By Dr Antonio Carmona Beaz
Looking at 2020 in retrospect, the pandemic can be regarded as a great interruption to our daily lives, and long and short-term planning. Although not equitably, COVID-19 has affected the lives of most people and most societies, not to mention the global economy. Trips were cancelled and jobs were lost; neighbors, friends and family got ill, with just over 2 million Covid-19 related deaths worldwide. Between Marigot and Philipsburg, the death toll, up to 30 December, was 39 out of a total of 2,429 cases island-wide. Schools closed, reopened and re-closed again and again in attempts to simulate a functioning public school system, and many students lost contact with their teachers.
According to the Netherlands Red Cross, more than 10,0000 individuals in Sint Maarten are dependent on food packages. If these figures are reliable, then hunger came to the doorsteps of 1 out of 4 residents in the Southside of the island, many of which were stranded undocumented workers not able to return to their respective homes. Due to the economic impact, the pandemic also rocked the Kingdom of the Netherlands politically, and brought the government of Sint Maarten, together with those of Curaçao and Aruba, to its knees. In order to receive help from the Dutch government, the island-states were forced to implement stringent conditions, including reducing the income and work benefits of civil servants.
Once again, we as a society are urged to face our own vulnerabilities and forced to look for alternatives that would speak to the sense of helplessness. The most recent drastic experience prior to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus was Hurricane Irma in 2017; there also we were obliged to rethink our collective lifestyle as we went into the long haul of recovery. But in a sense, the pandemic was worse than the hurricane. After a hurricane, a country can rebuild the necessary infrastructure a functioning society requires, in time and according to the pace of the economy. With this pandemic, our tourism dependent economy fell flat on its face and we haven’t yet even recovered from the hurricane.
It is one thing to practice patience while infrastructure is being rebuilt in order to accommodate expected tourists. Waiting for the economies of North America and Europe to recover and the vaccines to be implemented en masse, is something else. There are no guarantees.
Throughout 2020 Cultural Xpression has taken note and reported on the varying community responses to the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on the island of St. Martin. The pandemic has also been described as a portal, or opportunity, to break with our unsustainable past and truly embark upon a journey toward economic diversification. Similarly, the prospects and longing for food security seem to have been reactivated with the building of kitchen gardens in communities and schools, and a larger interest in small scale agricultural production. Throughout the last year, the exchange of seeds, seedlings and plants became commonplace in social media. Despite the fact that the island’s large supermarkets continued to operate as usual, the impetus for public dialogue about food security was never lost. On the contrary, even government and large land owners started turning their eyes to the ground and to the possibilities of economic diversification through all the products and services that sustainable agriculture can offer. All of a sudden, we started listening more carefully to those who worked the land and those who promoted agriculture on the island. The knowledge that those close to the land were sharing all along, gained in value because of the pandemic.
Similarly, in education, efforts were made to rethink our food systems and nutrition. Continuing to educate the population about agrocecology, the University of St. Martin (USM) continued to work with Eco Sint Maarten Agriculture Research and Development in designing tailor-made curricula for different sectors of society. Together with the Red Cross and other local foundations, a feasibility study was conducted to understand what is needed in order to re-insert agriculture and nutrition into elementary and secondary school curricula. Furthermore, the Government of Sint Maarten Department of Community Development, Family and Humanitarian Affairs collaborated with Spaceless Gardens in offering the general public 6 and 8-week courses on climate change challenges, plant and soil science, and agribusiness.
We recognize the fact that many St. Martiners depend on tourism and we pray that employment and security will soon return to those affected families. Simultaneously, we hope that this spirit of engagement in a collective rethinking on what our island needs to reduce our climate and pandemic related vulnerabilities, will not be lost.
Leave a Reply