BEING A ROLE MODEL, sages warn, can be a double-edged sword that spawns inspiration and frustration.
United States President Barack Obama, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the basketball superstar of yesteryear whose sky-hook revolutionized the game, and Misty Copeland, the first black principal ballerina of the American Ballet Theatre, are on a long list of role models who endorsed that significant bit of advice and are living proof of its accuracy.
“When I think about the journey I’ve travelled, there’s no doubt that young African-American, Latino, Asian and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender) youth, they have (many) more role models,” said Obama.
To that list must be added Selwin Hart, a Barbadian and a top international climate change expert whose family roots can be traced to Church Village in St Philip where he grew up.
He is Director of the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon Climate Change Support Team and in that position he knows every comma and nuance of one of the world’s most important agreements: the pact on climate change that was negotiated last December in Paris and can change the way people everywhere live. It’s a pact that enabled the Bajan to be in the same room as Obama, Francois Holland, France’s President and other key leaders.
In his UN job, Hart meets regularly with Ban Ki Moon, advises on the latest climate change developments, represents him at international conferences in far flung capitals and is the secretary-general’s eyes and ears, so much so that in less than three weeks, when more than 100 leaders or their top representatives from every corner of the globe assemble in New York for an important milestone: the signing of the global climate change, the Barbadian will have a pivotal behind- the-scenes roll standing at Ban Ki-Moon’s side.
“It is so easy for young people in and out of Barbados to become discouraged. But given that climate change is the top global priority not only of countries like Barbados but for places like the U.S. and Canada, indeed the entire world, you would have expected that someone from a rich and powerful country would be asked to lead this important agenda of behalf of the secretary-general,” said Hart, a graduate of the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus and later of Fordham University in New York which awarded him a master’s degree.
“The mere fact that you have someone from a country of fewer than 300 000 people leading the secretary-general’s work on this issue is testament to what is possible.”
We couldn’t agree more.
“I don’t talk a lot about it, but many times in my life I was told you can’t do this or you can do that because it isn’t possible. Now here I am in New York. It has been an amazing journey. The truth is that I never took ‘no’ for an answer. The other part of the story is that I would never have reached this far without the help of so many people who sometimes saw things in me that I didn’t see in myself.”
Hart’s reputation in UN circles is that of a soft-spoken but very competent expert from a small Caribbean country. He knows how to function in the elevated international circles in which he operates.
A father of two, Hart was an adviser at the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank when the call came from the UN Secretary-General’s office in New York to head the climate change team. Today, he hopes Bajan youth would use his path as an example to pursue their dreams.
“I always wanted to do something that was different,” he said.
“I must admit, though, that I never saw myself at the UN in my current position.”
It helped that he brought to the job a wealth of experience gained from representing Barbados at the UN and serving as coordinator and lead negotiator for the Alliance for Small Island Developing States, (AOSIS), a coalition of 43 islands and low-lying coastal states in the Caribbean, Pacific, Africa, Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
“Young people in Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean shouldn’t simply seek to compete with the persons sitting next to them in the region but with people around the world,” he said. “We can compete with the brightest and the best in the rest of the world.”
Tony Best is the NATION’s North American correspondent. Email: [email protected]
