The ochre-colored African wind wafts through the Tanzanian veldt, ruffling the low acacia trees that grow scrubbily between august Baobabs. The sun is setting and the malarial mosquitoes start their evening hymn. In between the metropolitan mounds of termite nests an animal is waddling. Some would call it an ugly animal; it looks like an anteater: same oblong, awkward body and pointed snout. But unlike an anteater this animal is covered in reptilian scales, somewhat like a large, land-locked and ambling four-legged fish. The animal is called a pangolin and it is being hunted.

  Hiding behind one of the termite mounds is Andwele, from the Bantu-speaking Nyamwezi ethnic group, and he is poor. He hasn’t been able to provide for his family in some time and his children are hungry: there has been a persistent drought in this part of Africa and Andwele has been unable to make ends meet. Never before has it taken so long for the rains to come. It is as if the climate itself has changed.

  As Andwele was returning from his meagre farming plot in the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro he stumbled upon the pangolin as the animal was breaking open a termite mound foraging for food. Andwele loves and respects animals but he hasn’t eaten and has a cousin that can get almost a month’s salary for a live pangolin. He catches the ugly animal but while he does so his heart breaks as it looks at him with pleading puppy-dog eyes. But Andwele is hungry and so are his children so he stuffs the pangolin in his rucksack and the next day travels to Arusha to sell it.

  Three weeks later the pangolin has traveled 9,300 kilometers and finds itself in a small metal cage in a market in a medium-sized Chinese City. Although the city is considered medium by Chinese standards it is home to eleven million people. The animal is emaciated and covered in sores from being transported across the ocean in unhygienic conditions. It shares its cage with a bat, similarly covered in festering sores and lying listlessly at the bottom of its cage; resigned to its pending demise.

  Soon the owner of the stall removes the bat, the pangolin’s companion for the past four days. The two animals have been sleeping together, breathing together, shitting together. But now the bat is gone; it is being skinned after its head has been chopped off; the owner preparing it according to the traditional Chinese method.

  Two weeks later a mysterious, pneumonia-like disease is spreading rapidly in the densely populated city. But it is the Chinese New Year and people are traveling all over the world to be with their loved ones. One of those people is Xi-Li who has traveled to Bergamo in Italy to be with her family. To celebrate the Lunar New Year they decide to eat a traditional Italian meal at a trattoria on the Piazza Vecchia. Xi-Li hasn’t been feeling well; she has a slight temperature and a dry cough but she’s travelled all this way and decided to enjoy the special occasion. In three weeks she’ll be dead.

  Also at the restaurant is Massimo. Massimo lives in New York but travels to his home town often. A week after his meal he travels back to New Rochelle and kisses his wife hello. She notices he has a slight temperature but he insists he is fine. It is the eve of their anniversary and tomorrow they travel to Fort Lauderdale to embark on a 10-day Caribbean cruise; first Port of Call the tiny half-Dutch-half-French Caribbean Island of St. Maarten.

  A month after his cruise Massimo lies in an emergency hospital tent. He has been intubated with a respirator because he is too ill to breathe on his own. He might not make it. Ten thousand of his fellow New Yorkers haven’t. His wife didn’t. All across the globe life has drastically changed. Normal will never be the same again. The world cowers in fear of a new pandemic. Economies are collapsing. Oil prices have collapsed. Governments are struggling. Three billion people are forced to stay inside. And there is only one thing on everyone’s mind: COVID-19.

  The above is just one of the scenarios for the origin of a virus that has been dictating the human experience for the past three months, but it is the most plausible (5G towers and lab-gown conspiracies aside). The renown scientific journal Nature mentions that “researchers have noted that coronaviruses are a possible cause of death in pangolins (and) are a good candidate as a source for intermediate spread. … Pangolins are protected but illegal trafficking is widespread. It is almost certain that they are the source, … likely having infected a bat with the bat infecting a human in turn … .”

  The global spread of the pandemic and our ability, or inability, to manage the infection has highlighted the role environmental degradation and social inequalities have played in these unusual times. It has highlighted the global nature of the human experience and that an act of wildlife crime (exacerbated by a just-as-urgent but not as highly publicized climate crisis) has resulted in communities, economies and societies now being on the brink of collapse.

  It is no accident that my native St. Maarten has per capita one of the highest per capita COVID-19 cases and deaths in the Caribbean region. The prioritizing of the bottom line over the welfare of citizens has been the focus for the economic development of the island since the tourism boom in the 1960s, with a reliance on a model dictated by fast economic growth to the detriment of environmental and societal safeguards. Island communities must now place focus on economic, social and environmental sustainability as our guiding principle should we want to survive.

  One of the clearest and most obvious mistakes many of the islands in the Caribbean have made is an over-reliance on the Cruise Tourism industry. The Cruise Ship model for development, even before this crisis, has proven to not adequately account for the welfare of island societies and the natural resources critical to our ability to develop sustainably.

  We should learn from this lesson and not have multinational tour companies dictate the governmental and economic policies of the Caribbean. Mass tourism on the islands, coupled with an unrestrained and ill-planned thrust to develop just for development’s sake, has resulted in significant discrepancies between various social strata, discrepancies further highlighted by the virus.

  In order to emerge from this successfully the Caribbean has to alter the way we do business. Islands such as Bonaire should learn from what is happening around them, and islands such as St. Maarten and Aruba should learn from their own experience and move away from an economic model almost solely dependent on mass, lower-income tourism. Islands such as Bonaire and Saba are better positioned to emerge from this crisis scarred but not broken. Islands such as St. Maarten and Aruba, who have invested significant infrastructure into courting mass cruise tourism and budget-minded travelers, often to the detriment of the population and the environment, will be broken for some time and will struggle to emerge successfully from this crisis.

  Now should be the time for a renewed focus on building the resilience of our communities; counteracting deforestation, reining in unsustainable coastal development, ensuring proper solid waste management, preventing pollution from entering our air and water, are all issues which exacerbate the negative health and economic effects faced by Caribbean residents in a post-pandemic reality.

  As Caribbean people we cannot afford to lose focus; the region must get rid of the usual economic model that focuses on profit over people, further exacerbating income inequality. When we emerge from our houses we need to place emphasis on a more inclusive, sustainable future. After this crisis there has to, finally, be greater emphasis on the critical role the three pillars of Sustainable Development must play in terms of resiliency, especially considering the potential new crises in what is predicted to be an above-average Hurricane Season.

  There also has to be closer regional cooperation, cooperation that does not adhere to the usual model defined by former colonial powers who apparently consider a billion-euro grant to Southern European countries more important than providing relief to former colonies whose natural and human capital have fostered their own economic development.

  There has been no time in history which calls for a greater Caribbean unity than now as we emerge from one of humanity’s most existential crises. The old ways won’t work, and despite what we are going through we cannot function in isolation nor can we depend on former colonial countries and western or eastern superpowers to support our development; that much is clear.

  But there are encouraging signs. The encouragement provided by seeing our Caribbean environment healing should push us to foster and encourage further healing. Being isolated whilst being unified as a human race, unified by our common human experience of being shut indoors, physically isolated from friends and family, should unify us as global citizens while putting emphasis on local solutions for our societal ills.

  We cannot go back to business as usual; let us use the healing of nature to enter into a new phase of economic development, of finally being sustainable. Let us perpetuate that healing. Let us allow it to guide us into a more sustainable future. Let us ensure that wild areas and the animals that inhabit them are conserved. Let us manage our natural resources so that the goods and services they provide will be enhanced and secured. Let us make sure that the climate crisis is sufficiently addressed so that we can end poverty and global hunger so that people like Andwele are no longer forced to hunt wild animals to feed their families.

  Let us ensure, as we emerge from our cocoons, that we are on the right side of History. That we rise from our confinement a renewed, holistic and reinvigorated Caribbean society.

  Happy World Environment Day!

Tadzio Bervoets

Interim Director

Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance

By Alex Rosaria

The US recently announced across-the-board indictments of Venezuelan President Maduro and some of his inner circle on federal drug-trafficking and is sending Navy ships to beef up counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean Sea. Does this mean an invasion is imminent? Highly unlikely.

  This anti-narcotics mission has been months in the making but has taken on greater importance following the above-mentioned indictments. It’s to be supported by 22 partner nations, including Brazil (which sent its President to visit the US Southern Command in Florida on 9 March 2020). This is relevant since Brazil is opposed to any military intervention by the US in Venezuela (Reuters).

  The US has never camouflaged its desire to topple Maduro. Invading Venezuela wouldn’t be much of a problem for the US since Venezuela’s military has only limited combat value. But what then?

  Democracy, as we have seen in Iraq, cannot be copied and then pasted. The US can ill afford creating another mess without a clear exit plan. It also risks losing hard-won support among Latin American and Caribbean governments. China, Russia and even Iran would eagerly fill up the vacuum left behind by Washington in this region.

  It could be argued that China and Russia are less inclined to keep supporting Maduro as before. China for the time being will certainly be focused to revamp its post-COVID-19 economy. Russia faces uncertain times with a rapidly aging population, plunging oil prices which will push it further down on the list (currently number 11 behind Italy and Canada) of the world’s largest economies. The decision by Russian oil firm Rosneft, the biggest economic ally of Maduro, to cease operations in Venezuela and sell all of its assets in the country to an unnamed company that is wholly owned by the Russian government was simply stunning. Whatever the Kremlin’s new strategy, Rosneft’s exit will further crumble Venezuela’s economy as the flow of hard currency and supply of gasoline will disappear for the time being.

  Could this Kremlin move mean that the US, Russia (and China) are coming to a point that each will respect the other’s right to have and defend its own vital interests in the various corners of the world? (I will dedicate an article on this issue later). Could be, but the arguments against a US invasion of Venezuela are overwhelming as we have seen above.

  Will this show of force topple Maduro? Difficult to say. I believe that the US tough statements and actions are not a sign of an imminent military attack. It’s rather a signal to the Venezuelan opposition and military that the US would support an internal coup. It could also push Maduro into a corner forcing him into negotiating a bloodless exit. Hopefully those often elusive cooler heads will prevail.

  ~ Alex David Rosaria (53) is a freelance consultant active in Asia and the Pacific. He is a former Member of Parliament, Minister of Economic Affairs, State Secretary of Finance and UN Implementation Officer in Africa and Central America. He is from Curaçao and has an MBA from University of Iowa (USA). ~

It is with deep sorrow we mourn the passing of our former colleague, the late Mr. Louis Duzanson, former head of the department of General Affairs Island Territory St. Maarten.

Dear Editor,

  Let me start by  reminding everyone to keep a safe distance from each other. and do the safest thing, which these days is to STAY HOME..

  I have not had much of the usual contact with people since COVID-19 and even though I did not agree with certain things done, I have not written about it because I give priority to the cure or alleviation of that  virus. Then on the 17^th, I got a call asking me what I think about that piece written by the PPA leader. I looked it up and my opinion is based on my point of view. We do not need any unnecessary distraction at this time, whether well-meant or not. I do not think that we should embark on personal congratulations in a time when so many people are involved in trying to save lives of others. I can put my head on a block that there are thousands of people who in one way or the other are positively contributing to alleviate that corona virus or keep it under control.

  Many years ago my father asked me: “Where did you get that shirt?” “I bought it.” “Who made it?” “I do not know, somebody in a factory.” “What is it made of?” “I do not know, Daddy.” “Cotton, silk, wool, or linen? “Maybe cotton?” “Possibly, but it was made of cloth, who made the cloth?” “Somebody. It was made in a factory from raw material and the raw material was gathered by somebody.” “My son, why did I ask you all of those questions? The reason I asked you those questions is to let you know that because you like that shirt, you bought it. But you have to be grateful to at least six people for that shirt.”

  I too would like to give kudos to people, but then I thought of the amount of people who care and who are involved and I thought back on my father’s question about the shirt. And then I ask myself who is more important these days? The person who willingly goes out there and gathers the bush for bush tea which he knows will help you with the cough and the cold and the sore throat, or the person who gives you money, or the man in the supermarket or the man at the gasoline station?

  I will not judge, because it all depends on the circumstances. By now we should know what affects the people on the island and why, so let us consider this “the time to do well and don’t look back”.

  And let us not let up on praying for the first responders and the caretakers.

Russell A. Simmons