Oil and Climate Change in the Guyana-Suriname Basin

Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith is a Fellow with the Caribbean Policy Consortium and Global Americans and a Senior Associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has published widely on Caribbean security and crime issues, the latest book being Challenged Sovereignty: The Impact of Drugs, Crime, Terrorism, and Cyber Threats (University of Illinois Press, 2024). Recipient of the Dr William J. Perry Award for Excellence in Security and Defense Education, named in honor of former U.S. Defense Secretary, Ivelaw has served in several academic leadership roles, including as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana, President of Fort Valley State University, Provost of universities in Virginia and New York, and as a Dean at Florida International University. Also, he has testified before the U.S. Congress and served as a consultant to the U.S. State Department, the Commonwealth Secretariat, Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and several other agencies. As well, he has been a visiting scholar at the Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies in Washington, DC, the Royal Military College of Canada, and the George Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany.

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface and Acknowledgements

List of Contributors

Introduction

1. Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith, “Dynamics of Oil and Climate Change”

Part I: Petro Power Geoeconomics and Geopolitics

2. Lorraine Sobers, “Petro Power in the Guyana-Suriname Basin in Global Context”

3. Arthur Deakin, “Global Investment in the Energy and Allied Sectors in the Guyana-Suriname Basin: Actors and Actions”

4. Georges A. Fauriol, “Oil and Security: Geopolitical Implications for the Caribbean of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine”

5. Riyad Insanally, “Geopolitics of Oil and Territory in the Guyana-Suriname Basin”

6. Patrick Paterson, “Venezuelan Petro Politics and the Impact on Petro Power in Guyana and Suriname”

7. Anthony T. Bryan, “Petro-power Pursuits in the Guyana-Suriname Basin: Lessons from Trinidad and Tobago”

Part II: Petro Power Challenges and Opportunities

8. Barbara G. Reynolds, “Oil and the Domestic Politics Factor in Guyana and Suriname"

9. Vivian M. Williams, “Oil and Legal Dynamics in Guyana and Suriname: Considerations and Contentions”

10. Jack Menke and Daniël Amrish Lachman, “Reflections on Dynamics of the Natural Resource Curse in Guyana and Suriname: Lessons Learnt and Prospects”

11. Leyland Lucas, “The Oil Economy in Guyana and Suriname: Education Challenges and Opportunities”

12. Mavrick Boejoekoe, “Oil and Institutions in Guyana and Suriname: Challenges and Opportunities”

13. Joel Bhagwandin, “Local Content and the Local Business Environment in Guyana”

14. Ulric Trotz, “The Energy-Environment Nexus in Guyana”

Part III: Climate Change and Considerations Beyond Petroleum

15. Ulric Trotz, “Global Climate Change Dynamics: Impacts on the Guyana-Suriname Basin”

16. Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith, “Oil and Wet Neighborhood Dynamics in the Guyana-Suriname Basin”

17. Paulette Bynoe, “Climate Change Mitigation Measures in Guyana and Suriname: a Policy Perspective”

18. Norman Munroe, “Environmental Risks and Mitigation in the Guyana-Suriname Basin”

19. Scott B. MacDonald, “Product Diversification beyond Oil and Gas in the Guyana-Suriname Basin”

20. Keron Niles and Alicia Elias-Roberts, “Beyond Fossil Fuels: Alternative Energy Prospects in Guyana and Suriname”

Index

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Learning Adjusted Years of School and Expected Years of School for Select

Countries

Table 13.1 Local Content Spending in Guyana

Table 17.1 Summary of climate change scenarios for Guyana

Table 17.2 Overview of principal national mitigation policies and strategies in Guyana

Table 17.3 Overview of principal national policies and strategies of Suriname

Table 18.1 Installed capacity for electrical energy in the proposed Caribbean energy alliance involving Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Geographic Definition of the Guyana-Suriname Basin

Figure 1.2 Guyana-Suriname Basin Showing Oil Operators

Figure 1.3 Guyana Suriname Basin Exploration Activities

Figure 2.1 Outline of Guyana Suriname Basin

Figure 2.2: Location of Stabroek and Kaieteur Blocks offshore Guyana in relation to the

location of Block 42 and Block 59 offshore Suriname

Figure 3.1 Risk Analysis of Guyana’s Main Sectors and Suriname’s Oil and Gas Sector

Figure 5.1 Maritime Areas in Dispute

Figure 6.1 Oil and Gas Reserves in Venezuela

Figure 6.2 Venezuela Inflation and Oil Revenue, 1980-2018

Figure 6.3 Political and Economic Events and the History of Oil Prices, 1965-2022

Figure 10.1 Causes leading to firm regimes rendering communities path dependent on elites,

multinationals, and the extractives sector in general

Figure 12.1 World Governance Indicator Index for Nigeria, Suriname, Norway, and Guyana

Figure 12.2 The Governance Index: Suriname and Guyana

Figure 13.1 Local Content Spending in Guyana

Figure 16.1 Guyana and Suriname Oil Operations

Figure 16.2 Oil Exploration and Extraction in the Guyana-Suriname Basin

Figure 16.3 Guyana Natural Resource Fund Portrait Second Quarter 2023

Figure 18.1 Offshore Guyana and Suriname showing the Stabroek Block relative to the Block 58

Figure 18.2 Global energy security indicators in the net zero pathway

Figure 18.3 Primary energy consumption by energy source; and share of primary energy consumption by source, world

Figure 18.4 Global energy-related CO2 emissions in the net zero pathway and low International Co-operation

Figure 18.5 Example of a path to achieving CO2 emission reduction in the transportation sector

Preface and Acknowledgments

Books generally have interesting, if not fascinating, genesis stories, some of which are complex, while others are simple. This volume is no different. It has an interesting, yet simple, origin story. It dates to early October 2022, when Tim Shaw, a long-standing and respected friend, and the editor of Routledge’s New Regionalisms series, proposed the idea of a book on Guyana’s burgeoning oil industry in an email to me and other friends. The colleagues who responded to Tim all supported the idea, but there were no takers to lead the project. In early December I moved beyond endorsing the project to expressing interest in contributing to it and suggested that the project scope be expanded in two ways. One was to turn the petro power spotlight also on Suriname, and the other was to extend the scope of the discourse to the issue of climate change, which is not only one of the two countries’ shared challenges, but which also has significant implications for the success of the oil pursuits and the use of the oil bounty.

Admittedly, my recommendation was influenced by self-interest, as I had recently conducted a study on the subject of oil and climate change in Guyana and Suriname, which was published by the think tank Global Americans, of which I am a Fellow. The study itself was named among the Top 10 Most Read Studies published by Global Americans in 2022. Tim embraced the expanded scope idea and persisted in his pursuit of a project leader, encouraging another Guyanese-born scholar and me to consider it. I acceded to Tim’s request in early December 2022. We then ran the idea by the series commissioning editor Rob Sorsby, who endorsed it wholeheartedly. Thereafter I assembled the team of authors, prepared the project proposal, and shepherded it through Routledge’s proposal review process.

I am fortunate—and thankful—to have secured the time and talent of an outstanding group of scholars, diplomats, and policy analysts for this volume, who hail from Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States of America. My gratitude to each of them for their splendid contributions. As well, I thank Tim Shaw for planting the initial scholarly seed, which later germinated into the extant project scope for New Regionalisms, a series of which he is deservedly proud, and for his overall support. Routledge senior editor Rob Sorsby’s patience and professionalism have been major assets, and I am grateful for his engagement. Also deserving of mention is editorial assistant Devon Harvey, for her invaluable role during contract preparation, and Raj Nandini who managed the production process. My thanks, too, to the many individuals who provided research and other assistance to the various chapter authors. For myself, allow me to place on record my appreciation of Fitzgerald Yaw of the Guyana Development Initiative—The Porter Project in Guyana and Col. (Ret.) Desmond Roberts in New York for their thoughtful comments on the chapters that I authored.

This book fills a significant lacuna in the literature, with little to no competition. Four constituencies should be interested in it. One constituency is comprised of students, scholars, and policymakers in the Caribbean and in the countries with business investments in Guyana and Suriname, especially in the energy sector. A second is policy and operational staff in regional and international organizations and companies concerned with energy and climate change. Individual consultants as well as consulting businesses that focus on energy and climate change constitute the third group. Finally, the heavily-attended annual energy showcases held in Georgetown and Paramaribo would provide excellent sales opportunities, especially as they attract upwards of 1,500 participants combined, from industry and governments from the hemisphere and beyond, and from international organizations, academia, and the media. Thus, I commend this volume to readers, fully confident that it will expand horizons on matters related to oil and climate change in the Guyana-Suriname Basin.

Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith

Long Island, New York

September 2023

List of Contributors

Joel Bhagwandin, Director of SphereX Professional Services, Inc., a financial advisory, market intelligence, and analytics company, is a finance professional and a public policy analyst with more than fifteen years of experience in corporate finance, management, consulting, and academia. As a public policy and financial analyst, he actively provides insights and has been analysing a range of public policy, economic and finance issues in Guyana for more than seven years. In this regard, he has authored more than 300 articles on economic and finance issues, and and has written extensively on the nascent oil and gas sector as well. Joel is a former acting Executive Director of the Private Sector Commission, the apex private sector body in Guyana, and a former Senior Manager, Strategy and Transactions at Ernst & Young (Guyana), a global professional services firm. Joel currently holds several leadership portfolios in the private sector. He is a Non-Executive Director of the Guyana Oil & Gas Energy Chamber (GOGEC), Chairman for the Local Content Sub-Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce Guyana (AmCham), an active member of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce (GCCI) and the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA). Academically, Joel is the holder of a master’s degree (MSc.) in business management with a specialization in banking and finance.

Mavrick Boejoekoe was the District Commissioner responsible for the strategic leadership of an area of the district of Sipaliwinie, Suriname, between 2012 and 2017. In 2018 he was selected to represent Suriname in the Hubert Humphrey’s Fellowship Program, where he focused on international development and did his professional affiliation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He has over ten years of experience working in the central and local government in Suriname and was the Indigenous and Tribal People and Stakeholder Specialist (ITPS) at the National Institute for Environment and Development in Suriname. In 2022 he became the member of the Suriname Energy Chamber. Mavrick is currently the Permanent Secretary of Suriname’s Ministry of Regional Development and Sport, responsible for regional development. He has a Master’s in Public Administration from Anton de Kom University of Suriname and a MBA from Suriname’s International Businesschool Americaseurope.

Anthony T. Bryan is a leading scholar and an independent consultant on energy development, security, geopolitics, and renewable energy in the Caribbean. A widely published scholar on regional security issues in the circum-Caribbean, Bryan is an Honorary Senior Fellow with the Institute of International Relations at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, and a Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Caribbean Policy Consortium. His academic career includes tenured professorships at the University of Rhode Island, and at the University of the West Indies-St. Augustine where he was the Director of the Institute of International Relations for a decade. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University at Bloomington, Georgetown University, Universidad Simón Bolívar, and the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His think tank career includes: a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a residential fellow in the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Director of the Caribbean Studies Program at the North-South Center of the University of Miami. He is the author/editor of 10 books and numerous articles. Professor Bryan has been a member of several cabinet-appointed committees in Trinidad and Tobago on reviews of foreign policy and the restructuring of the diplomatic service. He has also testified on U.S.-Caribbean trade and security issues before United States Congressional Committees on several occasions.

Paulette Bynoe is a Senior Lecturer, the former Dean of the Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and currently the Deputy Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Guyana. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography (University of Sussex, UK), an MPhil in Environmental Education (University of Bradford, UK), and a BA in Geography (University of Guyana). As an inter-disciplinary trained Environmental Specialist with approximately 24 years of experience, Dr. Bynoe has taught several environmentally oriented courses in community-based disaster risk management, environmental impact assessment, environmental research methods, and environmental resources policy. Her research interests are environmental education, environmental resources policy, including IWRM, sustainable livelihoods, climate change, and disaster vulnerability. In 2015, she was awarded the Golden Arrow of Achievement for her contribution to environmental education and training, research, and the development of policies on natural resources management. Dr. Bynoe served/currently serves in various capacities nationally, regionally, and internationally, including Lead Climate Negotiator for Guyana (2016-2019) and Chair of the G77 and China Climate Change Group (2020), and Advisor to the 2021 G77 and China Chair for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Board Member of the Global Water Partnership (current) and Chair of the Kyoto Protocol Compliance Committee –Enforcement Branch (current).

Arthur Deakin is the Director of AMI’s energy practice, a leading provider of energy intelligence and analytics in Latin America. Arthur has led close to 100 Latin American energy market studies since 2017 and has project experience in over 20 jurisdictions in the Americas. He has also written and published over 30 articles related to the energy sector. Whether it is determining what country to develop a solar farm or determining the market size and growth potential of specific products for the grid, AMI has a 20+ year track-record of helping clients make strategic market-facing decisions to win new business in the region.

Alicia Elias-Roberts s currently the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago. She has over 20 years’ experience as an energy and environmental law academic and consultant. She has done consultancies for several international organisations and various governments in the Commonwealth Caribbean. She has written over 20 journal articles, chapters in books and edited books with reputable publishers. Alicia has a Law Degree from the University of Guyana, a Masters of Law (BCL) Degree from the University of Oxford (UK), and a LLM in Energy, Environment and Natural Resource Law from the University of Houston (Texas, USA). She also holds the PhD, focused on Energy Development Law, from Queen’s University (Canada).

Georges Fauriol is a co-chair of the Caribbean Policy Consortium (CPC), and a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is retired from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) where he was Vice President for Grants Operations and Evaluation, and also taught in the Democracy & Governance Program at Georgetown University. He previously served as Vice President of Strategic Planning, and also Senior Vice President at one of NED’s implementing institutes, the International Republican Institute. Fauriol held several positions at CSIS, including as director and senior fellow of the Americas Program, and previously was also the assistant to the chairman of the Center’s Board of Trustees. Earlier, Fauriol worked at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. He has extensive international and cross-regional field experience, including project missions in Eurasia, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America. He is widely published—in Foreign Affairs, Polity, and other journals and websites—on Caribbean Basin politics, U.S. foreign and security policy in the Caribbean Basin, and democratization dynamics. He has testified several times before U.S. congressional committees and holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith is a Fellow with the Caribbean Policy Consortium and Global Americans and a Senior Associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has published widely on Caribbean security and crime issues, the latest book being Challenged Sovereignty: The Impact of Drugs, Crime, Terrorism, and Cyber Threats (University of Illinois Press, 2024). Recipient of the Dr. William J. Perry Award for Excellence in Security and Defense Education, named in honor of former U.S. Defense Secretary, Ivelaw has served in several academic leadership roles, including as Vice Chancellor of the University of Guyana, President of Fort Valley State University, Provost of universities in Virginia and New York, and as a Dean at Florida International University. Also, he has testified before the U.S. Congress and served as a consultant to the U.S. State Department, the Commonwealth Secretariat, Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and several other agencies. As well, he has been a visiting scholar at the Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies in Washington, D.C., the Royal Military College of Canada, and the George Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany.

Riyad Insanally is a retired career diplomat with over 31 years’ experience, who received Guyana’s third highest award, the Cacique’s Crown of Honour (CCH), in the 2019 National Honours, for “long and distinguished service in the field of diplomacy and international relations”. He last served as Guyana’s Eighth Ambassador to the United States and Fourth Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States, from September 2016 to June 2021. Ambassador (ret) Insanally is currently a Senior Fellow at the Caribbean Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Center for Latin America. He is also the Senior Caribbean Advisor at Transnational Strategy Group in Washington, DC; an Associate of the University of Guyana Foundation; an inaugural member of the Global Advisory Council of The Presidential Precinct in Charlottesville, Virginia; and an Honorary Associate Fellow of the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Riyad won a Guyana Scholarship in 1977 to attend the University of Cambridge. He studied Modern Languages and Latin American Studies and holds MA and MPhil degrees from Cambridge and a PhD from Harvard University. He is fluent in English and Spanish, and proficient in French.

Daniël Amrish Lachman has garnered experience holding several top-management positions in the food, industrial gases, mining and metals, and consulting industry. He was the Director of the National Planning Office, the Director of the Institute for Graduate Studies and Research, the Director of the Centre for Socio-Scientific Studies, a part-time lecturer at several academic institutes (foreign and local), a senior consultant with Applied Intellect, and a member of the Socio-Economic Council. He is currently a senior fellow at Naturata Global, has worked on a number of international technology and country-wide policy and research issues and projects, such as industrialization, innovation, energy, scenario and strategy development, local content, etc., and has advised and worked with Governments, SMEs, Multinationals, NGOs, and Multilateral Institutions. Dr. Lachman specializes in Energy System Transition Management, Strategy Development, Business Process Re-engineering, and Reliability Centered Maintenance, and has further interests in industries with increasing returns, the resource curse and urbanization; he has written more than articles on the Resource Curse, Paradigms, Energy Transition and Efficiency, and Reliability Excellence.

Leyland Lucas is the Founding Dean and Professor of Management at the University of Guyana’s School of Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation. He holds a Certificate in Post-Graduate Diploma in Bank Lending from New York University; an MBA from Howard University, and a Masters and PhD from Rutgers Business School in New Jersey. He has served as a Professor of Management and Director of the PhD Program in Business Administration at Morgan State University and as a Visiting Lecturer and External Examiner at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, University College. His primary research interests are in areas of organizational learning, knowledge transfer, minority, women, and diaspora entrepreneurship, and reputational effects on performance. He has also conducted research in the area of building organizational capabilities and competencies. Dr. Lucas has undertaken and completed research in the US, Ghana, and Guyana on several issues linked to his research interests. Since returning to Guyana, he has actively engaged in discussions around issues of Cooperatives, Credit Unions, Oil and Gas, Building Human Capital, and Local Content. In addition to his academic role, Prof. Lucas has also provided service to this nation in a number of other capacities. He served as Chairman of the Boards of GO-Invest and the Guyana Revenue Authority, as well as a Commissioner on the Public Utilities Commission, among other roles.

Scott B. MacDonald is the Chief Economist for Smith's Research and Gradings, a Fellow with the Caribbean Policy Consortium and a Research Fellow with Global Americans. he has worked for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Credit Suisse, KWR International, and Mitsubishi Corporation, covering international economic affairs, sovereign debt risk, and credit analysis of banks, mining, and energy companies. He has also been an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, St. Thomas Aquinas College and Manhattanville College. He has published 20 books on international economic and financial affairs, Caribbean development issues (with a strong focus on the Southern Caribbean), and the role of China in the Caribbean and Latin America. His latest book is The New Cold War, the Caribbean and China, published by Palgrave Macmillan (2022). He is working on a new book Energy, Strategic Metals and China.

Jack Menke served as President of The Anton de Kom University of Suriname from 2016 through 2019. He was appointed in 2009 professor to the Social Sciences chair Multiethnic Societies with emphasis on research methodology. He served as a visiting professor and researcher at universities in Brazil, the Caribbean, USA, Belgium, France, Holland, South Africa and Mauritius. A social scientist specializing in qualitative and quantitative research methods with a focus on methodological pluralism, he holds a Ph.D from the University of Amsterdam, and has published 10 books and 130 articles on politics, informal economy, political economy, poverty, cultural diversity, and methodology. Recent innovative research relate to regional sustainability and geopolitics. Jack has been a principal researcher in the international Americas Barometer Project (LAPOP), sponsored by Vanderbilt University. His 2021 book entitled Sustainability at a Crossroads: Challenges and Opportunities of the Guiana Shield illustrates the positioning for action at a crossroads of an ongoing planetary degradation and solutions to enhance regional and global development.

Norman Munroe is Professor in the Mechanical and Materials Engineering department, College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University and Distinguished Chair, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, University of Guyana. He has a BS in Chemistry Physics from Dar-es-Salaam University; M.Phil. in Mineral Processing Engineering, Leeds University, UK; MS in Metallurgical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Canada; and Eng.Sc.D. in Chemical Metallurgy, Columbia University, New York. His research focuses on the design and deployment of renewable energy systems, extractive metallurgical systems, corrosion, and biomedical devices. His research on the corrosion and biocompatibility of implant materials has led to US patents. He has served as department Chairman, Associate Dean, and Director of Centers, major Advisor of 26 doctoral and master’s students and member of over 130 graduate dissertation committees. Dr. Munroe has over two hundred (215) refereed Journal articles/Proceedings/Presentations/Book Chapters and is the recipient of numerous awards including the FIU Excellence in Teaching, the Florida State Teaching Incentive Program award, the 2016 Educator award, Legacy Magazine, IAAM Medal for notable and outstanding research in Advanced Materials Science and Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, and a Fulbright Scholar award.

Keron Niles is a Lecturer at the Institute of International Relations at the University of the West Indies. His work focuses on problems that arise at the intersection of climate and energy policy. Dr Niles has been researching the link between industrial policy, international trade, and climate change in the Caribbean since 2008. Within the last five years, his research has also focused on assessing cultural industries as a pathway to low carbon and circular economic growth. Dr. Niles is also a published poet and has been a certified youth worker for the past 23 years. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Government (with minors in History and International Relations) from The University of West Indies and a Master’s Degree in International Law from the University of Aberdeen.

Patrick Patterson is Professor of Practice at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (WJPC). A 1989 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, he retired from the Navy as a Commander in 2009. His last assignment was as the Political-Military Advisor on the Fourth Fleet staff in Mayport, FL. His PhD in Conflict Resolution at Nova Southeastern University focused on negotiations with military institutions during post-conflict transitions to democracy. He has a Master’s degree in National Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, a masters equivalent from the Argentina Naval War College in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Master’s degree in Political Science from American University in Washington, DC. He is the author of four books and numerous defense and security-related articles in journals such as The Journal of Military Ethics, Military Review, Armed Forces Journal, Proceedings Magazine, Joint Force Quarterly, Naval History, The Journal of International Affairs, and Security and Defense Studies Review. His latest book, The Blurred Battlefield (Joint Special Operations University Press, 2021), examines hybrid doctrines on the use of force for Latin American militaries combating violent crime groups. His principal areas of expertise include civil-military relations, human rights, international humanitarian law, and U.S. and Latin American history.

Barbara Reynolds, Vice President for Administration, Advancement, and Planning at the University of the Southern Caribbean in Trinidad and Tobago, served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana from August 2014 to September 2019. Prior to this, she was Head of Education for Save the Children UK, after having spent the previous two decades with UNICEF in programme, management and representational roles at Headquarters and country offices. Ms. Reynolds began her professional career as a teacher and continues to be involved in education. She Co-Chairs the CARICOM Digital Skills Task Force, is Vice-Chairperson of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, and is a Member of the Independent Technical Advisor Panel for the Global Partnership for Education. She is an active human rights professional, and an experienced human rights and gender mainstreaming facilitator. She holds a BA Education (Caribbean Union College), MA in Curriculum and Teaching (Howard University), the Post-Graduate Diploma in Distance Education (University of London), EdD in International Education Development/Curriculum and Instruction (Columbia University) and the MSt in International Human Rights Law (University of Oxford).

Lorraine Sobers is a lecturer at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine in the Petroleum Studies Unit. She has a BS in Chemical Engineering and MS in Petroleum Engineering from Texas Tech University. She worked as a Petroleum Engineer at the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries, Trinidad and Tobago before obtaining her PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College, London in 2012. Dr Sobers has 20 years of experience in the energy sector specializing in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). She has a keen interest in using her technical expertise for the formulation of innovative low carbon development policies in the Caribbean region. Dr. Sobers is a Fulbright Scholar, the Project Coordinator for CO2 Emission Reduction Mobilization (CERM) Project, a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, and a Fellow of the Caribbean Policy Consortium.

Ulric Trotz is a scientist by training, Dr. Trotz commenced his university education in Edinburgh, and attained his Doctorate in Organic Chemistry in Toronto, Canada. He has worked as Director, Science & Technology Division, Commonwealth Secretariat and Science Adviser to the Commonwealth Secretary General, 1991-1997, and Dean, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Guyana 1976- 1979; Director, Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology in Guyana, 1980-1991. Since 1997 Dr Trotz has been giving direction to the Caribbean region’s efforts to build capacity for climate change adaptation. In 2005 Dr Trotz assumed the post of Deputy Director & Science Adviser to the newly established Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, a post he held until his retirement in 2020. Dr Trotz served as a Review Editor for Chapter 16 on Small Island Developing States in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). He has been publicly recognized in his country of birth, Guyana with the Golden Arrow of Achievement (AA) in National Honours in 1983 for long and distinguished service in Science and Research., and in Barbados, as an Honorary Distinguished Fellow of the University of the West Indies.

Vivian M. Williams uses a unique blend of law, business, and communications competencies to help corporations and entrepreneurs navigate legal and functional issues. He has decades of litigation and transactional experience, combined with competencies in predictive analysis. He heads VMW LAW PC, which has divisions in the United States and the Caribbean. Sitting at the intersection of law, economics, and public policy, he provides perspectives on the role of law and institutional structures in remedying or perpetuating socioeconomic disparities and injustices. His real-world experience is complimented by a growing body of academic work. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of International Business at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business. He obtained his doctorate in business from Baruch, and holds an MBA, and Master of Laws degrees from institutions such London School of Economics, New York University, HEC Paris (École des hautes études commerciales de Paris), and George Mason School of Law.