South Pacific States Research Articles

ON THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY IN HISTORY: NIKOLAY N. MIKLOUHO-MACLAY

The paper strives to present and analyze the role of personality in history on the example of the outstanding academic and traveler Nikolay N. Miklouho-Maclay (1846–1888), who devoted his life to science and high ideals of greater good and humanism. The author shows what influence a historical figure can have both on his contemporaries and next generations, giving the answer to the key question: ‘To what extent the scientific and ideological heritage of a scientist can be relevant in the 21st century?’ The paper considers N. Miklouho-Maclay’s contribution to a variety of academic disciplines as an ethnographer, anthropologist and naturalist, describing significance of his major studies, in which he focused both on people, and the manifestations of this culture within the geographical environment. The author also pays attention to sociopolitical activity of N. Miklouho-Maclay and his firm public position aimed at the protection of Pacific Islanders from the slave trade and colonial enslavement by the Western colonial powers of the 19th century, emphasizing its contribution in the 20th and 21st centuries to the establishment of multilateral friendly relations between Russia and the South Pacific states. The paper reviews N. Miklouho-Maclay’s academic and educational activities in preserving historical heritage since the 1930s, as well as the growth of his personal popularity nowadays. The author quotes authoritative academics and experts in various fields of knowledge from different countries, describing their image of N. Miklouho-Maclay, thus presenting a generalized portrait of the famed explorer and defining his personal role in history, which is far from fading nowadays.

Property rights and climate migration: Adaptive governance in the South Pacific

AbstractHow would a polycentric property system react to mass movements of people caused by escalating climate change? Drawing on multidisciplinary perspectives, the article suggests an analytical frame for polycentric property system responses to climate migration. The case study is Solomon Islands, a South Pacific state with high levels of environmental vulnerability, where people draw on various governance mechanisms to secure proprietary relationships with land. These governance mechanisms not only encompass property rights derived from the state, but also proprietary relationships secured through social norms, informal agreements, and acts of mutual coordination. The key argument is that governance mechanisms to secure property rights for climate migrants have absorptive limits that affect broader processes of adaptation to climate change. The heuristic of absorptive capacity provides a basis to consider adaptive property law for a future of climate migration.

Countries of the Central and South Pacific Region are Russia’s competitors in gas supplies to Japan

The article analyzes the role of the Central and South Pacific states in providing Japan with natural gas. This issue is very relevant, as Russia sets a strategic goal of expanding its presence in the Japanese energy markets, including increasing natural gas exports. However, the latter actively buys natural gas in several countries around the world, and despite the factor of geographical proximity, Russia has not yet managed to become a key supplier of this energy supplier to Japan. As a result of the conducted research, it is possible to confirm that the Central and South Pacific region is currently the main supplier of LNG to Japan and a serious competitor for Russian suppliers. However, even if a few decades later, due to the depletion of gas reserves in some countries of the region, a free niche is formed, Russia may fi nd it difficult to occupy it due to increased competition from some states of the Persian Gulf.

Южная часть Тихого океана в Инициативе «Пояс и путь»: аспекты безопасности

The article analyses the implementation of China’s mega-strategy the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the South Pacific. The key parameters shaping the security milieu of this subregion are outlined, China’s measures in the context of the BRI realization are revealed and systemized, the key BRI vulnerability factors in the South Pacific are distinguished. In the author’s view, stressing its significance as the non-traditional security provider to the South Pacific states, without timely and comprehensive measures to cope with the COVID-19 pandemics as part of its BRI strategy China may become a hostage of this approach.

Официальная помощь в целях развития как аспект австралийско-китайского соперничества в Южно-Тихоокеанском регионе

Due to China's increasing involvement in South Pacific, there is a growing interest on the part of the middle and great powers in providing the Pacific island States with an increasing amount of material assistance. With its unique geographical location, as well as numerous initiatives in the humanitarian, trade, economic and defence areas, Australia's influence is reinforced by its status as the major ODA source in Oceania. At the same time, despite Australia's clear advantage in providing ODA to South Pacific states, the region is attracting an increasing number of countries aimed at providing ODA to South Pacific countries, especially China.

Examining the immanent dilemma of small states in the Asia-Pacific: the strategic triangle between New Zealand, the US and China

ABSTRACTSmall states throughout the Asia-Pacific are confronted by a growing dilemma over how to balance their traditional security ties with the US and rapidly growing trade with China. This gives Washington and Beijing potential leverage over small states to use within their competition with one another. This article explores the implications of this for New Zealand – a small South Pacific state that prides itself on maintaining an independent foreign policy. Situated within the small state literature, it utilises a material-based strategic triangle to illustrate the fundamental facets of New Zealand's position. Relatedly, the article examines how Wellington has managed its burgeoning relations with China and the US over the past decade and critically considers New Zealand's independent foreign policy. It finds that New Zealand has adopted a mixed set of strategies to manage its position between the US and China, closely aligning itself with Washington while remaining nonaligned on some key security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. New Zealand has certainly not opted for neutrality. The article concludes that New Zealand and other small states must remain vigilant, may want to consider alternative strategies of alignment, and outlines a number of areas where additional research could prove fruitful.

It Takes Two to Tango, But Three to Commit Adultery: A Survey of the Law on Adultery in Post-Colonial South Pacific States

Adultery appears to provide a common link between divorce regimes. However, this does not necessarily mean that the rationale for the demonizing of adultery is the same in different parts of the world or that it is treated the same way in matrimonial regimes or under criminal laws. This article looks at the law of adultery in the South Pacific and seeks to place it in its historical and social context. It commences by exploring the historical approaches to adultery in selected South Pacific countries, with some reference to the development of the law in England, where most State law in this field originated. The article then looks at how adultery is treated under headings formed by the three legal responses to adultery: divorce; compensation; and criminal sanction, and the common law and customary law stances on each of these responses are compared. The article concludes with some comments on the significance of the similarities and differences highlighted in the article for law reform and the practice of transplantation.

The EU as an Agent for Democracy: Images of the EU in the Pacific Media ‘Mirror’

The Pacific is a major recipient of EU assistance under the Cotonou Agreement and target for EU development actions (including the reinforcement of democracy and human rights). Positioning its inquiry within the diffusion theory, this study focuses on one of the Union’s ‘normative’ profiles communicated externally, namely the EU’s international performance as a promoter of democracy, rule of law and human rights. This paper considers a particular case study, namely the EU’s metaphorical imagery in media discourses in Fiji, a South Pacific state experiencing an ongoing democratic crisis. These external media framings of the EU are then compared with the auto-images the Union has about itself when interacting with the Pacific. The conclusions indicated a mismatch in external and internal EU imagery potentially ripe with miscommunication and counterproductive for EU–Pacific relations in general (and EU–Fiji relations in particular).

Antipodean Statebuilding: The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and Australian Intervention in the South Pacific

This essay analyses Australian-led statebuilding efforts in Solomon Islands, through the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). RAMSI has often been offered as a successful example of statebuilding worthy of international consideration. Here, some of the limitations of the RAMSI mission and its progress in rebuilding the ‘failed’ South Pacific state will be carefully assessed. Despite significant short-term statebuilding successes in restoring security and stabilizing the economy, RAMSI faces long-term challenges centred on the complex politics of political community-building. As an example of ‘best practice’ statebuilding, RAMSI highlights the complexities involved with the two-level game of international intervention: the (conflicting) challenge of reconciling the need to respect sovereign sensitivities with the need to undertake robust political engagement.

Emerging Pedagogies of Linguistic and Cultural Continuity in Papua New Guinea

This paper explores issues of linguistic and cultural continuity in vernacular education in the south pacific state of Papua New Guinea (PNG). It draws from an ongoing ethnographic study of the introduction of vernacular teaching in elementary and lower primary schooling where English has recently been replaced as the medium of instruction making way for PNG's more than 850 languages to potentially be languages of early school instruction. In this paper, PNG's multilingual setting is presented in terms of a linguistic ecology of which vernacular schooling is emerging as an integral part. The circumstances discussed have been selected to highlight the way the introduction of vernacular and the use of vernacular genres and storytelling practices has prompted the emergence of indigenous or culturally continuous pedagogies not previously apparent. They derive from visits to rural schools in two provinces, classroom observations and discussions with elementary school teachers, and video recording and discussions of micro-teaching sessions in storytelling with final year primary teacher trainees during 2003. The situated meanings of stori performance, gesture, circulation and place are discussed as key features of local communicative genres. The paper has relevance for educators working in multilingual, vernacular and language transition settings where, it is argued, pedagogy can be informed by a greater awareness, understanding and uptake of local language genres.

The Growth of Pentecostalism in French Polynesia: A Hakka History

While Pentecostalism exists today in French Polynesia, as in all the South Pacific States, it has followed an unusual path there, taking root initially (during the 1960s) within the Hakka Chinese immigrant community. Long perceived by the historic Protestant Church as “Chinese-style Protestantism”, it initially gave birth to several Hakka Churches, each of which combined cultural identity, integration into Polynesian society and adherence to Christianity in different ways. However, after a series of secessions, a significant number of Hakka converts and their children are to be found in a transcultural Church, the Assemblies of God of French Polynesia. The intersecting histories of Pentecostalism and of the Hakka community in French Polynesia thus bear witness, in an exemplary fashion, to the gradual construction of a plural society (both multicultural and multi-confessional), which is in tension with the adherence of (almost) all the population to Christianity, as well as with individual cultural identities.

Environmental impact assessment in the Fijian state sector

For over 20 years, the South Pacific state of Fiji has required developers to conduct more than 70 environmental impact assessments (EIA), without specifying the environmental quality or impacts it considers (in)appropriate. It has ignored aspects of EIA to which agencies funding development have paid little attention—assessing alternatives, monitoring outcomes and enforcing consent conditions. This infers the Fijian state is not serious about using EIA to control environmental quality. Factors other than technical shortcomings are shaping the way the state constrains EIA practice. Unless these factors change, the comprehensive EIA system proposed in Sustainable Development legislation will not prevent environmental degradation.

Regionalism, strategic Denial and South Pacific security

THE PRIME MINISTER OF THE COOK ISLANDS, SIR THOMAS DAVIS, BEGAN 1986 BY DECLARING that he intended to proclaim his country formally neutral. Sir Thomas offered, in explanation, his belief that the ANZUS regional security pact was in collapse, leaving the Cooks solely dependent on a bilateral defence relationship with New Zealand which he described as worthless. Apparently, Sir Thomas wanted to indicate that if his country could not rely on a regional arrangement for its security, he would prefer to fall back upon an ostensibly unilateralist solution (neutrality) buttressed by the global guarantees of international law. Whether or not his declaration was a ploy to embarrass the New Zealand Labour Government of David Lange in its dispute with the United States over nuclear warship port access, and notwithstanding the practical and legal impediments to carrying out his intention, Sir Thomas's gesture epitomizes the dilemma facing the South Pacific regarding regionalism and the security of the region. Many of the underpinnings of the Pacific Islands regional system come from outside the islands themselves, and yet these same supports are linked to sources of danger which threaten not only the validity of the regional system but also the exercise of sovereignty by member states. Regionalism has played a central if contested role in the international affairs of the South Pacific since at least World War II. The small states of the South Pacific are more obliged than most to pursue their international objectives through single rather than multiple avenues. The loss of regionalism as an effective avenue of diplomacy would therefore impose vastly more significant costs on the South Pacific states than would be expected in other regions. This review of regionalism and security focuses on two central themes of the current security debate. The first concerns the nexus between regionalism and regional security: that is, how important is the vitality of the regional system to the security of the South Pacific? Second, to what extent can regional security in this part of the world be independent of the global priorities of the superpowers? The answers to these two questions are not necessarily mutually compatible. Indeed, the prospects for security in this region could depend upon insulating the regional system from many extra-regional pressures, at least under the existing framework. The islands (as well as other states) may find that retaining the South Pacific regional system involves both structural change and a shift away from the traditional, tacit, Western alignment on security issues.

The South Pacific Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone

T HE WORLD NOW HAS a second treaty requiring military denuclearization of an inhabited area in perpetuity, the Treaty of Rarotonga.' The pact was signed on August 6, 1985, the fortieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, by eight of the fourteen members of the South Pacific Forum at a conference held in the capital of the Cook Islands. The new treaty partially reflects, but also in some respect differs from, the Treaty of Tlatelolco providing for a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) for Latin America and the Caribbean. For the independent South Pacific nations, which were already free of nuclear weapons before the treaty emerged, the Rarotonga pact is a step onto the global anti-nuclear stage. The peace movement has welcomed the agreement as a conservative precursor of a further spread of nuclear pacifism. The South Pacific NWFZ will be incomplete unless and until the nuclear-weapon states (NWS) accept the Rarotonga Protocols. Since the 1970s, the NWS have shown varying degrees of interest in a South Pacific NWFZ. South Pacific Forum delegations visited the capitals of the NWS in early 1986 to explain the Rarotonga Treaty and invite comments on its protocols. Ratified protocols would assure that China, France, the U.S.S.R. and the United States would abstain from any action violating treaty norms, and that the NWS would not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against Rarotonga parties. What are the leading provisions of the new pact and how do they compare to the Latin American model? How did regional actors, especially Australia and New Zealand, bring about the Rarotonga Treaty? Do the South Pacific states, large and small, agree among

The South Pacific states, the USA and sovereignty over highly migratory species

The South Pacific states, the USA and sovereignty over highly migratory species