the world within the context of the global political economy.
Minister James presented his thesis while addressing the Berlin Economic Forum in Berlin, Germany on last Wednesday March 5, 2025.
The Berlin Economic Forum, hosted by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, is an annual think-thank of dignitaries including senior politicians, heads of global governance organizations, senior parliamentarians, mayors, heads of universities and representatives from leading corporations.
The forum, which aims to analyze and explore national economic policies and their applications within the global context focuses on policies that can be used as primary drivers for advancing global economic growth, democracy and peace.
Delivering the keynote address under the theme, “Navigating the Global Political Economy – The Role of Small Island Developing States in a Complex Geo-political Landscape”, James called on world leaders and policy-makers to provide efficacious modalities, through urgent multi-lateral action, to address the challenges facing humanity.
According to Minister James, as the world’s population expands, countries will require efficacious management of their resources from food security, water management and accelerated transition to renewable energy to reduce the downside risk and escalating pressure on our environment and the depleting world’s resources.
“Failure to adequality adjust our priorities will see global conflicts of epic proportions as resource-nationalism becomes the order of the day,” he cautioned.
Minister James noted that meaningful reforms of outdated global institutions including the United Nations and the international financial institutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) along with full forensic reforms of the global financial architecture are required, thereby making them fit for purpose to our current contemporary realities.
Minister James highlighted several call-to-action initiatives from meaningful debt restructuring, a multi-dimensional vulnerability index to better facilitate development financing and a reacceleration of the targets towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“Our progress has been hampered due to global instability in trade, the world economy and geo-politics.
Globalization have turned the world into a global village, yet growing instances of outright political and economic self-interest impacts the global economy, inequality gaps between the world’s rich and the poor threatens our very existence and hampers tangible direct benefits to majority of the world’s population. There is no one formula to solving the world’s major problems, but undoubtedly addressing the issues affecting the world’s most vulnerable provides a starting point,” Minister told the gathering.
On the issue of trade, Minister James expressed that fair trade must become an essential component of the world’s economy if the global community is to create an environment for international business and sustainable investments.
‘The global elite will tell you free trade is the best thing for our global economy. We ignore the fact than even within economic partnership agreements, including EU-ACP countries there is an uneven balance of trade. We must consider fair trade and the uneven balance of trade within the context of free trade,” Minister James said.
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