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Pacific leaders, Australia agree to disagree about action on climate change

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BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS REPORTER MELISSA CLARKE IN TUVALUUPDATED FRI AT 1:36PM

Australia has stymied efforts by small island states to get Pacific-wide consensus on their declaration for stronger action on climate change.

Key points:

  • Australia expressed reservations about emissions reduction, coal use and the Green Climate Fund
  • Scott Morrison said he understood sensitivities in the Pacific region but ultimately he was “accountable to the Australian people”
  • Tuvalu’s Prime Minister was disappointed with the outcome, saying leaders “should have done more work for our people”

Regional leaders, including Australia and New Zealand, held 12-hour talks in the tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu for this year’s Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), eventually reaching an agreement on a statement on climate change and a communique early this morning.

They could not reach agreement on the Tuvalu Declaration made by smaller Pacific countries, instead drafting a separate Kainaki II Declaration, with different terms on coal use and emissions reduction.

The finished communique comes with a qualification that means the leaders do not support all of the declaration from the smaller nations.

Scott Morrison in Tuvalu

Earlier in the week, the Smaller Island States (SIS) group agreed to the Tuvalu Declaration, which acknowledges a climate change crisis, encourages countries to revise the emissions reductions targets and calls for a rapid phase out of coal use.

They had hoped the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum, which includes Australia and New Zealand, would endorse it.

But Australia expressed reservations about the sections on emissions reduction, coal use and funding for the UN’s Green Climate Fund, while New Zealand also had reservations about the section on the Green Climate Fund.

Introducing Tuvalu

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will arrive in Tuvalu, one of the smallest and least-visited nations on Earth, for the annual gathering of Pacific leaders, who have named climate change as their top issue.

That means that the final communique endorses the Smaller Island States declaration “with qualifications”, and no country has fully committed to endorsing the Tuvalu Declaration.

Speaking after the marathon leaders meeting, Mr Morrison said he wanted the SIS group to be able to express its views “freely” but that its statement was not binding on the rest of the forum.

“The Pacific Island Forum has its leaders meeting and it agrees to the things that it agrees. And then the Small Island States have their own forum that sit within that,” he said.

“And it’s not incumbent on the leaders’ forum to have to run a ruler over that.”

‘The Prime Minister of Tonga actually cried’

Tuvalu’s PM said tears were shed during Pacific Island Forum.ABC NEWS

That disappointed the PIF chair, Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga, who said as he left the meeting: “We tried our best”.

Mr Sopoaga had invested significant time and energy in making climate change the central focus of the meeting, and pushed for the Tuvalu Declaration to be adopted by Australia, but was resigned to the alternative outcome.

Negotiations were heated, particularly between Mr Sopoaga and Mr Morrison.

Pacific pivot undermined

Australia’s return to its Pacific neighbours after years of neglect could risk being undermined by the Government’s intransigence on the region’s main threat: climate change.

“We expressed very strongly during our exchange, between me and Scott [Morrison], I said: ‘You are concerned about saving your economy in Australia … I am concerned about saving my people in Tuvalu,'” Mr Sopoaga said.

“That was the tone of the discussion. Please don’t expect that we come and bow down … we were exchanging flaring language — not swearing — but of course expressing the concerns of leaders.”

Mr Morrison said he understood the sensitivities in the region and showed his respect during negotiations, but ultimately he was “accountable to the Australian people”.

“I am accountable to the Australian people, that’s who I’m accountable for,” Mr Morrison said.

“I understand the deep sensitivities. It’s not a theoretical issue, it’s not a dinner party conversation here in the Pacific.

“It’s not just about Australia’s economy. It’s about how Australia can continue to provide the support that we do across the Pacific region.”

Mr Sopoaga said Tonga’s Prime Minister Akilisi Pohiva had been reduced to tears as climate change activists delivered a presentation to the leaders earlier in the week.

“The Prime Minister of Tonga actually cried in the meeting … shed tears in front of the leaders, such is the passion.”

Tongan PM Akilisi Pohiva and Morrison
Tongan PM Akilisi Pohiva and Morrison

The outcome falls short of what Mr Sopoaga and some other Pacific leaders had hoped.

“It was a negotiated outcome, I think it still contains some references to the (UN) secretary-general’s message to accelerate actions against climate change and it’s a way forward,” he said.

“I think we can say we should’ve done more work for our people.”

How do the declarations differ on key issues?

Abbot Point coal terminal in north Queensland

Emissions reductions:

Tuvalu Declaration:

“Encourage all countries to revise their nationally determined contributions so as to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Kainaki II Declaration

“Call for … all parties to the Paris Agreement to meet or exceed their nationally determined contributions.”

Climate change and the ADF

 
Australia’s Defence Department has spelled out clearly to a Senate inquiry that climate change will create “concurrency pressures” for the Defence Force as a rise in disaster relief operations continues.

Coal use:

Tuvalu Declaration:

“We re-affirm the UN secretary-general’s call for an immediate global ban on the construction of new coal-fired power plants and coal mines and … [call on them to] rapidly phase out their use of coal in the power sector.”

Kainaki II Declaration:

“Invite all parties to the Paris Agreement to reflect” on the UN secretary-general’s remarks on “fossil fuel subsidies and just transition from fossil fuels”.

“[Call on] the members of the G7 and G20 to rapidly implement their commitment to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”

Green Climate Fund:

Tuvalu Declaration:

“We call for a prompt, ambitious and successful replenishment of the Green Climate Fund.”

Kainaki II Declaration:

The international community “continues efforts towards” meeting international funding commitments, “including the replenishment of the Green Climate Fund.”


Nature Care

Fijian PM accused Scott Morrison of being ‘very insulting and condescending’

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Fiji’s leader has hit out at his Australian counterpart, questioning their personal relationship following the Pacific Island Forum.

Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has launched a scathing attack on Scott Morrison and his deputy prime minister over their attitude towards their Pacific island neighbours.

But the Australian prime minister insists his government still has a deep commitment to its regional neighbours after a tetchy week at the Pacific Island Forum which tried to turn the heat on Australia over climate change.

In an interview with Guardian Australia on Saturday, Mr Bainimarama accused Mr Morrison of being “very insulting and condescending” during a leaders retreat.READ MORE

Deputy prime minister Michael McCormack.

Deputy PM says Pacific Islands will survive climate change because they ‘pick our fruit’

“I thought Morrison was a good friend of mine, apparently not,” he said.

Asked if Mr Morrison’s approach might cause some Pacific leaders to look to China, Mr Bainimarama said: “After what we went through with Morrison, nothing can be worse than him.”

“China never insults the Pacific.”

Labor’s climate change spokesman Mark Butler weighed in saying the long-standing relationship with Pacific countries has been damaged by Mr Morrison’s heavy-handedness.

When combatting climate change, it’s good to have an ally like New Zealand in your corner. Together, we can save Tuvalu, the Pacific, and the world. Vinaka vakalevu for the passion you bring to this fight, @jacindaardern.

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“It just adds insult to injury to have the deputy prime minister of the country then say if you lose your home through sea level rise you’ll be fine because you’ll be able to access some job opportunities in Australia.”

Pacific island leaders used the forum to urge Australia to lift its game on climate change to protect low-lying countries like Tuvalu by curbing fossil fuel emissions.

Nationals Leader Michael McCormack, who was acting prime minister while Mr Morrison was attending the forum in Tuvalu this week, said on Friday he gets annoyed when Pacific countries point their finger at Australia and say it should be shutting down its resources sector.

“They’ll continue to survive because many of their workers come here and pick our fruit, pick our fruit grown with hard Australian enterprise and endeavour and we welcome them and we always will,” Mr McCormack is reported as saying.

Mr Bainimarama said the comments were insulting and disrespectful.

“But I get the impression that that’s the sentiment brought across by the prime minister,” he said.

Labor frontbencher Jason Clare also had a crack at Mr McCormack, saying it’s hard to have credibility in this debate when emissions are going up and members of the government are cracking jokes.READ MORE

Back on home soil in Adelaide on Saturday, Mr Morrison said Australia has the deepest engagement and biggest commitment in the world to the Pacific,

“We’re there for the difficult conversations, we’re there for every type of conversation with our Pacific family, just like any family that comes around the table,” he told reporters after addressing a South Australian Liberals conference.

“We will always be there and regardless of whatever issues we have to work through at the time.”

Even so, Pacific island leaders are taking their call for action on climate change to the United Nations at a climate meeting in New York in September.

This week’s forum ended with a statement calling on major economies to “rapidly implement their commitment to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”.

Many of the forum members wanted to single out coal-fired power for its impact on the climate, but the language was rejected in the final document.SOURCE AAP – SBS

Source: ABS Com. AU

Asia Oceania

Pacific Island nations will no longer stand for Australia’s inaction on climate change

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The Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Tuvalu this week has ended in open division over climate change. Australia ensured its official communique watered down commitments to respond to climate change, gaining a hollow victory.

Traditionally, communiques capture the consensus reached at the meeting. In this case, the division on display between Australia and the Pacific meant the only commitment is to commission yet another report into what action needs to be taken.

The cost of Australia’s victory is likely to be great, as it questions the sincerity of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s commitment to “step up” engagement in the Pacific.

Read more: Can Scott Morrison deliver on climate change in Tuvalu – or is his Pacific ‘step up’ doomed?

Australia’s stance on climate change has become untenable in the Pacific. The inability to meet Pacific Island expectations will erode Australia’s influence and leadership credentialsin the region, and provide opportunities for other countries to grow influence in the region.

An unprecedented show of dissent

When Morrison arrived in Tuvalu, he was met with an uncompromising mood. In fact, the text of an official communique was only finished after 12 hours of pointed negotiations.

While the “need for urgent, immediate actions on the threats and challenges of climate change”, is acknowledged, the Pacific was looking for action, not words.

Morrison was met with an uncompromising mood in by leaders in Tuvalu. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

What’s more, the document reaffirmed that “strong political leadership to advance climate change action” was needed, but leadership from Australia was sorely missing. It led Tuvaluan Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga to note:

I think we can say we should’ve done more work for our people.

Presumably, he would have hoped Australia could be convinced to take more climate action.

In an unprecedented show of dissent, smaller Pacific Island countries produced the alternative Kainaki II Declaration. It captures the mood of the Pacific in relation to the existential threat posed by climate change, and the need to act decisively now to ensure their survival.

And it details the commitments needed to effectively address the threat of climate change. It’s clear nothing short of transformational change is needed to ensure their survival, and there is rising frustration in Australia’s repeated delays to take effective action.

Australia hasn’t endorsed the alternative declaration and Canberra has signalled once and for all that compromise on climate change is not possible. This is not what Pacific leaders hoped for and will come at a diplomatic cost to Australia.

Read more: Response to rumours of a Chinese military base in Vanuatu speaks volumes about Australian foreign policy

Canberra can’t buy off the Pacific

Conflict had already begun brewing in the lead up to the Pacific Islands Forum. The Pacific Islands Development Forum – the brainchild of the Fijian government, which sought a forum to engage with Pacific Island Nations without the influence of Australia and New Zealand – released the the Nadi Bay Declaration in July this year.

This declaration called on coal producing countries like Australia to cease all production within a decade.

But it’s clear Canberra believes compromise of this sort on climate change would undermine Australia’s economic growth and this is the key stumbling block to Australia answering its Pacific critics with action.

As Sopoaga said to Morrison:

You are concerned about saving your economy in Australia […] I am concerned about saving my people in Tuvalu.

And a day before the meeting, Canberra announced half a billion dollars to tackle climate change in the region. But it received a lukewarm reception from the Pacific.

The message is clear: Canberra cannot buy off the Pacific. In part, this is because Pacific Island countries have new options, especially from China, which has offered Pacific island countries concessional loans.

Read more: As Australia’s soft power in the Pacific fades, China’s voice gets louder

China is becoming an attractive alternate partner

As tension built at the Pacific Island Forum meeting, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters argued there was a double standard with respect to the treatment of China on climate change.

China is the world’s largest emitter of climate change gasses, but if there is a double standard it’s of Australia’s making.

Australia purports to be part of the Pacific family that can speak and act to protect the interests of Pacific Island countries in the face of China’s “insidious” attempts to gain influence through “debt trap” diplomacy. This is where unsustainable loans are offered with the aim of gaining political advantage.

But countering Chinese influence in the Pacific is Australia’s prime security interest, and is a secondary issue for the Pacific.

But unlike Australia, China has never claimed the moral high ground and provides an attractive alternative partner, so it will likely gain ground in the battle for influence in the Pacific.

Growing confidence among Pacific leaders has changed diplomatic dynamics forever. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
Growing confidence among Pacific leaders has changed diplomatic dynamics forever. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

For the Pacific Island Forum itself, open dissent is a very un-Pacific outcome. Open dissent highlights the strains in the region’s premier intergovernmental organisation.

Australia and (to a lesser extent) New Zealand’s dominance has often been a source of criticism, but growing confidence among Pacific leaders has changed diplomatic dynamics forever.

Read more: Climate change forced these Fijian communities to move – and with 80 more at risk, here’s what they learned

This new pacific diplomacy has led Pacific leaders to more steadfastly identify their security interests. And for them, the need to respond to climate change is non-negotiable.

If winning the geopolitical contest with China in Pacific is Canberra’s priority, then far greater creativity will be needed as meeting the Pacific half way on climate change is a prerequisite for success.

Source: The Conversation

The Melanesian Way

PNG leader urges Australia and NZ responsibility on climate

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Papua New Guinea’s prime minister says Australia and New Zealand must join his country in protecting Pacific islands from climate change impacts.

Papua New Guinea prime minister James Marape and wife Rachael (front) visit Australian ship-building company Austal in Perth, 23 July 2019 Photo: PNG PM Media
Papua New Guinea prime minister James Marape and wife Rachael (front) visit Australian ship-building company Austal in Perth, 23 July 2019 Photo: PNG PM Media

Papua New Guinea’s prime minister says Australia and New Zealand must join his country in protecting Pacific islands from climate change impacts.

James Marape has returned home after his first official visit to Australia, a six day-visit in which he met a range of officials from the prime minister to state governments.

Mr Marape told the Guardian that Australia had a moral responsibility to the upkeep of the planet, particularly given the extreme effects climate change is having on smaller Pacific nations.

He said the voices of smaller island nations must be listened to.

According to Mr Marape, Australia, New Zealand and PNG must shoulder some responsibility for the displacement of communities from the smaller regional countries caused by climate change.

He said he believed the bigger regional countries should lead the Pacific as a “bloc” of nations reconfiguring their economies to handle resource productions in a more environmentally and socially sensitive way.

Source: RNZ

Uncategorized

Be Careful on Visa for Airports jn Australia

Today is January 6, 2019 I am at the Denpasar International airport. I arrived here at 20.00 or eight at night and right now I am writing this entry at 23.06

Three hoars gone since I arrived here.

I want supposed to check in at 08.00pm and my plane has already departed for Brisbane at 22.10.

I was refused to check in because the Malindo Air from Denpasar to Brisbane is not issuing my boarding pass.

The counter told me I need to entery visa number for Australia in order to my boarding pass to be printed.

I stepped back,  asked the person who bought my ticket. I got two replies. The first one is that it is OK if it is less than 8 hours layover in Australia.

The second answer was a screenshot sent to me saying “no visa required” in the ticketing office website

Of course both did not help.

I asked my colleague to ask the ticketing office but no luck

My advice for other travellers

Especially those holding Asian and African passports should know that entering into Australia is not easy. We need to avoid any flights transit in Australia and use transfer in Asia instead.

Secondly we need to make sure when traveling via the USA to r Australia that we need to book and buy tickets when they connecting flight is the same airline. If not then you need to check out and if you need to check out then you will need visa..

those who are traveling to Melaneaia my advice is to choose the Asia routes not Australia ones. To go to Vanuatu I suggest you to use Fiji Airlines. To go to PNG it is cheaper and safer to use Phillipines Airlines. Just avoid Australia totally.

Melanesia Network

Indigenous descendants from Vanuatu begin family search

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By SBS – 

Aboriginals Smuggled to Vanuatu
Aboriginals Smuggled to Vanuatu

IT’S a little known detail of the so-called ‘blackbirding’ trade: how a group of Aboriginal Australians ended up in Vanuatu, never to return home.

Chief Richard David Fandanumata has travelled to Australia from Vanuatu to see the land his great-grandfather came from.

He hopes to find his lost relatives with just a handful of clues.

“I want to find out where Manuma from, that name,” he said. “If any Aboriginal people know ‘Manuma’ or ‘Makuma’, that is the place where my great-grandfather was taken.”

Chief Richard’s great-grandfather was an Aboriginal Australian who ended up on the island of Tongariki around 1910.

His story starts with the so-called ‘blackbirding’ trade of the mid to late 1800s.

Thousands of workers were tricked, kidnapped, or occasionally came willingly, from the Pacific Islands to work in Australia’s sugar cane fields.

Chief Richard’s forebears from Tongariki were among them. He says the men were chained and sometimes beaten. They worked for some time at a sugar factory in Caboolture, but may have moved between towns for work.

Emelda Davis, chairwoman of the Australian South Sea Islanders Port Jackson, said Pacific Islanders often lived closely alongside Aboriginal people.

“Given the nature of that trade, you had Indigenous, Torres Strait Islander and South Sea Islanders all working alongside each other under slavery conditions,” she says.

This close interaction sometimes led to marriages – and violence.

In 2012, Chief Richard and his brother Abel David, a former Vanuatu Member of Parliament, were part of a group of South Sea Islanders who travelled to Bundaberg for a ‘sorry’ ceremony, apologising for the past killing of Aboriginal people.

Ms Davis says the workers were acting under instruction from their bosses.

“This was something, their hands were forced, in order to do this, tribal warfare, in order to clear the land, but same time, our people took on board the young children that were abandoned,” she says.

An estimated 7000 Melanesian workers were deported after 1901 when the White Australia policy kicked in.

“We’ve always been aware of the Australian Aboriginal descendants living in Vanuatu,” says Ms Davis.

Details of exactly how they ended up there and what happened next are unclear. But tales have been kept alive by oral histories passed on through families.

Generations of Chief Richard’s family have told how his great-grandfather, a man named ‘Manuma’ or ‘Makuma’, depending on the dialect, was rescued at sea and taken to Tongariki with returning workers.

He narrowly avoided a grim fate.

“They should have ate him, because we [were] still cannibals at that time, but chief says we’ll take care of him, and chief gave him his daughter to marry,” he said.

“[It was] because of his hair. Curly… Aboriginal hair. So chief says don’t kill him, we’ll keep him.

“That’s where my grandmother was the daughter of that man, Manuma.”

Pastor Yanick Willie
Pastor Yanick Willie

Yanick Willie is a pastor and also from the island of Tongariki.

His family story tells of two children who were smuggled into the hold of a ship called the Lady Norman.

“They bring with them two children, namely Willie Tutukan and Rossi. We are born out of these two little children. Willie Tutukan married to a Tongariki woman.”

Pastor Willie says there are now about 400 known descendants of Willie Tutukan and Rossi, living in Tongariki and elsewhere.

He says Aboriginal descendants today face discrimination in Vanuatu.

“It’s very hard, we are always under discrimination,” he says.

“They look down on us and… sometimes call us ‘trouble people’. We have been hurt.”

Last week the men, along with several other descendants, travelled to Australia to make the first steps towards finding their long lost family members.

Tukini Tavui of the Pacific Islands Council of South Australia helped facilitate the trip after hearing of their plight through Dr David Bunton, whose own forebears were missionaries to Vanuatu in the 1800s.

“I think it’s important that Australians are aware, particularly Aboriginal people, that they have families over there that were taken during those times, in the early 1900s,” he says.

Chief Richard David says he knows finding his family will be a difficult task, but even being in Australia has been healing.

“It’s been hard today, but there will be tears of joy since we are coming back home.”

Uncategorized

Vanuatu descendants of Indigenous Australians search for long lost family

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By ABC – 

Pacific Islander labourers were forced to return to their home islands starting in 1906. (Picture: State Library of Queensland)
Pacific Islander labourers were forced to return to their home islands starting in 1906. (Picture: State Library of Queensland)

A SMALL group of men from Vanuatu with Aboriginal ancestry have travelled to Australia on a mission to reconnect with their long lost family, and to push for better recognition of their Australian ties.

Thousands of people with Indigenous Australian ancestry are believed to be living in Vanuatu. Many are the descendants of blackbirded islanders went back to Vanuatu at the turn of the 20th century, in line with the White Australia Policy.

Between 1863 and 1904, more than 62,000 Pacific Islanders were taken to Australia — often against their will, or on false pretences — to work on Queensland’s cotton and sugar plantations.

David Abel (left), pictured with Emelda Davis (right), is trying to find his relatives in Australia.
David Abel (left), pictured with Emelda Davis (right), is trying to find his relatives in Australia.

But Emelda Davis, chairwoman of the Australian South Sea Islanders Port Jackson chapter, said it wasn’t just Pacific Islanders who were kicked out of Australia.

She said there were stories of islander workers taking in orphaned Indigenous Australian children, as well as stories of workers marrying and establishing families with Indigenous Australians.

“Then when the White Australia Policy came in, the mass deportation did take a lot of those Indigenous families back to the islands,” she said.

“It’s always something that was known, but it’s quite interesting that it’s being promoted or brought to the attention of the Australian Government now.”

South Sea Islander farm workers on a sugar plantation at Cairns in 1890. (State Library of Queensland)
South Sea Islander farm workers on a sugar plantation at Cairns in 1890. (State Library of Queensland)
David Abel, a former Vanuatu MP and a descendent of a Pacific Islander blackbirded to Australia, has long been an advocate for better recognition of that dark chapter in Australia’s history.

He and his brother, Chief Richard David Fandanumata, a member of Vanuatu’s influential National Council of Chiefs, were in Adelaide this week for a forum on the topic hosted by the University of South Australia.

Both brothers have Aboriginal ancestry through their mother, and have been tracking others down around Vanuatu.

“We started receiving stories from all around the islands, I came here with some figures that put them up to over 4000,” Mr Abel said.

Chief Richard said they are not necessarily seeking Australian citizenship, but they do want to be recognised.

“Plenty of us, when we look at our history, our bloodlines, our family tree, they call us Australians,” he said.

“They connect us. And we want to become part of the family. Those of us in Vanuatu want to be connected with our family in Australia.”

The brothers are trying to track down their Australian family, the majority of whom are believed to be from the Tweed Heads region of New South Wales.

The Vanuatu men were in Adelaide this week for a forum at the University of South Australia.
The Vanuatu men were in Adelaide this week for a forum at the University of South Australia.

 

But there is some disunity within the group who have travelled to Australia.

One of the descendants claims many people with Aboriginal ancestry experience discrimination back in Vanuatu, and don’t have equal access to customary land or education

Pakoa Rudy Rolland, a police officer on Tongariki Island, told The Australian newspaper last week that hundreds of people with Indigenous Australian heritage in his community were living as second-class citizens.

But Mr Abel said while he agreed there was ‘a history’ of issues with land rights, many descendants of Indigenous Australians in Vanuatu have had successful careers.

He said he did not want the comments to overshadow their trip.

“There’s a Lord Mayor, even the person who’s giving this information is a police officer, some of them were teachers. I believe they are respected,” he said.

Nature Care

‘Small and Far’: Pacific Island States Gather at Annual Forum

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The 16 states are meeting this week to discuss regional challenges, particularly climate change.

Source: https://thediplomat.com/, By Grant Wyeth

'Small and Far': Pacific Island States Gather at Annual Forum
‘Small and Far’: Pacific Island States Gather at Annual Forum

The 47th Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting began this week on the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. The meeting will bring together the leaders of 16 Pacific Island states to provide a platform discuss the prominent economic, development, and security issues of the region, and seek solutions to the region’s mutual problems.

The forum describes its mission as: “to work in support of forum member governments, to enhance the economic and social well-being of the people of the South Pacific by fostering cooperation between governments and between international agencies, and by representing the interests of forum members in ways agreed by the forum.” It has met annually since 1971, when the forum was founded as the South Pacific Forum.

Sixteen states in the South Pacific are members of the Pacific Islands Forum: Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

Reflecting the predominant geographic nature of the forum’s members, the theme for this year’s summit is: “Small and Far: Challenges for Growth.” While each of the members have small land masses and populations (Australia aside), their combined sovereignty covers an area of 8,538,293 sq km (3,296,653 sq mi), making their agreement over maritime concerns important not only for members of the forum, but also for states outside the forum with interests in the South Pacific.This geographic reality is usually reflected in the priority of regional fisheries and shipping lanes on the forum’s agenda. However, in recent years the impact of climate change has begun to dominate discussions within the forum.

The smaller states within the South Pacific have become a leading voice on the global stage on the issue of climate change and its potential effects on human security, as well as the environment. Pacific Island nations take climate change extremely seriously, with some forecasts predicting a potential loss of territory due to rising sea levels. For Tuvalu, a country whose highest point is only 4 meters above sea level, rising sea levels are very real threat to its existence.

This puts them at great odds with the region’s main power. Low-lying Pacific Islands deem Australia’s continued reliance on coal, as both a source of energy and a major export, a menace. Australia remains the third largest producer of coal in the world (behind China and the United States), and the world’s largest exporter of the fossil fuel, with no intention of shifting these positions.

The most prominent external issue for the forum will remain its interest in the Indonesian province of West Papua. In June this year the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu informed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that they were very concerned about the deteriorating human rights situation in West Papua. While representatives from West Papua have no involvement in the forum, many of the Melanesian states like the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea maintain a strong ethnic solidarity with the Indonesian province, and pay special attention to developments there.

At last year’s Forum in Port Moresby a decision was reached to organize a fact finding mission to West Papua. However, Jakarta indicated it would not welcome any delegation, and had problems with the use of the term “fact-finding.” However, West Papuan leaders in exile remain hopeful that a push for similar pressure on Indonesia will develop from this year’s forum. However, with Australia keen to maintain friendly relations with Indonesia, it is doubtful Canberra will add too much of its weight to these concerns.

The other major concern for the forum will be the continued negotiations of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (known as PACER Plus). There is a developing consensus among the smaller Pacific Islands states that this agreement would not promote further economic development. Given that these island states already have tariff-free and duty-free access to the Australian and New Zealand markets the PACER Plus agreement would do little to enhance this reality.

Fiji’s Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, has stated there “aren’t enough pluses” for Fiji to warrant signing the agreement, and the PNG Trade Minister has flatly stated he is “not interested” in it.  Of greater importance to the Pacific Island states is freer labor mobility for unskilled and semi-skilled workers within the Australian and New Zealand markets. This is seen as having a far more direct positive economic impact for these countries.

The forum will conclude on Sunday September 11 with its traditional communiqué of conclusions reached to be published shortly after.