Video: Momentum builds for debut Small States Conference

In just over a week, the first ever biennial Commonwealth Small States Conference gets under way aimed at highlighting the concerns of small states to the international community.

Set up in the wake of the global economic crisis, the two-day summit hosted by the Commonwealth Secretariat sees representatives of the Commonwealth's smaller member states meet with international donors and partner agencies to help find solutions to critical challenges including debt, private sector investment, trade, sustainable development and lack of resilience.

Vulnerability of small states

Attendees include the World Bank, World Trade Organization, Caribbean Community, Australian Government, UK Department for International Development and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

According to Dr Cyrus Rustomjee, the Secretariat's Director of Economic Affairs, the conference - at Marlborough House in London, United Kingdom, between 28 and 29 July 2010 - is a "unique" opportunity to help small states develop responses to the "severe challenges" they have faced since the financial crisis.

"We have come to a juncture where many, many small states in the Commonwealth and beyond are in very, very difficult situations - their economic and social situations are dire," Dr Rustomjee says.

Often geographically remote and reliant on a single export commodity, small states are especially vulnerable to environmental disasters and shocks in the world economy. In recent months, risk averse investors, reduced trade earnings, and shortages in foreign exchange receipts have had an especially severe impact. Adverse trade effects alone have taken away on average 2.93 per cent of small states' output, estimates Dr Rustomjee.

"Whenever a crisis comes - whether it is a crisis in finance, as we have seen in the past couple of years, or, as is coming, a crisis in the environment - small states tend to be the worst hit, the most vulnerable and the least resilient," Dr Rustomjee continues.

"They don't have easy access to the finance needed to lift themselves out of the crisis; they don't have the human resources; they don't have the technical capacity on their own and without support, to build sustainable futures and withstand future crises.

"The moment is now to convene a meeting, take stock, work through some of the particular challenges these countries have, and see whether development partners and member countries and the Commonwealth Secretariat can find pathways to help."

Benefits to the public

With presentations from luminaries including the Finance Ministers of St Kitts and Nevis and Jamaica, as well as government representatives from Namibia, Mauritius, Barbados and Maldives, the meeting offers a platform for small states to exchange views, highlight good practice and develop common positions. An agenda chosen by the participants will focus on financing sustainable development, debt, private sector development, vulnerability and resilience, and international trade and regional co-operation.

Dr Rustomjee stressed that the meeting has been structured to bring real benefits to ordinary people. The Secretariat will be encouraging participants to network and get together for meetings in the wings that produce real results, he said.

"What the conference offers to a farmer on a small island in the Pacific is the possibility that the government, donor agency and regional partner [at the conference] can come to agreement, for example, to provide sea defences, which stop salt water coming on to the land and destroying not only the crop but the actual asset upon which the farmer lives - the land itself."

At the end of the meeting, participants will deliver recommendations for promoting the interests of small states with specific actions to be taken by the Secretariat, the member states and the international community.

The conference follows a Commonwealth Secretariat/World Bank Joint Task Force on Small States, which concluded that characteristics such as limited diversification, limited capacity, poverty, susceptibility to natural disasters and environmental change, remoteness and isolation, openness and income volatility pose special developmental challenges to small states.

Secretariat Links:

• What we do: Environmentally Sustainable Development