A COLUMN WRITTEN BY KALIOPATE TAVOLA, PUBLISHED IN ISLANDS BUSINESS, JAN 2021

In my last article in this magazine, I referred to the structure of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and its system of decision-making as being antiquated. This was on the basis that PIF’s type of regionalism is voluntary. Members are not legally bound to the decisions they make at the regional level. I suggested the prospect of its reconsideration as a means of enhancing the benefits to members.

And I pointed to the deficiencies in regional cooperation, regional integration, for example, in the last 49 years of PIF’s existence, as areas to be redressed for greater benefits to members.

The direct implication of that hinted at a decision-making process that would be a reversal of the status quo. Involuntary regionalism, which would mean binding decisions at the regional level. Furthermore, that would necessitate derogation of sufficient state power to the region to enable the latter to make those decisions.

From my perspective, as one schooled in the classical Barassa model of regionalism – linear, with regional economic integration, advanced economic union, for example, and having worked fourteen years in the European Union that exemplifies such a model, my assumption of eventual derogation of power from the states to the region was one I had thought to be a natural progression for Pacific regionalism. But it is not to be.

Professor Greg Fry, in his latest book: ‘Framing the Islands’ (2019, ANU Press) has done immense service to this region with his well-researched 14 chapters – a goldmine of much-needed information about Pacific regionalism: from well prior to 1971 when the South Pacific Forum was established, to the development we see today as well as prospects for the future.

In Fry’s exhaustive study of Pacific regionalism over several decades, he concluded that Pacific regionalism has taken a non-classical approach. Despite occasional attempts at fostering regional integration which requires derogation of power from the states to the region, this has not happened at all.

Pacific regionalism has evolved in ways that has acquired its own political significance that is recognized by member states without the latter derogating their power to it. Fry stated that states, for instance, have used the regional structures as means of networking. Fry identified such forms of political significance, for example: one which exudes a ‘strategic political arena’; that which portrays its own ‘regional governance’; a ‘regional political community’ and a ‘diplomatic block’.

It is interesting that Pacific regionalism has evolved in this manner. In retrospect, however, such a non-classical approach may have been a product of its own history. The South Pacific Forum (SPF) of 1971 resulted from the Lae Rebellion (1965). The five Pacific Island Countries (PICs) rebelled against being dominated by the metropolitan powers of the then South Pacific Commission. They wanted paramountcy and freedom in the exercise of their respective state power, especially when they were firmly on the road to being independent states. Having acquired that power, they were reluctant to lose it – even derogating some of it to the SPF.  

That situation prevailed even after the SPF morphed into the enlarged Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in 2000. The situation continued after PIF’s membership expanded to include two territories of one of  the metropolitan powers, France (New Caledonia and French Polynesia) in 2016.

In discussing the scenarios from which the various forms of political significance emanated, Fry pointed to the recent ‘new’ Pacific diplomacy that is transforming Pacific regionalism. This relates to the ascendancy of the PICs, especially in championing climate change – an existential threat to their homes, tradition and culture. Such ascendancy is not a one-off phenomenon. This reflects the parallel ascendancy of the Pacific Small Island States (PSIDs) in the work of the United Nations’ General Assembly. But it also reflects the extent to which PICs have been extracting, over time, the benefit of Pacific regionalism.

Fry delved into benefits and beneficiaries in his book. He went further.  He concluded that due to the recent ascendancy of PICs, the future of Pacific regionalism will pivot around issues and interests that matter to them. PICs’ ownership and custodianship of these issues are taken for granted. So when it comes to any structural changes needed for Pacific regionalism, the non-classical approach is likely to pervade. This is the new normal.

The prospect of Fry’s ‘regional political community’ is that which is likely to encapsulate the political significance through which PICs will continue their ascendancy. This political scenario is neutral when it comes to any derogation of power from the member states. Fry has demonstrated that.

I would suggest that this matter is taken up seriously in the formulation of the 2050 Strategy. A proposal underlying the PICs’ ascendancy has already been advanced by former Prime Minister Sopoaga of Tuvalu in the form of an ‘United States of the Pacific’ (USoP). The former Prime Minister advanced his proposal to counter that made by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia: for the islands of Tuvalu, Kiribati and Nauru to swap Australian citizenship for maritime resources owned by these Pacific Island states. I discussed this proposal in the June 2019 issue of this magazine.

Later, in the December 2019 issue of the magazine, I discussed the convergence of this proposal in the context of the general invocation of the Forum Leaders’ decisions from the 2019 Leaders’ meeting in Funafuti. This could easily be seen as an extended part of the general conjunction I talked about in my December 2020 issue of this magazine. In that same December issue, I also mentioned the initiative: ‘Reweaving the Ecological Mat’(REM) by Pacific Theological College’s Institute for Mission and Research. The REM advocates are recommending USoP for consideration in the formulation of the 2050 Strategy by the relevant Forum Officials committee.

The USoP proposal will obviously account for the engagement of PICs in Pacific regionalism. But how would member states: Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) be accounted for? I discussed this specific matter in the June 2019 issue of Island Business, and I have written a paper on it: ‘Towards a New Regional Diplomacy Architecture’, published in ‘The New Pacific Diplomacy’, 2015, edited by Greg Fry and Sandra Tarte.

The new diplomatic architecture I suggested requires an overarching agreement to link the PICs’ own forum, on one hand, to that of ANZ, on the other. This echoes the same kind of arrangement that PICs (as members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group) have with the European Union. This same arrangement can also be extended to any other global powers that wish to formalize their partnership with the PICs.

To date, as we have seen, Pacific regionalism in all its various forms of ‘political significance’ has not necessitated derogation of power and sovereignty from the states to the region. Going forward, however, and should the reconfigured Pacific regionalism come to fruition, it remains to be seen whether the status quo over four to five decades of regionalism will continue.

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© Kaliopate Tavola and kaidravuni.com, 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kaliopate Tavola, kaidravuni.com and Islands Business with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.