Last week this column commented on the audacious aim of Trinidad and Tobago's Vision 20/20, which envisages that island achieving the status of a modern developed economy and society by 2020, particularly in vital areas such as health, education, housing, recreation and sports, and the environment.

With its abundant natural gas resources, its already installed infrastructure, the capabilities of the firms already engaged in producing energy products, and the outlook of both local and foreign investors, this aim is not an-other case of idle expectations and naive day-dreaming.

It is clear to those familiar with the country that if it can avoid repeating the policy mistakes of other resource-abundant countries, and indeed its own failings after previous oil booms, the 'low-growth syndrome' or the 'Dutch disease' infection that has dogged these states need not be replicated and attaining this vision is possible, but would take some doing.

'Biting the dust'

The other side to this 'brave New World' is of course the reality of how vulnerable Caribbean societies are, and indeed how often in the past similar grand visions have, as the saying goes, 'bitten the dust' and left a legacy of deep disappointment. Such bitter disappointments go back to the very early periods of the modern phase of Caribbean history, when conquest and settlement of the region was led by the obsessive search for El Dorado, the city of gold, and the 'treasures of the Indies.'

Travelling to Jamaica last week to teach for two days at a joint UWI-UG run WTO sponsored three-month course for regional officials on the WTO and external trade negotiations, it was difficult after undertaking this journey across the region and arriving in Jamaica and interacting with the participants on the course not to sense the compelling apprehensions and concerns widely shared among many persons about the future of CARICOM.

The participants on the course came from all CARICOM member countries (including the two most recent Haiti and Suriname) as well as Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In the sessions it seemed that the common vision was that of a region with a seemingly unending catalogue of problems.

Many of these were of a critical nature, several of which have arisen in recent times and show no signs of abating. Indeed if anything, they appear to be multiplying and growing in their intensity and complexity.

These problems to which I refer, do not include the more persistent and longstanding economic and social ones. Since 9/11, the region has faced an exceptionally difficult international economic environment.

The adverse effects of the global economic slowdown that has accompanied 9/11 continue to be felt in many countries, despite reported signs of a turnaround in the fortunes of the tourism and travel sectors and the good fortunes of oil in Trinidad and Tobago.

Global security concerns have taken centre stage completely, thereby hastening the further decline of aid flows to the region and generating a mood of investor caution that has dampened private foreign capital flows to several regional countries.

Further, the dramatic collapse of the 5th WTO Ministerial Conference at Cancun has put multilateral trade negotiations under the WTO on pause. Closer home the hemispheric negotiations for the FTTA are in trouble and as Richard Bernal the Chief Negotiator for the Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) has observed: "the FTTA talks have stalled."

The situation is no better in regard to the Cotonou Agreement as regional negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) has already encountered several missed and postponed deadlines.

To compound these problems on the external trade negotiations front, a formal challenge has been brought by several sugar-producing nations (including Brazil) to the EU-ACP Sugar Protocol, under which the region secures preferential access and higher prices to the European sugar market.

Even as this article is being written the region finds itself caught up in the slide of the US dollar, to which we bind the fortunes of our currency. Under the weight of a massive fiscal deficit (running at about 5 per cent of GDP) and a massive balance-of- payments deficit (with the current account gap also about 5% of its GDP) the US dollar has depreciated spectacularly against other major currencies in recent months.

Because CARICOM member states peg their currencies against the US dollar, their currencies have followed the US dollar and depreciated against other currencies with which we trade significantly, particularly the Euro, the Japanese Yen, the British pound and the Canadian dollar. This has gone by almost without notice or public comment, so many are the problems that the region faces.

To these seemingly persistent economic problems the region encounters, we can add the persistent social ones. Here I will only refer to HIV-AIDS where the regional infection rate is the second highest in the world, the increased penetration of organised crime into all interstices of the society, and the corrosive spread and influence of the narco-economy.

Haiti, border controversy and the CCJ

To these persistent regional problems and many more three have now come to the forefront of the regional agenda. These are the crisis in Haiti, the border controversy that has arisen between Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, and which now directly involves Guyana, and the difficulties being encountered in establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

These have arisen in an already crisis ridden and unsettling regional environment. Together and separately these three issues if not swiftly resolved could threaten the very foundations on which the present phase of the Caribbean integration effort rests.