“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Oscar Wilde

Though it might seem counterintuitive, the recent attention in the press regarding the ACS is welcome, as it allows me to engage in a collective mea culpa on behalf of the Secretariat, it being evident that we may have been lax in our communications strategy by taking our fame for granted (though we are glad our website is useful). Upon our 10 th Anniversary and with the 4 th Summit to be held in Panama looming large, the reawakened interest must be a good omen.

Though our shoestring budget (33% decrease in ten years) may be blamed for the publicity lapse, through the determination of its Members, with a little help from the Secretariat, the Association can point to concrete results. Some highlights:

The ACS policy to “Unite the Caribbean by Air and Sea” acknowledges the imperative of addressing the dramatic situation of air transport in the Greater Caribbean and led the Association to negotiate its Air Transport Agreement to offer the legal framework to provide a variety of air service options, whilst ensuring the highest degree of operational safety and security in international civil aviation and tackling the urgent need for a general aviation policy for the Greater Caribbean by which Members may be guided in their aviation arrangements for a wider choice of routes, carriers and improved services.

The ACS, with other organizations, is also developing a Port and Maritime Database inclusive of freight costs and services available, to soften the impact of the vicious cycle of no-trade-through-lack-of- transport / no-transport- through-lack-of-trade in our region, usually unfairly blamed on transporters.

The ACS Convention Establishing the Sustainable Tourism Zone of the Caribbean (STZC) creates the first such zone in the world by providing quantifiable criteria and a mechanism for certifying specific destinations. The objective of the STZC is to establish a geographically determined cultural, socio-economic and biologically rich and diverse unit in which tourism development will depend on sustainability as internationally understood. In other words: The Convention will afford Members the opportunity to develop and coordinate strategies in areas such as community participation and profit in tourism, the environment, technologies for sustainability, economic policies and instruments, tourist markets, indicators of sustainability in tourism, air and maritime transport and public and private sector collaboration, among others.

The ACS identified early on that increasing the ability of Members, particularly the most vulnerable, to mitigate the devastating effects of disasters, which year after year are visited upon our region with increasing frequency and severity is a priority and set forth to develop a cooperation system in this area. The adverse impact of disasters, left unchecked, will continue to have dire consequences for the sustainable development of our region and thus calls for the urgent establishment of a legal framework that promotes cooperation for the prevention and management of disasters. The ACS Agreement for Regional Cooperation on Natural Disasters was signed in 1999.

Recognising that intra-Caribbean trade accounts for less than 8% of the total trade of its Members, the ACS has embarked on several initiatives to address this sad state of affairs. Work continues to be carried out in respect to obstacles to trade in goods and services, as well as in investment promotion and protection, taking care to consider the special needs of small economies.

Also, acknowledging again that scarce trade cannot be laid at the feet of the shipping industry, the Business Forum of the Greater Caribbean stands out as an ACS initiative which, in coordination with the trade promotion organisations of the region, seeks to promote trade through the coordination of business meetings over a two-day period, providing valuable opportunities for visiting exporters and importers to develop intra-Caribbean business opportunities. More than 1200 ACS entrepreneurs have attended the event in the past 5 years and the latest edition of the Forum in the Dominican Republic, managed to secure initial business to the tune of US$5.000.000 in just one day.

There is an old Latin proverb to the effect that no one’s a Prophet in his own land but, though we seem to have recognition issues in our own countries, the work of the ACS has not gone unnoticed by the international community. The ACS has, through its effectiveness, transparency and wide Member base, earned the respect and support of governments outside the region, having received substantial technical and financial cooperation from countries such as Argentina, Canada, Germany, Finland, Italy, Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. This list does not include the contributions made by ACS Members and international organisations, which is also significant. Also, in 2004, the European Union recognised the Association as an important regional entity, through which relations between the EU and the Greater Caribbean Area can be deepened and consolidated and welcomed the progress made by the ACS in the consolidation of the cooperation zone of the Greater Caribbean.

Even if all of the above were dismissed, the ACS continues to be the only forum for the countries and territories that live on and from the Caribbean to interact to better their chances for collective sustainable development. The permanent contact between leaders and officials around the ACS table is invaluable for confidence-building and acquaintance, which is a prerequisite to, in the words of ex President Robinson of Trinidad and Tobago, “turn the Caribbean Sea into a lake” and ensure that we are, none of us, strangers in each other’s lands.

Throughout its existence, the ACS has been able to count not only upon successive governments of our Host Country, Trinidad and Tobago, as true believers in the cause, but also upon the continued hospitality of the Trinidadian people. Gone are the days when the Secretariat was nothing more than the Secretary General and his briefcase and today the ACS enjoys a modern Headquarters with state of the art communications facilities which, among many benefits, spare us from the hassle of a diplomatic pouch.