Quick Links
Connect us
Directors Databank (Empannel Yourself)
Become a faculty
Blog
Become an Awards Assessor
Publications
Contact Us
Navigating Risk Beneath Calm Horizons - Caribbean Directors Navigate Geopolitics and Climate Crisis
Insights from the
Caribbean Corporate Governance Institute (CCGI)
Are Caribbean boards ready for the challenges facing them today?
Many would answer this provocative question with a resounding 'no'.
The Caribbean, typically conjuring images of holiday vacations in a tropical paradise, finds itself at the nexus of two defining global challenges: intensifying geopolitics and climate-driven weather extremes. While Trinidad and Tobago manoeuvres the implications of heightened military tensions near its borders between the USA and Venezuela, Jamaica battles to recover from one of the most severe hurricanes in the region's history.
These crises carry profound implications for the Caribbean business sector. Directors bear the burden of guiding their organisations and, today more than ever, they must be alert to consequences that can destabilise operations and jeopardise employee livelihoods. In this volatile environment, effective governance is the ultimate strategic buffer.
Today's director must therefore have a deep understanding of their company's resilience and vulnerabilities and be able to ask discerning questions that push executives to produce board papers which reveal both weaknesses and opportunities, often hidden in verbiage. As Dr Peter Crow, a friend of the Caribbean Corporate Governance Institute (CCGI), notes in his Musings blog, board effectiveness stems from three key elements:
• Capability (what directors bring);
• Activity (what the board does); and
• Behaviour (how directors act and interact).
Cultivating these requires deliberate effort. Directors must commit to being truly informed, a significant challenge in this era of AI and rampant misinformation. They must ensure that the board agendas proactively address unfolding risks. They must also employ high emotional intelligence to foster constructive debate, avoiding both personal conflict and the perils of groupthink in the boardroom.
Key challenges demanding this balanced approach include:
• Shifting from 'just-in-time' efficiency to 'justin- case' resilience, with a critical eye on overreliance on outsourcing for critical functions in the context of supply chain disruptions (whether through threat of war or climate change).
• Navigating the transition from stable, longterm relationships to a volatile world where geopolitics can shatter supply chains and place tremendous strain on regional commitments.
• Reconciling increasingly polarised opinions to find coherent strategic paths forward.
Emphasising the board's unique role, CCGI's Global Ambassador Professor Bob Garratt advises that effective directors must see themselves as “a team apart, not a team together.” Addressing the 6th CCGI Global Conference in November 2025, he explained that while management teams work closely every day toward specific operational ends, the board, a group of people who meet intermittently, must champion independent thought. He reminded us that directors must work hard to be informed and to fulfil the board's mandate, which is to exercise good faith and due diligence to secure the organisation's sustainable future.
Emphasising the board's unique role, Professor Garratt advises that 'a team apart' is not a call for adversarial distance but for 'informed independence'. Directors must build a close, supportive relationship with executives, yet remain vigilant against complacency and missed opportunities. They cannot be passive recipients of information or prisoners of the status quo or, like a deer in headlights, paralysed by the chaos before them.
Their duty is to actively interrogate, guide, and ultimately secure the organisation's sustainable future through good faith, rigorous due diligence, and, more than ever, high emotional intelligence. This is not easy to achieve, but it is precisely this blend of trust and deep, shared insight that creates the conditions for truly effective governance.
In this volatile environment, effective governance is the ultimate strategic buffer.
And so Professor Garratt's counsel offers a crucial reframe: directors can take comfort in the inherent uncertainty of their task but must build their competence to fulfil their duty of due diligence. The very purpose of the board, he argues, is to gaze into an ambiguous future and steer the organisation through it. This requires continuous learning and the intellectual agility to discern trends that will shape tomorrow. Though directors are not magicians, they are expected to develop the foresight and courage to guide their organisations through continuous, complex change.
This requires directors in the Caribbean to be more than just informed; they must be intellectually curious and emotionally intelligent. In today's volatile environment, it is this very combination of collaborative trust and courageous, independent oversight that unlocks the most robust strategic decisions and forges strong stakeholder relationships that would survive the chaos and deliver on the promise of a sustainable future.
In a world of perilous frontiers, Caribbean governance is being tested. The lessons, however, resonate for directors everywhere.
Back to HomeAuthor
Ms. Kamla Rampersad de Silva
Chief Executive Officer Caribbean Corporate Governance Institute (CCGI)
Owned by: Institute of Directors, India
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the articles/ stories are the personal opinions of the author. IOD/ Editor is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in those articles. The information, facts or opinions expressed in the articles/ speeches do not reflect the views of IOD/ Editor and IOD/ Editor does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
