It was a busy time in Suva this month, as Presidents and Prime Ministers arrived in the Fijian capital for the 51st Pacific Islands Forum. Well, most of them – the absence of key Micronesian leaders and the withdrawal of Kiribati from the regional organisation highlight ongoing tensions, despite the warmth of the welcome and positive vibes from leaders in their first face-to-face meeting since 2019.
The centrepiece of the week was the adoption and launch of the 2050 Strategy for a Blue Pacific Continent, a new framework for regional co-operation. For Forum host and Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, “the 2050 Strategy is a critical element in our regional work and is placed to be the ‘north star’ of our future national and regional policies and development.”
Over three years, a Forum sub-committee led by Fiji and Vanuatu, and backed by Joel Nilon and other staff of the Forum Secretariat, have been consulting on the key pillars of the strategy, described by the Forum as an “overarching blueprint to advance Pacific regionalism for the next three decades, articulating the region’s long-term vision, values, and key thematic areas and strategic pathways.”
The strategy identifies seven themes and five pathways (governance; inclusion and equity; education research and technology; resilience and wellbeing; partnership and co-operation). Beyond the jargon however, is the need to make it real for ordinary people.
Church and civil society organisations like the Pacific Islands Association of Non-government Organisations (PIANGO), Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) and the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) made significant efforts to ensure that community voices were included in the development of the strategy. But PCC General Secretary, Reverend James Bhagwan says that their work is not over with the launch: “How do we ensure that the vision of the 2050 strategy – a high level document that talks about non-state actor participation and inclusion – actually gets translated into the implementation process?”
At the summit, leaders agreed that a key element of implementation will be a major review of regional architecture. They will now move to look at problems of duplication of services, financing and structural issues affecting the Council of Regional Organisations of the Pacific (CROP). Tensions remain – Fiji’s ongoing refusal to contribute its grant to the regional University of the South Pacific (USP) highlights the ongoing challenge of regional co-ordination.
Suva Agreement
Following the threatened withdrawal of the five members of the Micronesian Presidents’ Summit, leaders adopted, in large part, the “Suva Agreement” that was developed during negotiations in May. This process will bring major changes to the appointment of the Forum’s leadership – both Chair and Secretary General, and relocate offices to the northern Pacific.
Prime Minister Bainimarama describes the Suva Agreement as “a political commitment to resolve our impasse and keep our family together while at the same time implementing some reforms that have been sought by some of our Family members. Like all families, we sometimes go through a rough patch, but our strength lies in our resolve to work together as one Blue Pacific Continent.”
The meeting was rocked, however by a letter from Kiribati President Taneti Maamau announcing his government’s rejection of the Suva Agreement and withdrawal from the Forum. During the summit, Bainimarama called his i-Kiribati counterpart to break the ice and renew dialogue, and the leaders decided “that the people and Government of Kiribati will always be a part of the Blue Pacific Family, and committed to continue to dialogue towards a resolution to restore the unity of the Forum Family.”
With plans for a Special Leaders Meeting later this year to continue the transition around the Suva Agreement, leaders agreed to continue dialogue with the Maamau government, “including through the appointment of a dedicated Special Envoy.”
With Forum members (except for Kiribati) adopting the “Suva Agreement” at the summit, the way is open for a series of measures to implement the deal. Leaders agreed on new procedures for the selection of the Secretary General and the Pacific Ocean Commissioner, with “equal representation of the three sub-regional bodies achieved by the creation of two deputy Secretary General positions alongside the Secretary General.”
Officials will now begin planning for a new Forum sub-office in the northern Pacific. The agreement also includes the relocation of the Office of the Pacific Oceans Commissioner (OPOC), currently based at the Forum Secretariat in Suva, to the northern Pacific (but with a location yet to be determined).
Who’ll pay for all these new jobs and offices? Australia and New Zealand initially. The Forum communique welcomes that “Australia and New Zealand would make an initial contribution to operationalising the Suva Agreement, and all Members will make a contribution to ongoing implementation.” But there are plenty of other partners out there who’ll make offers to assist, hoping to influence the Forum agenda. Does this set back efforts to increase control of the budget by Forum island countries, as advocated by former Secretary General, Dame Meg Taylor?
The deal also commits to “a rotation of the Secretary General and Forum Chair positions between the three sub-regions for a balanced representation at the Executive level of the Secretariat.” Micronesia will nominate the next Secretary General beginning in 2024 and for the purposes of rotation, Australia will be listed under the Melanesian sub-grouping and New Zealand under Polynesia.
Throughout this process, Cook Islands leader Mark Brown has made clear that protecting current Secretary General Puna – his predecessor as Prime Minister – is a crucial part of the package. Brown’s Special Envoy to the Suva meeting, Tepaeru Herrmann told Islands Business: “For the Cook Islands, the legitimacy of the decision taken by leaders to appoint Secretary General Henry Puna is one that had to be preserved.”
The Cook Islands will host the next Forum leaders meeting in 2023, so Puna will have strong support in next year’s Forum chair. Despite earlier suggestions that Secretary General might end his term early, Puna will continue in his role until the completion of his current three-year term. The leaders’ communique notes that they will ensure the transition to Micronesian leadership is conducted “in a manner that is dignified and seamless.”
Climate action
The climate emergency remains a central pillar of Forum activity, as countries prepare for the next global negotiations at COP27 in Egypt.
With leaders declaring “a Climate Emergency that threatens the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of its people and ecosystems” in the Pacific, they reconfirmed that “climate change remains the single greatest existential threat facing the Blue Pacific, underscoring the urgency to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees through rapid, deep and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”
In a major achievement for a regional civil society campaign and the initiative of the Government of Vanuatu, the Forum called on the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). An ICJ opinion would clarify “the obligations of states under international law to protect the rights of present and future generations against the adverse impacts of climate change.”
Work will continue on the specific question for the ICJ initiative “to ensure maximum impact in terms of limiting emissions to 1.5 degrees” and – following lobbying from Australia – to include “obligations of all major emitters past, present and future” (i.e. China and India, as well as historic emitters like the United States and European Union).
After the election of a new Labor government in Australia under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Forum “welcomed and fully supported” Australia’s renewed commitments to reduce emissions by 43% by 2030. They also welcomed “the interest from Australia to host a UNFCCC Conference of Parties in partnership with Pacific Island countries.”
With church and civil society groups lobbying in Suva for more urgent action and stronger targets, Albanese told journalists that no one raised the issue of new Australian coal and gas projects with him: “Not one person today raised such questions in the meeting, nor was it raised in any of the meetings I held.”
In a busy week, Albanese may have missed the tweet on 13 July from Forum host Voreqe Bainimarama, stating: “Australia’s new climate pledge is a step-up that Fiji has long sought –– but out of the duty I owe every young person in the Pacific, I have urged @AlboMP to go further for our family’s shared future by aligning Australia’s commitment to the 1.5-degree target.”
Bainimarama issued a call for urgent climate action by all major industrialised nations. He stressed that he had been “clear and consistent” in every meeting during the week about the need for more ambitious climate commitments: “Most urgently, it requires that we end our fossil fuel addiction, including coal. That is our ask of Australia.”
Albanese got a warm welcome for the cameras in Suva from Manasseh Sogavare, winning a big hug from his Solomon Islands counterpart in front of assembled media. Sogavare reaffirmed, yet again, that there would be no military base in his nation and that Honiara would call on Australia first for policing support at times of crisis (dubbed “a family first approach to peace and security” in the final communique).
Beyond this, however, all parties danced around the reality that China will continue to be a key trade and investment partner into the future, and regional security debates will continue unabated. At a time of geopolitical tension, rising debt levels and fallout from the war in Ukraine, US-China strategic competition remains a constant. In response, the Forum “recognised the importance of regional unity and solidarity in dealing with intensifying geostrategic interest, particularly to ensure the achievement of shared and common objectives.”
Trade marking the Blue Pacific
One problem with the new “Blue Pacific” motif is that it can be co-opted by Forum dialogue partners, even if they don’t accept the core values at the heart of the strategy.
In June, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Japan announced that they would form the Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP) “for more effective and efficient cooperation in support of Pacific Island priorities.” Despite the claim of partnership and coordination from the US-led initiative, it’s notable that key donors like France and the European Union – let alone China – are not included in the founding line-up.
Leading regional academics Greg Fry, Tarcisius Kabutaulaka and Terence Wesley-Smith have blogged that the PBP initiative “effectively forms a special group of five ‘like-minded’ partners with a shared interest in displacing or competing with China. This then becomes a new grouping in the regional architecture – an inner circle – which complicates and ignores existing structures.” Islands Business has confirmed there was no formal dialogue with the Secretary General and Forum Secretariat in Suva before the PBP was announced – a mockery of the stated claim the new initiative will respect the key regional structures.
Despite calls to delay the official Forum session with development partners until later this year, the host nation invited U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris to present a video speech to leaders. Acknowledging past failures, Harris pledged expanded funding under the Tuna Treaty through the Forum Fisheries Agency, new U.S. embassies in Tonga and Kiribati, more Peace Corps volunteers and the appointment of a Special Envoy to the Forum.
Her speech was well received by Forum leaders, but the very next day, Democrat Senator Joe Manchin announced he wouldn’t fully back the Biden administration’s signature reconciliation bill before Congress. From a coal mining state and backed by the fossil fuel industry, the rogue Democrat rejected key proposals from his own party on climate finance, reduced emissions and tax increases for the wealthy. Many island leaders will await November’s midterm elections in the United States, to see if Biden’s party can maintain a majority in the House or Senate, and meet his 2021 pledge to double U.S. climate finance by 2024.
As Cook Islands Special Envoy Tepaeru Herrmann told Islands Business: “We have heard pledges, over the years, of elevated U.S. interest in the Pacific. While we have always wanted to engage, we need to see pledges translate to action on the ground, through general, respectful engagement.”
Action on disarmament
Other decisions in Suva show that there are ongoing gaps between key Forum Island Countries and the AUKUS partners, on questions like decolonisation and nuclear disarmament. Even as Canberra moves to purchase nuclear submarines under the AUKUS agreement, the Forum agreed on a series of initiatives around the Rarotonga Treaty for a South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ).
Leaders called on Forum members who are not parties to SPNFZ – such as Palau, FSM and Marshall Islands – to consider acceding to the treaty. They also encouraged Washington to ratify the Treaty protocols, given the United States is the only one of the five major nuclear weapons states that has failed to ratify these provisions, first adopted by Forum leaders in 1985. They also called for action on nuclear contaminants, challenging plans by Japan to discharge treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.
France’s colonial administration in New Caledonia also came under scrutiny, as the report of the December 2021 Forum Ministerial Committee to New Caledonia was presented to the summit. New Caledonia’s new President, Louis Mapou said the report was discussed and welcomed at the leaders’ retreat, and there were pledges of the Forum’s “continued engagement with New Caledonia” as it moves to talks on new political status (see page 14 for more on this issue).
In contrast, West Papua disappeared from the Forum agenda, just weeks after Prime Minister Albanese visited Indonesia, extending ties to the Jokowi administration, and Forum Chair Bainimarama attended the G20 summit in Bali, the first island leader to address the global summit of major powers. Despite lobbying from the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), the final Forum communique made no mention of the leaders’ longstanding calls for a UN Human Rights mission to the troubled region, calls that have been ignored and rebuffed by the Indonesian government and military.
