PACIFIC leaders must listen to young people and pursue the common good as the region confronts climate distress, rising inequality, weakened civil society and a loss of trust in government, governance and leadership.
Speaking to an audience at the 2nd Pasifika Philosophies Leadership Weaving Futures Conference, Professor Shaista Shameem, vice-chancellor of The University of Fiji, said the central question was not what leaders thought leadership should be, but what young people wanted from leadership.
“It’s the young people who are the future generations,” she said. “Now we have done our time, and there are a lot of mistakes that my generation has made in terms of the environment.”
Shameem said students at The University of Fiji, including students from Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and other places in the Pacific, were “very critical of leadership, of the current leadership.”
“So the main question is: What kind of leadership do young people want?” she asked.
She said young people were asking questions about the global agenda and were interested in ethics, environmental protection, justice and equality. They also focused on collaboration, community, compassion and collective experience.
“What COVID did to young people is something that is not yet properly understood,” Shameem said.
“We have not done the research on it, and we don’t know what the long-term effects have been on young people as a result of COVID, and in the Pacific as much as the rest of the world.”
She pointed to Vanuatu law students who brought an environmental case to the International Court of Justice as an example of the “bravery and courage” of young Pacific people.
“They are the ones who are defining the agenda for us,” she said.
Shameem said Pacific leadership had to be grounded in realities on the ground, including political polarisation, exclusion, weakened civil society and the rise of authoritarianism.
“We have to balance out traditional societies that are collaborative and consensus-based with traditional societies that perhaps unwittingly also practice authoritarianism, just like any other society in the world,” she said.
She identified several principles for leadership: pursuing the common good; recognising power imbalances that harm the environment; using emotion as part of reason and logical decision-making; and practising good stewardship as a caretaker and custodian of society.
Redefining Pacific Leadership
“Leaders who think that we have a homogeneous society and that one size fits all are not going to last for very long,” Shameem said.
Her blueprint for Pacific leadership included a longer-term view, courageous leadership, mutual appreciation, cultural understanding, listening, cooperation and mutual respect.
She said leaders should look beyond five-year strategic plans and the gross domestic product model, arguing that unpaid labour by women was productive labour but was not recognised in statistics.
“One of the worst things about how we calculate productivity in society is that we refuse to recognise that what women do as unpaid labour is productive labour,” she said.
Shameem said Pacific communities also had to confront non-communicable diseases, HIV in Fiji, domestic violence, family safety, the rights of children, climate distress, migration and the loss of trust.
“They don’t trust government. They don’t trust governance. They don’t trust leaders,” she said. “And how are we going to recover that?”
Climate distress was causing social problems as well as environmental damage, she said, including the dislocation of people and young people. Migration could appear to be the only solution, but displaced people also had to carry their culture, social systems and understanding into a different context.
Shameem also questioned whether education was serving Pacific national priorities or mainly transferring skills from Fiji to Australia and New Zealand.
“Am I educating for the skills transfer from Fiji to Australia and New Zealand, or are we educating for national priorities here?” she said.
She said the three leadership crises identified by her students were environmental, social, and trust. Pacific leadership, she said, should be culturally collaborative, mutually respectful and based on fiduciary responsibility towards the people.
“Pursue the common good, balancing individual and specific public interests, and finding good communication skills,” Shameem said.
“The question then becomes: at the end, how is this different from the other cultures? And that’s a question that I think we’ll have to leave for another day.”
