The Caribbean Potential: Reimagining the Region’s Policy Frameworks

Dr. Georges A. Fauriol, Former Vice President of Grants Operations and Evaluation, National Endowment for Democracy and Fellow, Caribbean Policy Consortium
January 2021

The Caribbean enters 2021 outside many of the violent crosshairs affecting the rest of the world, but a mix of factors, notably the global pandemic, an uncertain economic outlook, an unsteady US policy footprint now merging into a new administration in Washington, and an expanding politico-humanitarian crisis with Venezuela, are going to test Caribbean national leadership and will require a more robust regional consensus to emerge. The region’s layered institutional machinery anchored in democratic norms, and the emergence of the southern Caribbean as a heavyweight oil and gas producer, can provide major buffers to effectively tackle the confluence of factors affecting the region. But unless deployed strategically to benefit the Caribbean’s future, those same assets will also shape a much bleaker future.