In a small meeting room, tucked away from the faux waterfalls of the Paris Regency Hyatt hotel’s immaculate lobby, Warren Smith, a soft-spoken Jamaican economist and the newly re-elected president of the Caribbean Development Bank, explained how it all might work.
“The trick,” Smith said, “is to take a regional approach.”
Electricity in the Caribbean region costs three to four times as much as in the United States. Caribbean island economies are highly vulnerable to the “vagaries of the international petroleum market,” Smith said, and the boom and bust cycles that characterize those markets spell instability and risk for island states hampered by isolation and size constraints.
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About the author
Michael Igoe@AlterIgoe
Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.
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