Pacific citizens: Though 50 years ago there was not much contact ...

Pacific Cooperation Foundation: Just as the Asia 2000 Foundation was ...

Tackling Pacific Island problems from within the Parliament: Strategic thinking about ...

The agenda: THEN: Social issues were important ...

Improving partnership: There is a need to revive the Pacific Islands ...

Tackling blindness among Pacific peoples: Tongan public health specialist ...

HIV AIDS - moral and medical solutions: Public health and other policy planners...

Tongan job solution: Managed employment is a Tongan New Zealander's private ...

The new tertiary landscape - what's in it for Pacific peoples?: Education is ...

Making good citizens: In our Pacific region, and elsewhere in the world ...

Involving Pacific peoples in local decisionmaking: The question all New Zealand ...

Tangata Pasifika? Michael Powles, who has worked ...

Endorsing good governance: Former New Zealand career diplomat Gordon Schroff ...

Need not be conflict: Issues in Pacific governance - where one size does not ...

Cooperation wins: Greater regional cooperation on common issues might ...

APEC and PECC: Though New Zealand seeks to be a good international ...

Advocacy on market access: The Pacific Islands Trade and Investment ...

Being Pa'alagi: The Being Pa'alagi programme, in which I looked back ...

Collaboration key to achieving vision: The vision of the Ministry of ...

Talk to all pacific cultures with one voice:
Ethnic Communications

Cooperation wins

By Anthony Haas

Greater regional cooperation on common issues might help the sustainable viability goal for Pacific Island nations.

It could be built on the foundation of the Pacific Islands Forum, including the specialised ministerial meetings in trade and other sectors. Possibilities might be discussed and debated over time, and any particular ideas shouldn’t be rushed says former New Zealand diplomat Michael Powles.

“ For a start, the habit of collaboration could be increased – leading to more regional thinking,” he said in an interview on his Pacific experience for the series of oral archives in the Being Pa’alagi programme.

He said the proposal from Mike Moore, a former New Zealand Prime Minister, several decades ago for a Pacific Parliament might have been ahead of its time then, and is but one of many options that might still be considered.

But he does say if Europe can evolve to involve countries with different personalities, maybe a Pacific community – with a small ‘c’ – has potential for Pacific neighbours to aid cooperation and increase mutual self-help. It could involve New Zealand, and hopefully Australia.

Regional tuna cooperation

Regional cooperation is good governance, and involves surrendering some sovereignty – Pacific tuna management illustrates the potential.

Powles also chairs the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Conference, which attempts to control and manage the tuna resource in the wider Pacific – one of the world’s largest fishery resources.

The Western Central Pacific Tuna Commission, established under the Law of the Sea Convention, is seeking management regimes for the highly migratory tuna. The annual catch is worth $2–3 billion per annum – the major fishing nations and the Pacific coastal states each have an interest in what has great potential for the Pacific Islands nations.

They are setting up a fisheries commission, to make the more detailed rules.
The Pacific Island nations (PINs) recognise the need to try to cooperate – and find they have to compromise to achieve goals such as an agreed base for the commission. The Federated States of Micronesia has been chosen as a base. Regional cooperation helps them face the might of the major fishing nations. PINs have made concessions to present regional solidarity.

Fisheries cooperation has been more extensive than regional cooperation in transport.

The fisheries cooperation has been helped by the major states respecting the regional approach.

Tuna economic impact

But tuna is not the elusive magic bullet that might ensure prosperity for the Pacific Islands nations.

There is no single resource that will ensure viability for states that would otherwise be unviable, says Powles.

But fisheries could make a difference in countries such as the Cook Islands and Tuvalu. In some countries it will be the next most important after tourism – in Tuvalu and Kiribati it could come ahead of tourism, Powles says.

Published 3rd qtr, 2003

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