(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Senior officials from Japan are to meet with senior officials of the Caribbean Community in their Fifteenth CARICOM-Japan Consultation, which opens on Monday, at the Georgetown based CARICOM Secretariat.
The CARICOM-Japan Consultation provides a forum for dialogue on the their bilateral and technical cooperation programmes, including the frameworks adopted at the first and second CARICOM Ministerial meetings, held in November 2000 and September 2010 respectively. The Meeting will share views on the status of the Partnership Programme and the CARICOM-Japan Public Private Joint Economic Mission held in 2011.
CARICOM and Japan will exchange views on outcomes of the United Nations Rio+ 20 Conference on Sustainable Development, and will continue to share views on climate change. Issues related to the environment are of even more critical interest to Japan in light of its recent vulnerability to the 2011 tsunami and the nuclear crisis spawned by the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s recorded history.
Earlier in May of this year, CARICOM Secretary-General Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, in accepting the credentials of the new Ambassador of Japan, His Excellency Yoshimasa Tezuka, had noted that CARICOM relations with Japan – particularly in the international arena – had been “advancing steadily.” Ambassador LaRocque had also mentioned the upcoming Fifteenth CARICOM-Japan Consultation and noted that it would be “an opportune time to review the progress of our political engagement, cooperation in international fora, and technical cooperation activities, particularly within the context of the new Framework.” For his part the newly accredited Ambassador to CARICOM had pledged “to vigorously follow-up on the outcome to the economic mission from Japan in November last year, which sought to boost relations between Japan and CARICOM.”
He had also intimated that there would be further co-operation and strengthening of ties between Japan and CARICOM member states at this year’s Japan-CARICOM Consultation. CARICOM /Japan Consultations have been on-going since 1993 and have touched on a wide range of areas of cooperation, including disaster management, business and tourism development, and agriculture.
To date, after two High-Level Ministerial Meetings and 14 consultations the CARICOM-JAPAN relations have witnessed a New Framework for Japan-CARICOM Cooperation for the Twenty-First Century (2010) that outlined a number of political, economic and social areas of collaboration. Under this Framework, Japan provides technical assistance for projects funded under the Japan-CARICOM Friendship and Cooperation Fund (JCFCF) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
More than 35 projects in thematic areas of tourism, environmental protection and energy have been implemented in CARICOM Member States, since 2001. Fourteen Member States will be participating in the 15th CARICOM-Japan Consultation, five of which will be joining via video conferencing.
