Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
An advertisement by a bank sparks a letter to an editor which is published in a newspaper, released on social media and stirs and sparks a virtual racial war.
The fingers point now to a cycle of blame: Who's at fault?
Is it that the advertising agency and the bank were insensitive to the deeply entrenched racism and other historical hurts festering in the society? Was the media fuelling racism to sell a few to a gullible public who is sure to jump at the ongoing race-baiting, consciously or subconsciously perpetrated on a society that cannot rise out of the scars of the past? Each may have very sound and solid justifications on its actions, but the reality is that media, culture and gender sensitive literacy have moved to the forefront of the challenge for social literacy, virtually replacing the traditional three R's with a new one - Respect!
And we are way past the time to begin to unravel and rethread the flaying and flawed social fabric.
It points to the challenge for social, cultural, gneder sensitive literacy and re-educating the education setor ...
In celebration of Independence, Demokrissy is migrating!
Loyal followers of Demokrissy have been enquiring about the State of the State at Independence.
While the State itself might be slow to evolve, we are continue our revolution, smashing walls and barriers (read more and Subscribe https://krisrampersad.com/)
..Dr Rampersad calls on PM, Pres in her mission to protect T&T’s national heritage
Published:
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Dr Kris Rampersad
An online petition has been started by heritage educator, author and researcher Dr Kris Rampersad as well as open letters to President Anthony Carmona and Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar calling for the safeguarding of T&T’s natural heritage, the “other Magnificent Seven of the South.”
“It is something of a suicide pact if a state opens the doorway for destruction of its natural heritage without proper safeguarding as it is for an activist to embark on a fast to the death,” said the outspoken Rampersad, who refused at this time to specifically name the other Magnificent Seven given the sensitive and exclusive nature of her research.
Evidence of what may be clues to the ‘missing links’ in the story of human history and evolution may lie in south Trinidad are in danger of disappearing by negative development actions, she said. Rampersad has been piecing together the comparative pre-and post-colonial heritage of T&T in the context of the Caribbean, South America and its global connections.
She is also the T&T representative on the Unesco Executive Board in Paris and chair of the National Commission for Unesco. An independent multimedia journalist, Rampersad is also a Unesco/Commonwealth/Caribbean trained heritage educator, and member of the scientific committee of the International Culture University and the International Institute of Gastronomy, Culture, Arts and Tourism.
Rampersad has written an impassioned letter in her blog Demokrissy (www.kris-rampersad.blogspot.com) to Carmona and Persad-Bissessar to safeguard these valuable heritage elements in their home districts of south Trinidad, which she calls “The Other Magnificent Seven”—of south Trinidad/South America/Global South and the globe.
She said these efforts must be part of and contribute to a holistic approach to reviewing and revising misrepresentations of the islands in national symbols as the Coat of Arms and the National Anthem. The open letter calls on the President and Prime Minister ‘to lead’ in safeguarding the endangered and neglected heritage including these valuable assets which she claims have outstanding universal value.
The blog which is receiving the thumbs up across her extensive social media network, has inspired a Change.org petition to Carmona and Persad-Bissessar (http://goo.gl/EEzSc6) calling on them to act now, before all is lost.
Banwari site and other Magnificent Seven of the South Rampersad, who is the author of the first book on Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Through the Political Glass Ceiling, that maps the PM’s journey from rural Trinidad to Prime Ministership from speeches, said the letter was inspired by her own impulse to act because it was the responsibility of citizens to motivate and encourage public officials to act in the best interests of the country.
She said, “While a responsible citizenry has a duty to hold officials to account, we also must take responsibility for our actions that impact how authorities may react or act.
“There has been an increasingly hyped national environment that makes it almost impossible to recognise what is empty noise and what may be constructive criticism. “It is on us to find the tone to make the authorities listen. I hope my blog achieved that.”
Speaking to the Sunday Guardian on her way to the biannual Unesco Board meeting in Paris, Rampersad said unplanned and unchecked development actions can cost us valuable evidence contained not just around the Banwari site—the 7,000-year-old humanoid skeleton discovered in 1968—but of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ elements that span across the entire peninsula for southeast to southwest Trinidad.
Much focus on PoS and city heritage She said there had been much focus on Port-of-Spain and the city heritage that included the seven European-styled buildings in disrepair, but the fundamental and valuable heritage of global scale importance have been overlooked as part of general neglect in development planning for the South.
“Maybe that has been a good thing and it has allowed these assets to remain undisturbed, but development focus in this district now means we have awakened a sleeping giant, and we must pause, take actions to secure and safeguard, document and explore what really we are sitting on before we allow what may be another course of development.”
She said focus on heritage had contributed to enhancing national revenue, employment and substantially diversifying economies of many countries which is why so many hanker after being admitted to the Unesco World Heritage lists or any of the recognition Unesco offers on the global value of tangible and intangible heritage.
“But there are steps to be taken which we have not been entertaining,” she said, claiming her research included interviews and examination of oral and literary culture, maps, comparative charts and other evidence from across more than 50 countries. Rampersad said, “The traditional confrontational stance between development and conservation has resulted in a kind of public fear and deafness.
“One such I have encountered, apart from a general apathy and indifference to act, is the erroneous belief that the operations of the oil sector or Lake Asphalt may be negatively affected. “This is very far from the truth as the model I am developing has a central place for the oil sector and other industrial heritage.”
Win-win model
She said that there was an absolute win-win model that had been workshopped at various regional Unesco and other forums and to senior officials of the World Heritage Centre, all of whom had urged and were eager to see us step forward. Rampersad said that will be quite a breakthrough for many other societies also trying to strike the balance between meeting the needs of growing populations while conserving for the future.
“I have many examples of our working successfully with governments, industry and communities to find the perfect fit between what has traditionally been seen as competing actions. “As a small island, T&T with its wealth of human, natural and industrial financial, intellectual and other resources is ideally positioned to impact on and make a difference on the world’s drive for sustainable development.”
Rampersad said that she feared that “the trigger effect of one kind of development to others can now destroy valuable evidence that has not been thoroughly investigated and so unless we move to safeguard them and establish parameters where this can co-exist with development, we stand to lose a legacy that is of value to not just us in the islands, in the region, but also in defining and establishing our pre-and post-colonial connections to the world.
“We have the resources, financial and human and intellectual to position T&T as a model small island nation that effectively strikes the balance between development and conservation—that was the goal of the recently held United Nations Summit which Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar attended. “So I am asking the President and the Prime Minister to lead us and take the necessary steps to do this.”
Inaugural Address at 194th session of
UNESCO Executive Board, Paris, France
Dr Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago Representative on UNESCO
Executive Board 2013-2017 at the 194th Session of the UNESCO Executive, Paris,
April 2014
Dr
Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago Representative on the UNESCO
Executive
Board (centre) co-chairs with the UK a joint sessionof the
Finance and
Administration and Programmes and External Affairs Committee
during the 194th session of the UNESCO Executive Board in Paris.
Photo
Courtesy Kris Rampersad. All Rights Reserved
Greetings on behalf of the
Government and People of Trinidad and Tobago who welcome, admire, respect and
support the Director General’s initiatives to reform and restructure UNESCO and
her intensive drive to use soft diplomacy which we believe is crucial to significantly
impact the post-2015 agenda as we transition from priorities of the Millennium
Development Goals and consolidate the gains of them through more focussed
Sustainable Development Goals.
Trinidad and Tobago pledges its commitment to
engaging in this process of futuring the operations of UNESCO to remain
relevant and responsive to a global environment of dynamic and effervescent
change. It is an environment that is demanding greater inclusivity. It is placing
increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity,
gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools
placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies
towards eroding these superficial barriers.
In this context, we believe that the work of
UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed the
institution best positioned to consolidate the gains of the past towards
carving responsive and relevant paths to progress that address the needs of
generations to come. Foremost among these seems to be combating the ennui and
disenchantment at failed and failing macro political, institutional and
bureaucratic formulas, systems and structures in favour of more glocally
(global-local) focussed initiatives that emphasis and value empowerment of individuals,
communities and civil society to explore their full potential.
Certainly there is much more that needs to be done
to particularly better utilise new technologies in making our work here at
UNESCO more effective and more relevant.
We reiterate the call made by the Trinidad and
Tobago Minister of Education to the Director General at the last General
Assembly, that UNESCO, along with its focus on other disadvantaged groups as
women and children in general, take a lead role in championing actions
throughout the United Nations system that would directly impact and bring in to
the mainstream the estimated 30 percent of the global population of special
needs children who are still severely marginalised and handicapped by current
existing systems in education, culture, science and information.
We support our colleagues speaking on behalf of
strengthening the culture initiatives having regard to the direct benefits this
is having from the work done in our societies where for many the main sources
of income and survival reside in leveraging their talents and skills as the
counter to the haemorrhaging of national resources, by exploitative, corrupt
and ineffective systems and practices. We endorse the culture-centred development drive that
recognises not just intercultural linkages but also cross sectoral links.
At the same time, we particularly commend the
drive to synergise and harmonise sustainable actions in biocultural diversity
and acknowledgement of the intrinsic interplay between physical, mental and
emotional cultural spaces and the potential to either erode, or energise these through
use of scientific understanding and technologies.
In this regard, we believe compilations as the
2013 Creative Economy Report could achieve greater depth were it to more fully
explore the cross-sectoral cost-benefit analysis of the co-relation between the
creative and cultural sectors and other out-of- the-box-areas - as the economic
value of social and culturally inclusive practices on political stability for
instance – an area of analysis that is sadly lacking and could provide the
data, if not ammunition, needed by UNESCO in pursuit of its motto of building
peace in the minds of men and women.
As such, we look forward to deepening of UNESCO’s
intersectoral increasing drive to promote multisectoral partnerships, and
collaborative mechanisms through cross institutional and cross regional
platforms, including with other institutions of the United Nations.
It is in these contemporary areas of UNESCO’s
focus, including its now developing perspective on Big Ocean Sustainable States
(Boss) – the informal rebrand of SIDS - Small
Island Developing States posited at the last General Conference - that we in
the Caribbean believe we can draw the greatest strength, given our evolution
from a history of fragmentation, violence, migration and marginalisation.
The Caribbean Sea at once connects and separates
us from all the regions of the world. It presents to the UNESCO community beyond
the hard politics of power and dominance, a living example for survival and
resilience that endures despite and through a history of genocide of
indigeneous peoples, slavery, forced indentureship, and migration.
Such resilience is represented in the survival of
religious and cultural practices, habits and beliefs: the vibrant celebrations
that range from pre-Columbian festivities of the Mayans, Incas, Tainos and
others to the evolving festivities of migrated peoples: the Garifuna and Rastafari
from oppressed African heritage; and others transposed from the East – the resilient
Ramleela, Chinese Dragon festivities, and their evolving fusions in our
cuisine, music, dance, drama, our Carnivals and steelpan, reggae, zouk and
chutney. All of these present significance to UNESCO ideals of peoples, who
beyond conflict and tensions, are finding ways to celebrate their migrations,
cultural contact and shared occupation of our natural environment.
Yet, our space is at the same time, severely
endangered by the risks of climate change and sea level rise, deforestation, poor
land use practices and pollution and other development challenges.
We believe that the UNESCO mechanisms in science,
education, information and culture can be more effectively used to bridge these
divides, and to help us to further explore, capture and harness these
experiences for the benefit of building peace in the minds of men and women
Even
as we admire the creative initiatives of the Director General to balance a
shrinking budget in challenging financial times, we pledge to work with her for
further rationalisation, while we particularly look forward to better
engagement and more equitable treatment of the countries of the Caribbean. We form
part of the Latin American and Caribbean UNESCO region, and represent almost 40
percent of the votes from this region, but not an equivalent allocation of UNESCO
resources. In its programme of restructuring, we would also
suggest that UNESCO look at ways of redressing of imbalances in its institutional
structure and mechanisms of field and national offices in our region where of
12 offices in the region, only one – located in Kingston - serves the 13 member
and four associated members of CARICOM.
We assure you of our commitment and support to the
Director General’s goal of making UNESCO more relevant and more effective.
I thank you
Dr
Kris Rampersad, UNESCO Executive BoardApril
2014
