A COLUMN WRITTEN BY KALIOPATE TAVOLA, PUBLISHED IN ISLANDS BUSINESS, MAY 2023
Julian Aguon is from Guam and is a Human Rights lawyer, Founder of Blue Ocean Law, a progressive firm that works at the intersection of indigenous rights and environmental justice. He is also a writer. He wrote his celebrated essay, ‘To Hell With Drowning’ in ‘The Atlantic’ in 2021. He wrote: “For people living in Oceania, climate change is the fight of our lives, and we need more than science to win. We need stories. And not just stories about the stakes, which we know are high, but stories about the places we call home. Stories about our own small corners of the Earth, as we know them. As we love them.”
His reference to ‘climate change is the fight of our lives’ echoes the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ (PIFL) 2018 Boe Declaration, wherein Leaders identified climate change as the region’s existential security threat. ‘And we need more than science to win’, firstly, for me, is an unequivocal affirmation that whilst science relating to and substantiating climate change is resolute, there is more that the region can do. Aguon’s strident call for stories, to supplement science and to authoritatively validate lowering the stakes faced by the region, is a rallying call that cannot be denied – that for our deep attachments and love for our big ocean states, our homes within the Blue Pacific Continent.
On 11-14 April 2023, the Australian Association for Pacific Studies (AAPS), hosted its Biennial Conference, themed: ‘To Hell With Drowning’ at the School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University (ANU). AAPS’ Vice President, Professor Katerina Teaiwa, corroborated the Conference theme and its intended manifestations to reflect Aguon’s rallying call for stories.
Professor Teaiwa went further in collaboration with Julian Aguon. She said: “Characterizing the whole Pacific as vulnerable and in deficit is not that inspiring. It’s not empowering. It’s not accurate, we are safeguarding what’s important… What we are doing in the region is important in its own right. We are challenging the discourse. We are challenging the policies. We are challenging the framework.”
A quick glance at the Conference programme verifies what the good Professor was saying. Intergenerational Wisdom of the Blue Pacific was the first day’s theme. The second day covered a range of emboldening issues like The Decolonial Possibilities of Pacific Studies Futures, Reframing and transforming oceans governance in Oceania, Justice for Creation: Indigenous perspectives and the role of the Church, Ocean Diplomacy and Refusing Fatalism: Voices for climate justice and decolonial futures.
The themes for the third day were equally inspiring. It kicked off with Trans-Indigenous reflections on sovereignty and self-determination. The afternoon sessions included: Navigating uncharted waters; Critical approaches to law and Pacific peoples and Stories of environment and disability in Oceania. The last day of the Conference continued its high-level themes in Decolonial feminisms in Oceania: Localised and regional perspectives and Rethinking Australian coloniality through Pacific Biography.
In this article, I am linking Pacific regionalism (Pacific Islands Forum, PIF) to the conference theme: ‘To Hell with Drowning’. The linking is more than just thematic. The AAPS Conference itself should be seen as part and parcel of Pacific regionalism.
The 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent is Pacific regionalism’s long-term plan that was approved by PIF’s Leaders at their 51st meeting in Suva on 11-14 July 2022. It is yet to be finalized. It still needs an Implementation and Monitoring Plan and a Regional Architecture. Notwithstanding that, the Strategy’s typology is already determined in that it is essentially political (see IB, March 2023 issue). That is to say, it is not economic regionalism or a trade block, nor security regionalism in the traditional sense. Admittedly, all three aspects of regionalism are reflected in one way or another. However, the 2050 Strategy is essentially political regionalism in its principal orientation.
As such, PIF’s principal tools for all its work under the 2050 Strategy comprise all the political forces that it can muster from across the board – the regional political leaders and the public at large, including members of the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), women, youth, the private sector and the churches.
It is now the task of the PIF and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) to reach out to these regional political forces to mobilize them appropriately. They have to take the first initiative to reach out. Gone are the days when they would sit back waiting to be approached. Peoples’ powers have to be natured and valued by those in position of regional authority for the good of all. The seat of power is firmly in the public domain. Pacific regionalism’s ‘The 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent’ is configured that way.
Such a configuration is apt for Pacific regionalism, given its voluntary nature. Its power base thus resides in the states, constituent members of PIF. It is expected therefore that the various states and the peoples therein will play dominant and critical role in the furtherance of the theme ‘To Hell With Drowning’ and to generate stories that can validate lowering the stakes confronting climate change regionally and also globally.
Stories at hand of increasing resilience against climate change by Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are welcome. Equally welcome are stories of joint efforts by regional teaching and learning institutions to teach and research climate change resilience. PIFS and state/national delegations, it is noted, are actively attending global consultations for a new international law to regulate/reformulate the concept of statehood and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in the event of sea-level rise.
Some other stories from PIF members give reasons for hope. Those from Tuvalu, for example, have been consistently uplifting over the years. In 2019, for example, then Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga rejected former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s suggestion that Pacific islanders of Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Nauru swap Australian citizenship for maritime resources owned by them. This required these PICs to surrender their respective sovereignty through voluntary constitutional changes. This was to be a long-term solution.
In response to this, Sopoaga came up with his idea of ‘United States of the Pacific.’ This was an optional conceptual supra-state construct along the lines of the European Union (EU) and its raison d’etre was ‘to amplify their concerns about climate change on the global stage’.
Fast forward to 2022, Tuvalu’s current Foreign Minister Simon Kofe announced during his speech at the COP27 climate summit that his country planned to use Web3 technology, Metaverse to preserve its nature, history, culture and society in the future.
Other initiatives that challenge the discourse and demonstrate that we are not drowning and that we want to change the policies to those that can work to reverse climate change and thus reduce the high stakes confronting us are presented with names that are equally nostalgic and stimulating. ‘Lalaga’, for example, is Tongan Ms Amelia Siamomua’s reimagining of Pacific regionalism. ‘Weaving the Ecological Mat,’ is Pacific Theological College’s contribution to the same theme. It, however, is a lot more ground-breaking than that. It probes into the prospect of reforming aspects of capitalism itself. ‘New Pacific Consciousness’ is former Nauru President Lionel Aingimea’s idea of reimagining Pacific epistemology and ‘Motu Folau Treaty,’ by Cherelle Jackson Lagipoiva is another attempt similar in trajectory to that by former Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga’s ‘United States of the Pacific’. Lagipoiva’s proposal, however, is revisiting the idea of an ‘economic union’ that the foundation members of the South Pacific Forum had resolved to pursue way back in 1971.
“We are not drowning,” Pacific climate activist Ms Brianna Fruen declared at COP 26. “We are fighting!” To Hell with Drowning. Just hear our stories!
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