‘...In recent times, the image of the Pacific Islands as the ultimate paradise on earth has taken a severe battering.'


Not many years ago, the Solomon Islands was called the Hapi Isles and Fiji’s own sobriquet was ‘The Way the World Should Be’—something rugby star Waisale Serevi reminded Fijians and the world in his message after winning the International Rugby Board Sevens circuit this year.

Western novelists, anthropologists and artists have all depicted the Samoan Islands as the happiest place.
But in recent times, the image of the Pacific islands as the ultimate paradise on earth has taken a severe battering.

Environmental degradation wrought by unsustainable development, lifestyle diseases, economic hardship, political instability and much of the ills of a fast globalising planet have all washed up on shores of many islands nations like so much unwanted flotsam.

Last month’s announcement that the happiest place on earth is still in the Pacific islands region, therefore, was reassuring—though we find the yardsticks to measure the ‘happiness quotient’ rather amusing.

A survey conducted by the United Kingdom-based New Economics Foundation declared in July that Vanuatu is the happiest place on earth, according to their ‘Happy Planet Index’.

The index is computed by combining life expectancy, the degree of contentment reported by a country’s inhabitants, their use of resources and other such statistics ranging from hard data to very, very subjective factors.

The world media lapped up the announcement, prone as it always is to pick up any out-of-the-ordinary trivia that comes its way.

If Vanuatu is the happiest, the world’s most powerful and richest nations, the G8 that met in Russia last month, were ranked close to the bottom of the pile. Oceania’s wealthiest countries Australia and New Zealand ranked 139th and 94th respectively. The United States was 150th and United Kingdom 108th. 

Poorer countries—with notable exceptions particularly in the African continent—have tended to fare better than the richer countries in the ‘happiness index’, though many of these ‘happy’ countries fare dismally in the development indices that in the real world actually determine a country’s success. Vanuatu comes 207th in a list of 233 countries in terms of GDP, yet has been found to be the happiest place on earth.

Other countries—particularly islands nations—that incidentally have hosted bizarre reality shows for western television like Vanuatu follow it closely in the happiness index.

It is not hard to see why these nations are ‘happier’ than those of the developed world: for one, they are well endowed with natural resources; have low, sustainable populations; have lifestyles that are in harmony with nature and their environment; and have over the generations mastered the art of living within their means—the very antithesis of the western consumerist model.

Those ‘happy’ places have always been that way until successive waves of contact with the ways of the western world. In the centuries of maritime exploration, it is the westerners that brought deadly diseases to many of these ‘happy’ places exterminating much of their populations.

And when not spreading diseases, they plundered, marauded and colonised—only to leave them with systems of government and economic structures foreign to their cultures, ultimately making most of them inherently dependent and deeply indebted to western aid.

Yet, the report incredulously recommends western-style developmental and economic measures to ‘improve’ these ‘happy’ places!

Among the recommendations being put in place are economic policies to eradicate poverty and recognising individual contribution—two fine examples of more western top-down thinking to be foisted on the ‘happy’ people.

At any rate, it is increasingly difficult to see Vanuatu retain its ‘most happy place’ status in the coming years—again thanks to western concepts of ‘development’, ‘happiness’ and the rest of it.

Come 2013, the country is in line to lose its ‘Least Developed Country’ (LDC) status, graduating into the league of ‘Developing States’, much like fellow Pacific Islands nations of Samoa, Kiribati and Tuvalu.

In that event, the country will stand to lose considerable developmental aid and trade concessions. Also, we know from experience that this graduation is not among the happiest of events for the graduating countries.

Papua New Guinea, a developing country, is being considered for a demotion to an LDC status. There is perhaps one other reason why Vanuatu will lose its paradise status: International watchdog Transparency International has demanded that Vanuatu’s Official Secrets Act be repealed immediately.

The act apparently throws a smokescreen on the dealings of what goes on within the portals of government and bureaucracy.

The ordinary Vanuatu citizen, it thinks, is in the dark about all the wheeling and dealing that happens.

Ignorance is bliss, as the old adage goes. Could it be this ignorance that has contributed in no small way to Vanuatu’s ‘happiness’ quotient? Would repealing the act plunge the country into gloom?

If the world’s last pristine places and their happy peoples are to retain their naturally happy states, they should be spared the top-down western models of development and half-baked attempts to “integrate them into the global economy”.