For all of the second half of the 20th century, The Bahamas depended on sun, sand and sea as one of the primary elements in its emergence as one of the tourist meccas of the world. Other island states in our region took note and capitalized on the sun, sand and sea to build their own tourism industries.
Today virtually every island nation or colony in the Caribbean region has tourism as an important component in their economies. How long can tourism sustain us? Will it plateau? We all know it is extremely sensitive to conditions over which we have no control. December 9/11 is a prime example.
What alternative is there? Financial Services is constantly under pressure as the countries comprising Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) continuously introduce laws, which are aimed at putting, offshore banking centre like The Bahamas out of the Financial Services business.
Steps are being taken to establish a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry and this is being met with serious opposition from environmental groups. Will the three companies (AES, Tractabell and El Paso) get permission? It is still being debated in government quarters.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry has granted oil exploration permits to a couple of companies to conduct drilling investigations to determine whether or not oil is available in commercial quantities somewhere on the Great Bahama Bank.
These are all possibilities and whether or not they can come to fruition is still a big question. There is another option. However, to appreciate the possibilities this option holds, this story must be told.
Around the same time as The Bahamas Development Board under the late Sir Stafford Sands began to envision that tourism had an economic future in The Bahamas, the government of India, on achieving national independence in 1947, began to concentrate its fledging aeronautical, defence and electronics industries in Bangalore around its premier science and technology university, The Indian Institute of Science, which was started in 1909 by one of their industrialists, Jamsetji Nasorwouji Tata.
At the time no one envisaged the development of the computer industry to point where personal computers and computer software would change the way the world conducted its affairs via Internet technology and the utilization of cyberspace.
Today, Bangalore, because of the India Institute of Science and the concentration of engineers resulting from India’s defence, electronic and aeronautical industries has emerged as a locale of one of the biggest concentrations of software industry in the Third World. In the world of the Microsofts, Apples, and Hewlett Packards, Bangalore is known globally as the Silicon Valley of The East. This has resulted from Mr. Tata’s vision for a world class science and technology university where its graduates are in demand by the IBM’s Intel, General Electric and universities like MIT and Cal Tech.
The Bahamas’ geographical location places it in the position where its sub-tropical and tropical climate along with the marine ecology gives outstanding biodiversity and ideal for a range of technological introductions which could provide the same kind of base for attracting scientists and scientific based companies just like India’s Institute of Science in Bangalore.
Biotechnology is changing many facets of life today. It has been called the cutting-edge industry of the 21st century. Biotech centres are springing up all over the world. The Bahamas has the environmental condition to be one of those centres, perhaps specializing in marine life. Biotechnology offers the opportunity of working with the innovative and the new and the satisfaction of tackling real-life problems like hunger, malnutrition and diseases. It is an industry which invests heavily in future growth; biotech companies on average invest about 35% of their profits in developing new products.
Through a Ministry of Science and Technology an aggressive programme can be put in place to attract biotech firms to bring their technology to The Bahamas and put The Bahamas on the map as a biotech centre. Because of technology, Hawaiian biotech firms are already getting three crops a year. The same can happen here even with environments like Inagua.
The Bahamas is blessed with unique climatic and environmental conditions. Let us use technology to enhance the economic benefits which can emanate from this uniqueness.
Biotechnology offers the opportunity to expand and diversify our economy in a new direction and places us on a path which could sustain us possibly forever. Science never dies, its importance only increases and technology is the vehicle for making science implementable.
By Godfrey Eneas, The Eneas Files, The Bahama Journal
