January 2017 | Business View Caribbean

8 9 have come down here and been aggressive with the governments down here and the pro- gram, CBS and other media houses in the Unit- ed States and elsewhere are also critical of the programs that exist in the United States and elsewhere. For example about a year ago ABC News did an investigation in the United States, where they have a program called the EB-5 which encourages citizens of other countries to acquire U.S. green cards by virtue of an invest- ment of at least half a million U.S. dollars with the guarantee that they will employ at least ten Americans and what they’ve done with this program is try to regionalize it, to create jobs in rural parts of America to spread the opportunity, catalyzed by foreign cash. “There are about 600 regional centers, my understanding is, throughout the United States, private agencies if you will, just like we might engage CS Global or Henley and Part- ners and they actually recruit foreign inves- tors. ABC did the program and they found a number of questionable situations,” he noted. Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit appears convinced, however, that the island’s program has been deliberately target- ed. “We view this as a beginning of a likely ongoing campaign to undermine and desta- bilize the economic well-being of Dominica, through the dismantling of its citizenship by opening lines investment program.” According to Astaphan, Skerrit might be worrying unnecessarily. “The pro- gram could end up doing us more good than bad, because people who want to invest in citizenship are going to invest. Whether it’s for tax avoidance, or to have an alternative to travel access, or to have an alter- native in terms of a location because the area in which you reside and the country in which you are a citizen may be unstable and you want an alternative. There are number of valid reasons that people would want a second passport,” he ex- plained. Astaphan described economic citizenship as a legitimate industry with a global reach. He suggested that the 60 Minutes pass- port exposé may have done some good for the Carib- bean citizenship by invest- ment business by alerting some Americans looking for a second or third passport. F ive civil society organizations (CSOs) in Trinidad and Tobago are starting 2017 ready to tackle climate change through raising awareness, advocating for strong policies and action, and implementing prac- tical adaptation projects guided by assessments of what are the key vulnerabilities and priorities for resilience building. The five CSOs –Caribbean Youth Environment Network Trinidad and Tobago Chapter (CYENTT), Environmental Re- search Institute Charlotteville (ERIC), Environment Tobago, Fondes Amandes Community Reforestation Project (FACRP), and Turtle Village Trust (TVT) –have been participating in the “Climate ACTT: Action by Civil Society in Trinidad and Tobago to Build Resilience to Climate Change” project, which aimed to build the capacity of five CSOs in Trinidad and To- bago to deliver programs/projects related to climate change adaptation and resilience. Over the last 16 months, the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) implemented and managed this project in collaboration with Conservation International and with sup- Trinidad and Tobago Civil Society Ready to Tackle Climate Change