The Dynamism of International Relations Surrounding the Pacific Island Countries: Focusing on the Engagement of Neighboring Major Powers and the Diplomatic Responses of the Island Countries

Oceania is a diverse region encompassing Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, New Zealand, and Polynesia, and it contains six of the world's 39 hotspots of diversity. It has a poor record for extinctions, particularly for birds on islands and mammals. Major causes include habitat loss and degradation, invasive species, and overexploitation. We identified six major threatening processes (habitat loss and degradation, invasive species, climate change, overexploitation, pollution, and disease) based on a comprehensive review of the literature and for each developed a set of conservation policies. Many policies reflect the urgent need to deal with the effects of burgeoning human populations (expected to increase significantly in the region) on biodiversity. There is considerable difference in resources for conservation, including people and available scientific information, which are heavily biased toward more developed countries in Oceania. Most scientific publications analyzed for four threats (habitat loss, invasive species, overexploitation, and pollution) are from developed countries: 88.6% of Web of Science publications were from Australia (53.7%), New Zealand (24.3%), and Hawaiian Islands (10.5%). Many island states have limited resources or expertise. Even countries that do (e.g., Australia, New Zealand) have ongoing and emerging significant challenges, particularly with the interactive effects of climate change. Oceania will require the implementation of effective policies for conservation if the region's poor record on extinctions is not to continue.

<scp>COVID</scp>‐19 and <scp><i>Re</i>‐Storying</scp> Economic Development in Oceania

The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) was tailor-made for Pacific Island. These islands consist of 22 self-governing nations on about 500,000 square kilometers of land scattered across about thirty million square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Island countries have declared their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and Extended Fisheries Zones (EFZs) and are cooperating with each other to stake their claims. The countries are sharing limited expertise, experience, facilities, infrastructure, resources and markets but are achieving admirable success in effectively acting upon their rights within their EEZ and EFZ and are setting the pace in influencing international events and practice. Pacific Island countries have formulated international management arrangements that safeguard the EEZ and EFZ and the marine resources within. The countries are using the EEZ and EFZ provisions to effectively stake their claims and are providing a good model for regional cooperation and collaboration based on the equitable pursuit of common economic goals, the peaceful use of ocean resources and the effective management of the marine environment. In addition, the Pacific Island states are working with distant water fishing nations (DWFN) to establish management regimes covering the EEZs and EFZs and the high seas as promoted by the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement. The 1982 LOSC has gained widespread acceptance among the Pacific Islands. The small island developing states in the Pacific saw in the LOSC the opportunity to formalize a system for the use and management of the region’s most important resource base, fisheries. The Pacific Islands countries were united in their support. In 1982, one of its members, Fiji became the first country in the world to sign and ratify the LOSC. By 2002, all of the 13 Pacific Island member-countries of the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), the regional fishery organization for the coastal States of the western and central Pacific Ocean, had ratified the LOSC. In addition, these countries

As an island country in the Pacific region, it is natural for Japan to have diplomatic relationships with neighboring island countries. By the early 1970s, Japan started to provide Official Development Assistance (ODA) to two individual island countries in the Pacific region, and, in the mid-1980s, when most of the island countries had achieved independence, Japan’s diplomacy expanded to additional countries. In 1985 then Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone made an official visit to two of the island countries, and, in 1987, official policy expressing support for the Pacific island countries’ independence, regional cooperation, political stability, economic development, and people-to-people exchange was issued. In October 1997, the “Japan-SPF Summit Meeting” with participants of leaders from Japan and 14 South Pacific Forum member island countries/regions and government representatives of Australia and New Zealand was held in Tokyo. The 8th Pacific Islands Leaders meeting held in May 2018 is symbolic of Japan’s diplomacy toward the Pacific Islands Forum member countries. This article is the author’s personal observation of Japan’s diplomacy toward Pacific Islands Forum member countries and the significance of Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting.

The Region in Review:International Issues and Events, 2015 Nic Maclellan (bio) The Paris Agreement on Climate Change, adopted by 195 nations, was the culmination of a year of action by Pacific Island governments and communities. Global warming was the central issue of security and rights in 2015, and there were significant advances on regional oceans and climate policy—a positive example of the collective advocacy dubbed the “New Pacific Diplomacy” (Fry and Tarte 2015). Throughout the year, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (pifs) introduced the new Framework on Pacific Regionalism, establishing a process to prioritize regional public policy. Despite improved relations after the 2014 elections in Fiji, Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama again refused to join the annual Forum leaders meeting, held in Port Moresby in September. Papua New Guinea and Fiji continued to assert their leadership ambitions, while governments held summits with India, Japan, France, and Republic of Korea. There was increasing debate over human rights across the region, on violence against women, the abuse of asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru, and the right to self-determination in non-self-governing territories. Public concern over West Papua prompted debate at the Forum leaders’ meeting, while the Melanesian Spearhead Group expanded its reach to grant associate membership to Indonesia and observer status to a coalition of West Papuan independence groups. Since her appointment at the 2014 Pacific Islands Forum in Palau, Secretary-General Dame Meg Taylor has bedded down a series of reforms in the Forum Secretariat in Suva. These internal changes come as part of a broader transformation of the regional architecture (Maclellan 2015d) through the Council of Regional Organizations of the Pacific (crop) and newer institutions like the Fiji-based Pacific Islands Development Forum (pidf). Even as the regional intergovernmental organizations were debating their mandate and structure during 2015, there were significant changes of leadership. As Pacific countries mobilized for the climate negotiations in Paris, the director-general of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (sprep), David Sheppard, announced his resignation. After six years at the helm, Sheppard was replaced by his former deputy, Kosi Latu of Sāmoa. At the pidf, Feleti Teo resigned to take up the position as head of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission in March. Former Fiji Secretary of Foreign Affairs Amena Yauvoli stood in as an interim executive before François Martel of Sāmoa was appointed in September as the full-time pidf secretary-general. Martel has worked for many years in resource management, biodiversity, conservation, and climate change. Forum Fisheries Agency (ffa) Director-General James Movick completed his first three-year term in [End Page 430] 2015 and was endorsed by ffa members to serve a second term to 2018. In an unexpected move, the director-general of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (msg) secretariat in Port Vila, Peter Forau, resigned his post in November, two years before the end of his second term. Plans to establish “Melanesian Solutions” as the secretariat’s commercial arm could not make up for funding shortfalls as the msg work program expanded during 2015. Departing his post, Forau also reflected on divergences within the msg over democracy in Fiji and West Papua: “There have been some influences exerted on some of our members about how they should relate to Fiji during the time when the government was not an elected government. And so some of those relationship issues are still around, and sometimes something has happened between, for example, Papua New Guinea and Fiji” (rnzi 2015). In early 2016, Fiji’s Amena Yauvoli was named as a candidate for the post. At year’s end, Audrey Aumua was appointed as deputy director-general of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (spc), taking over from Fekita ‘Utoikamanu. As a former World Health Organization regional representative, Dr Aumua will head the spc’s Suva operations, supporting Director-General Dr Colin Tukuitonga at the spc’s Nouméa headquarters. At a crop meeting in Nouméa in February, agency chiefs agreed to a review of regional governance and financing, to be led by former spc Director-General Jimmie Rodgers. The collaborative work of the crop agencies is currently managed through seven crop...

Climate effects on health in Small Islands Developing States

Supporting each other: Pacific emergency care clinicians navigate COVID-19 pandemic challenges through collaboration

The increase in the average temperature of the earth is experiencing global warming. Of the many impacts, sea level rise is one of the most important impacts because it can eliminate the existence of certain state entities. An island state with distinctive features and issued consisting of small islands is the party most threatened. This threat is slow but surely continues to haunt residents living in these island-states, for example the Pacific islands. The impact of this challenge is not only on the environment, but also on the social life of residents living in this area. If one day the area they now live in is completely submerged, then they must find a new place to live (climate change refugees). Therefore, the Pacific islands, specifically those who are members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), make various efforts in overcoming this problem. This paper uses the help of the green political paradigm (Green Politic) as a reference in seeing the phenomena associated with MSG and PIF in the Pacific countries.

Renewable energy in the Pacific Islands: Its role and status

ABSTRACTIn November 2011, the Polynesian Leaders Group (PLG) was formed. The inclusion of Samoa, Tonga and French Polynesia gives it enough political muscle to have some influence on Pacific regionalism, but exactly what this will be is uncertain. Notably, it was formed during a tense period for regionalism; Australia’s and New Zealand’s disproportionate influence in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat was increasingly being called into question, while Fiji was crowned the chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) even though it was then expelled from the PIF. To date, the PLG’s most notable work has been done in relation to climate change, while it also promises to address decolonisation, both of which are pressing issues on the regional agenda. These might be issue-areas where the PLG will make its mark. Another might be in counterbalancing the increasing regional influence of the MSG, which over the past 10 years has been willing to act independently of the PIF and its traditional benefactors: Australia and New Zealand. An examination of when and why the PLG was formed, how its membership is determined, and its position on key regional issues might provide answers about its regional implications.

The transformation in Pacific regional diplomatic culture associated with the rhetorical and institutional expressions of the principle of regional self-determination in the period 2009–2014 has held over the past decade despite significant challenges from a rapidly changing geopolitical context and threats to regional unity posed by a move by Micronesian states to leave the Pacific Islands Forum. Significantly, what we then called the ‘new pacific diplomacy’ has become institutionalised in the practices and policies of the main regional organisation, the Pacific Islands Forum, and in particular in its 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. This has enabled a continuation of Pacific diplomatic agency in relation to key issues such as climate change, and law of the sea and fisheries, and even regional security. Although the changing geopolitics has not yet succeeded in submerging Pacific diplomatic agency the hardest test is ahead of the Pacific states as they try to defend their interests in a context where the important strategic decisions affecting the future peace of the Pacific Islands region are increasingly made in metropolitan capitals and international groupings outside the reach of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Pacific Island states have, for decades, considered climate change a threat to their security. In 1991, island leaders declared global warming and sea level rise as serious environmental threats, and that their ‘cultural, economic and physical survival’ was at risk. Pacific Island countries have since played a disproportionate role in United Nations climate negotiations, working as a diplomatic bloc to shape new rules and to drive multilateral cooperation to reduce emissions. Pacific Island states have also sought greater recognition of climate change as a security threat. This article considers the history of Pacific climate diplomacy. It explains how Pacific Island countries have played a key role in the global response to the climate crisis and outlines the history of regional climate politics in the Pacific Islands Forum. We also focus on recurring tensions between Pacific Island states and Australia with regard to ambition to tackle climate change.

Reviewed by: Security and Development in the Pacific Islands: Social Resilience in Emerging States Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka Security and Development in the Pacific Islands: Social Resilience in Emerging States, edited by M Anne Brown. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007. ISBN cloth, 978-1-58826-505-0; paper, 978-1-58826-530-2; x + 347 pages, tables, figures, map, notes, references, index. Cloth, US$59.95; paper, US$24.50. Security and development are important issues in the contemporary Pacific Islands region. While these problems have long featured in discussions about the region, they have become more prominent in the past two decades, especially in light of the push for economic liberalization and the violent conflicts that have occurred in some Island countries and territories. The coups in Fiji, the violence associated with the demands for self-determination in New Caledonia and West Papua, the Bougainville crisis, the civil unrests in Solomon Islands, and the politically motivated riot in Tonga are some examples of violent conflicts in the region. Poor economic management and indigent social conditions are also matters of concern. Security and development in the region have also been influenced by global events and trends. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, for example, Pacific Island countries have become important in the war against international terrorism. Furthermore, socioeconomic developments have been influenced by the neoliberalism promoted by international financial and intergovernmental institutions. This book is, therefore, timely. It brings together an impressive group of authors who, in fourteen chapters, [End Page 194] examine some of the major security and development issues in the region: natural resource development, ethno-nationalism, gender, decolonization, public sector reform, poor economic management, and international intervention. The book covers not only the independent Pacific Island countries, but also the nonindependent territories of New Caledonia and West Papua, for whom self-determination is the most important issue. The introduction provides general and useful insights into the security and development issues and the experiences of the Pacific Islands region. Editor M Anne Brown notes that development and security are inter-related and "cannot exist without each other" (1), and that development, while desirable, can generate conflicts. This is because development involves significant and sometimes rapid change that "creates new winners and losers, recasts the contexts in which communities give substance to their beliefs, and plays into dynamics of conflict already present, perhaps triggering latent violence" (1). She outlines the major conflicts in the region and notes that "many of these crises have roots in historical patterns of uneven development, disruption of land tenure, or conflict around highly destructive resource extraction" (8). Brown takes particular issue with the description of Pacific Island countries as "failing states," arguing that Pacific Islands are, rather, "emerging states." Furthermore, the region is relatively peaceful and its people quite resilient—different in many ways from parts of Africa and the Balkans. Brown says that the issues that underlie security in the region are economic pressures, land, self-determination, and gender inequality. The rest of the chapters examine specific country experiences. Marion Jacka locates Papua New Guinea's development experiences within global development discourses and trends. In recent years, neoliberalism and the push for structural reforms have been promoted as both the answers to and explanations for what is described as the "failure of development" in Papua New Guinea. These initiatives have, however, contributed to new challenges—hence the need for alternative perspectives for explaining Papua New Guinea's development "problems." Jacka says that not only internal factors but also historical and global factors (such as the country's colonial legacy, the imposition of Western values, and the demands and the requirements of international agencies and aid donors) must be considered. She argues that aid has produced "a mixed bag" of results. She also outlines lessons that can be drawn from community development initiatives, arguing that, in a situation where "the state has still to be built, support for such community rebuilding must logically provide the way forward. Rather than trying to engineer change, it is important to consider ways of facilitating the efforts being made by Papua New Guinean communities to tackle their issues at the local level" (59). Orovu Sepoe...

Political, financial and operational supports given to these small states to the separatist freedom movement (OPM) has been done in a spirit of togetherness among the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). This international organization based on identity of Melanesian brotherhood which formed in 1986 by 4 small states in the Pacific Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon and Vanuatu, also by Kanak National Liberation Front from New Caledonia. In various international forums, including the United Nations (UN), these small states are bound to the small developing states. These small states group sometime surprising international forum with a hard statement, so that they are recognized by the world, because their voting rights are equals to other members This organization was keen enough to promote the freedom movement of OPM to achieve independence Papua, that was why Indonesia tried to achieve the membership of Melanesian Spearhead Groups (MSG), because Indonesia has a strong argument that as an island country, it has 11 million Melanesian decendants on its scattered island as Papua, Mallocca, Buton, Southeast Nusa) characterized by their hair type, skin color, body figures and have similarities to the Melanesian in the south pacific. The emergence of political maneuver that continue to attack sovereignty of the Indonesian government against Papua, raising a view of a need to have a grand strategy to enhance more understanding and gaining supports from the small island states regarding the free movement for Papua, especially in the UN forum through public diplomacy in the perspective of communication among nations.

Political, financial and operational supports given to these small states to the separatist freedom movement (OPM) has been done in a spirit of togetherness among the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). This international organization based on identity of Melanesian brotherhood which formed in 1986 by 4 small states in the Pacific Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon and Vanuatu, also by Kanak National Liberation Front from New Caledonia. This organization was keen enough to promote the freedom movement of OPM to achieve independence Papua, that was why Indonesia tried to achieve the membership of Melanesian Spearhead Groups (MSG), because Indonesia has a strong argument that as an island country, it has 11 million Melanesian decendants on its scattered island as Papua, Mallocca, Buton, Southeast Nusa) characterized by their hair type, skin color, body figures and have similarities to the Melanesian in the south pacific.&#x0D; The emergence of political maneuver that continue to attack sovereignty of the Indonesian government against Papua, raising a view of a need to have a grand strategy to enhance more understanding and gaining supports from the small island states regarding the free movement for Papua, especially in the UN forum through public diplomacy in the perspective of communication among nations.