CARIBBEAN COASTAL STUDIES

UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME (UNEP)

Caribbean Environment Programme
(CEP)



Wednesday afternoon, March 13, starting my first brief encounter with UNEP Program Officer Dr.Vicente Santiago-Fandiño, I made a jocular reference to the switch in the subtitles of two photographs in the most recent Sunday paper, which probably had several people fooled in believing that Dr.
Santiago was a woman ?....
But no, he was not, and
neither was he a Cuban
but rather a Mexican,
whose excellent command
of English dates back to
his academic training in
Marine Biology at
the University of Wales
in Bangor, Wales, UK.
There he had worked
with an old and highly
respected acquaintance
of mine, since demised:
Dr.Crisp, who had been
very active in international
cooperative efforts,
particularly in the
Persian Gulf.
This newspaper picture
shows Vicente (center right)
with the new Cuban project
manager Dr.Sergio Claure (left), Manuel Alepuz, the Director General of CIMAB, a Cuban coastal management center (center left), and H.E. Easton Douglas, the Jamaican Minister of Environment and Housing, during a workshop meeting on the pre-feasibility study on the cleanup of four major Caribbean harbors, including Kingston's and Havana's.
What with the recent US-Cuba flap about downing two airplanes, the US response involving any third party nation dealing with Cuba, and the withdrawal of USAID from the Caribbean, UNEP as well as Jamaica are put in a potentially awkward situation viz-a-viz US visitors.
Vicente and I resolved that issue very rapidly and set up a meeting for early Thursday morning before the return of Mr. Weill-Hallé, the UNEP Coordinator.
On Thursday at 8:30 we went through some of the new projects and a discussion about CEPNEWS, the very informative UNEP/CEP quarterly newsletter which has been published for several years.
I talked about the recent California NetDay96, Caribbean connectivity , and the World Wide Web, and in the course of the discussion was also introduced to Ms Alessandra Vanzella-Khouri, another Program Officer fluent in both Spanish (she is Colombian) and English (she attended Florida International University).
I presented to them, or rather, to UNEP/CEP, a copy of Bill Gates very upbeat "The Road Ahead", which Vicente took along to his briefing meeting with the Coordinator, while Alessandra told me about an ongoing project on Caribbean tourism and also made an appointment for me with Dr. Jeremy Wood of UWI.
I did not get the opportunity to meet with the other Program Officer, Mr. Kjell Grip, a Swedish Ecologist.
Next, Vicente came back to collect me for the meeting with Mr.Emmanuel Weill-Hallé, the UNEP/CEP Coordinator, who gracefully acknowledged my first sentence (in years) in French and thanked me - in English - for Bill Gates' book, and even had an acknowledgment letter ready to confirm it.
Apparently this was the right time to discuss matters of computers, communications and data-bases, and we had a very good and informal discussion on these topics. I was impressed with Emmanuel's frankness (no pun intended) and sorry to have to leave with so many 'loose ends' - because of my scheduled appointment at the UWI - but I had another brief conversation with him later that afternoon, by telephone from the IADB Open House, and we promised to keep in touch on these issues.
Before my taxi driver arrived, however, Vicente and I quickly visited the other United Nations Office across the hall, where they had a computer with WWW connections so I could demonstrate the use of the Caribbean Coastal Studies homepage and print out a resume on the spot. Vicente also took me to the UN Documentation Centre where Ms. Bond cheerfully helped me to a number of United Nations Law of the Sea and International Seabed Authority documents, perhaps only marginally relevant to coastal studies but certainly to me myself because of my job as a professor of oceanography and cousin to the former Dutch representative to the Law of the Sea.
That concluded the visit to UNEP/CEP, which I personally consider the focal point of Caribbean environmental matters. The people I met were most cooperative and pleasant and, as mentioned before, I like their CEPNEWS newsletter a lot.
Yet there were some problems which bothered me, both before and after my visit, in trying to get in touch with them and receiving answers to some specific questions.
I sent two faxes and made one telephone call to UNEP from the USA the week before I went there, yet did not succeed in firming up an appointment.
Same story after my return, when I tried E-mail, fax, and leaving word by phone, without receiving any response.
That's why I found it so ironic to receive the March issue of CEPNEWS with the distinct plea in the editorial on the front page.
My response to that is to urge UNEPCEP to:
  1. get a 'normal' E-mail address
  2. acknowledge, (preferably, also to answer) every incoming message the same day
  3. hook up with Internet
  4. prepare or have prepared for them, a UNEP/CEP homepage
  5. arrange that CEPNEW items are not just made available in the 'hard' copy by airmail, but also on the World Wide Web
    (keeping in mind that their quality on the screen is obviously not as good as when the article is properly prepared as part of a home-page.)
  6. include a translation in Dutch, in addition to those already made in French and Spanish. After all, there are some Dutch-speaking Caribbean islands, too.
  7. ensure that any future data-base be incorporated on the WWW so as to assure worldwide free and easy availability of data.

In summary, communication is a two-way street, and modern life moves or c/should move at a much faster rate than before. Just this morning, I received a welcome E-mail from Tobago and managed to answer it within one hour.. Our fathers would have had to wait a few weeks for a response, and earlier ancestors a few months or even years.



P.S. The United Nations is largely financed by the USA, but the USA has also chosen to become the biggest debtor to the UN for its assessed contributions.
We include a short newspaper article which shows that not everyone in the USA agrees with the refusal to pay, and that the money due for the contribution, averaging $ 4.40 per person, can be paid in other ways, too.
Thus, in conclusion, here's a French saying that comes to mind with regards to all such matters of dispensing, accepting, and effectively using the considerable amounts of aid and contributions involved: Noblesse (richesse?) oblige.

first and only version: March 31, 1996

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