The UWI, Cave Hill Campus CHILL- 60th Anniversary Edition

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UWI Students Engage IMF’s Managing Director

“The most important source of strength is you; believe in yourself,” she told students while meeting with them in a town hall-style meeting last June. The historic meeting was the first of its kind for the campus and the Bretton Woods institution. The hybrid event was held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre and streamed via UWITv Global and the IMF’s livestream channels. COVID-19 restrictions limited the number who could attend the face-to-face gathering. However, many tuned in online to witness their peers seize the opportunity to dialogue with the managing director on issues relevant to the IMF’s mandate and activities in the region, such as climate change, unsustainable sovereign debts, and development goals. On the issue of climate change, Georgieva urged people to act decisively to Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) , Ms. Kristalina Georgieva has urged students at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus to take charge of their destiny and to not sit on the sidelines as their countries’ leaders and other global leaders seek to solve the world’s pressing issues.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva being interviewed by (then) Lecturer in Economics, Dr. Simon Naitram

reduce the magnitude of this threat, while also charging students to lend their voice to the IMF’s rallying cry to “tax pollution, not people” . “We must tax CO 2 emissions. Make sure there is a price for emitting them whether that is a tax [or] trade/regulatory enforcement. Whatever the measure, it is most significant that we send a clear signal to producers [and] to consumers that we simply cannot survive as humanity unless we change,” urged Georgieva. The managing director also urged her listeners to act on these issues now, because “these are no longer problems of the future”. “I cannot think of a better voice on these existential crises than yours because you are going to inherit the problems my generation created. So press [institutions like ours], but act on

your own. Set the example that you care about these issues.” Economist Dr. Simon Naitram , moderator of the event and Lecturer in Economics at the campus, described this event as “a rare opportunity” for UWI students to directly engage with the leadership of one of the world’s foremost economic institutions. “As the IMF is in the business of tackling global challenges, we hope that this conversation inspired our students to think about how they themselves can be genuine world changers,” Naitram shared. Georgieva, who was on a 15-18 June visit to the Caribbean, had expressed her interest to meet with students of The UWI — “the future leaders of the Caribbean” — to discuss the IMF’s evolving partnership in the region while she was in Barbados on 16 June. The occasion was the managing director’s first call to Barbados and the region. l

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