New International Security Measure Forcing Caribbean Ports to Be Shipshape by Larry Luxner Seaports across the Caribbean must shape up or ship outóliterally. Come July 1, the U.S. Coast Guard will have the authority to deny entry to any cruise ship, cargo ship or other vessel that has stopped at a port that isnít in compliance with a strict set of new post-9/11 security regulations. The tough new lawóaimed at preventing a terrorist attack on the high seasówill cost tens of millions of dollars throughout the region. Yet even cash-strapped Caribbean islands that depend heavily on cruise ship traffic are finding that they have little choice but to comply. ìEvery single port has to be in compliance with the new International Ship and Port Facility Security [ISPS] Code. Itís all part of the strategic concerns of the United States, which is trying to ensure that none of these ports can be used as launching pads for a terrorist act,î said Anton Edmunds, a native of St. Lucia and deputy director of Washington-based Caribbean Central American Action (CCAA). ìThey say any ship that touches a port which isnít in compliance wonít be allowed entry into a U.S. port, so this h as serious consequences for international trade and the cruise ship industry.î Ellsworth John, ambassador of the tiny island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (population 116,000), is working diligently to meet the ISPS criteria, despite shortages of money and personnel. ìWe are trying our best to meet these basic requirements by the July 1 deadline,î he said. ìThe problem for a country like St. Vincent is that weíre a group of 32 islands, and therefore we have a number of ports. Therein lies the problem.î To help smaller Caribbean countries such as St. Vincent make the deadline, CCAA has teamed up with the Caribbean Shipping Association, the Florida Ports Council, the Organization of American States and the Ports Management Association of the Caribbean to form a new entity: the Caribbean Basin Maritime Security Alliance. This alliance has launched a pilot program to survey and assess the security requirements of 15 ports throughout the English-speaking eastern Caribbean. Half of the programís $400,000 cost is being funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development; the other half is coming from private industry sources. ìItís about terrorism, access control and providing a secure environment to work in,î said John LaCapra, president of the Florida Ports Council. ìBut it gets complicated because historically seaports have not had to provide the type of security thatís required now. Ocean commerce has always been about making sure the goods move to market better, faster and cheaper. With these new provisions, you have to find a balance between port operations and the ability to inspect the goods.î According to the Coast Guard, efforts to meet the U.S. version of the ISPS codeóknown as the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002ówill cost upward of $10 billion in the United States alone. He said that Fort Lauderdaleís Port Everglades has already spent $43 million on security upgrades, and the Port of Miami has spent $50 million. ìThe cruise ship industry is spending its own money within their own terminals. Under U.S. law, the private sector must comply with the standards on their own, so thereís a tremendous cost involved,î said LaCapra, whose Tallahassee-based organization represents 14 ports across the state of Florida. LaCapra said money is being spent on three levels: by the public ports for access control, by private terminal operators for screeners, divers, dogs and the like, and by the Coast Guard on water entrances to ports. Edmunds said the survey being conducted by the Caribbean Basin Maritime Security Alliance covers 15 ports in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. ìImplementation could conceivably cost each country as much as $5 million,î said Edmunds, although that number will vary from one island to the next. Trinidad and Tobago is one of the nations working hard to meet the new deadline. ìFrom what I understand, the government there is making every effort to be compliant by July 1,î said Edmunds, noting that Trinidadís Point Lisas Industrial Port Development Corp. is taking the lead on this issue because the group contains a number of facilities producing methane gas, liquefied natural gas and other petrochemicals. ìWith liquid natural gas coming in and out of there, they must be especially concerned about security,î noted Edmunds. Probably the best-prepared island in the Caribbean is Jamaica, which has already spent $7 million on port security. Earle Courtenay Rattray, charge díaffaires of the Jamaican Embassy, said the cruise ship industry is crucial to his country, which last year received more than 1 million visitors on 509 cruise ship calls (not to mention 3,843 cargo ship calls). Although Kingston is a major transshipment center, the focus at Montego Bay is cruise ships and at Port Antonio the focus is on banana vessels. Most of the $7 million has been spent on Kingston, mainly on the installation of six mobile gamma-ray units that can inspect containers and five similar units that can inspect break-bulk cargo. ìWe also have closed-circuit TV surveillance systems installed at all three ports so we can monitor operations around the clock, as well as an electronic access control and badging system,î Rattray said. ìThis is to provide security clearance for all persons entering and leaving the port and is linked into our police criminal records office. Itíll serve as a red flag to anybody whose name appears on a watch list.î Offshore, he said, the Jamaican government has put in place underwater surveillance cameras, ìstrategically placed to inspect the hulls of ships before they come in or depart.î Effective May 1, cargo ships entering Jamaican ports now pay a $105 security fee per full container load, and $210 per container for anything less than container-load shipments. So far, no security fee has been assessed on cruise ships. The aim, said Rattray, is not only to fight terrorism but also the smuggling of narcotics as well as stowaways. Finally, officials have placed a four-foot-high floating barrier to form a security cordon around cruise vessels. ìWe depend heavily on our tourism sector,î Rattray said, ìand perish the thought that something could happen while a cruise ship was in port.î Larry Luxner is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat. Womenís Group Says Free Trade Will Hurt Caribbean Economies Until just a few years ago, Jamaican dairy farmer Annette Dennis had four full-time employees. These days, business is so bad that she can only afford one part-time worker. The reason: cheap imports of powdered milk from Europe and the United States, a consequence of Jamaicaís recent trade liberalization program. ìThree years ago, the processing companies that normally buy our milk reduced the amount they take by 40 percent. A year later, they reduced the price they pay us by 19 percent,î said Dennis, a member of the Jamaica Dairy Farmers Federation. ìThe processors have decided to use powdered milk instead of fresh cowís milk because they can make more profit that way.î Dennis added that thousands of Caribbean women like herselfófrom poultry workers in Jamaica to banana pickers in St. Vincentówill suffer deeply if protectionist barriers are eliminated under the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Sheís one of several people who spoke at the Jamaican Embassy during a recent press conference organized by Womenís Edge, a coalition of 40 nonprofit groups including various well-known nongovernmental organizations. ìOur objective is to ensure that we promote positive alternatives to trade policies, so that women can have more economic opportunities,î said Marceline White, global trade program director of Womenís Edge. The groupís opposition to free trade contradicts the pro-FTAA position by Washington organizations such as Caribbean Central American Action, which says the regionís economy will benefit from the removal of trade barriers among the 34 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. ìOverall, women would lose more jobs than theyíd gain,î said White. ìWomen are gaining jobs in the tourism sector and at hotels and restaurants, and thatís fine. But the problem is that these are the lowest-wage jobs, while [ better-paying] jobs are being lost in the free zones.î At its peak in 1995, Jamaican free-trade zones in Kingston and Montego Bay employed more than 36,000 women, most of them involved in apparel and garment manufacturing for U.S. companies. However, shortly after NAFTA came into being, many of those companies relocated from Jamaica to Mexico to maximize profits and take advantage of Mexicoís sudden and unfettered access to the U.S. market. As a result, in 1996, Jamaicaís exports to the United States fell 12 percent while Mexicoís grew by 40 percent. ìOnce NAFTA took effect, Jamaica lost about 16,000 free-zone jobs to Mexico, and those were primarily young women with not a lot of education,î said White, noting that many of these newly unemployed women became seamstresses, hair stylists, maids or market vendors known as ìhigglers.î But most of them didnít have enough money to start small businesses or the qualifications to land formal jobs. And others, having worked for years in poorly lit and poorly ventilated factories, were left with poor eyesight and breathing problems, rendering them virtually unemployable. As a recipient of World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans, Jamaica in the early 1990s embarked on a course to open its economy and reduce the role of government in economic matters. Despite following structural adjustment policies, however, the countryís economy has remained fairly stagnant while the government debt burden has now reached 150 percent of the gross domestic product. Between 1993 and 2001, according to Womenís Edge, men gained jobs overall, while women lost them. The group warns that ìif the current draft of FTAA is implemented, Jamaican men stand to gain 50,000 jobs, while Jamaican women stand to lose 12,000 jobs between 2005 and 2009.î Although the number of jobs lost isnít huge, said the group, ìthe jobs that are being created pay less than jobs being lost. And the shift in employment opportunities is distressing, given Jamaican womenís critical role in maintaining and providing for households.î Working with the Trinidad-based Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), Womenís Edge assessed the economic, legal and regulatory impact of trade liberalization on Jamaicaís poor, and forecast the potential effects of an FTAA on Jamaicans living in poverty, particularly women. ìSince women are overrepresented in the public sector, any layoffs in that sector will disproportionately affect women,î the assessment said. ìBy extension, since a large proportion of households are headed by women, the loss of a formal-sector job that provides health care, social security and other benefits has alarming implications for the well-being of the entire household, particularly for children in the home.î Another area where a hemisphere-wide free trade agreement could harm women is agriculture. In Jamaica, women account for more than half of all poultry workers, mostly because raising chickens and turkeys in their backyards involves few start-up costs. Under the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture, Jamaica opened the door to imported agricultural products. Before that, it had already slashed import duties on poultry from as high as 200 percent to 40 percent. After import duties were lowered, U.S. poultry exporters flooded the island with cheaper poultry meat, putting nearly half of those backyard chicken farmersómostly womenóout of business. In the eastern Caribbean, a WTO ruling that forced European countries to stop protecting the banana markets of their former island colonies has led to a dramatic decline in banana exports from such countries as Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia and St. Vincent. Folade Mutota, a CAFRA consultant who helped to draw up the Womenís Edge study, said social dislocation has already become evident in those countries, which have very high rates of poverty despite their small populations. ìBananas have been the mainstay of these economies for decades,î she said. Mutota added that ìwomen are particularly affectedî because money from banana exports has often been used to pay for childrenís educations at universities in Barbados, Trinidad or Jamaica. Without those funds, education is suffering, and many families have left their countries for Europe and Canada. ìWeíve been trying to prepare our economies for the coming of the FTAA, but what we have found is that free trade hasnít worked for us in the Caribbean,î she said. Among other things, the study urges the United States to create international trade adjustment assistance programs in countries that may be displaced by trade liberalization. ìWith a very modest budget, the Womenís Edge Coalition and CAFRA were able to study the effects of free trade in Jamaica and forecast potential impacts of FTAA for low-income Jamaicans, particularly women,î the report said. ìThe U.S. government spent $556 million for trade capacity-building efforts with developing countries in 2001. The U.S. government can afford to spend the relatively low time and money required to complete a poverty impact assessment. Indeed, if they want trade policies to benefit the poor here and abroad, they cannot afford not to do such assessments.î óLarry Luxner