Islands Business - WE SAY: Voice of the Pacific heard with reverence

‘FFA is a beacon for other Pacific Islands regional initiatives and provides ample evidence
and confidence that individual differences can be overcome for the greater good and larger weal of
the region as a whole. In all the Pacific Islands nations’ regional organisations, there is none that equals the solidarity FFA has come to stand for’

The progress of regionalism in the sprawling Pacific Islands environment could be best described as patchy. Despite their collective vulnerabilities and the many attributes they share including shared histories, cultures and ways of life that is so inextricably linked with the all encompassing ocean, it has been hard to find all the young and developing Pacific Islands nations to be on the same page on a number of issues.
While this diversity of opinions and standpoints—as seen from their support of different international powers, for instance—shows their capacity to think independently and do what they perceive to be in their best individual interests, there have been occasions when such a diversity of opinion has divided the Pacific Islands to the advantage of outside forces and the severe disadvantage of their people.
And this is despite an over-arching mechanism being in place to address the collective interests of the nations of the Pacific Islands in the form of the Pacific Islands Forum.
Nevertheless, there have been some excellent instances where regionalism has worked exceedingly well bringing the fruit of collectivism by putting regional interests above individual national interests to protect and leverage the collective natural wealth of the people of this geographically vast region.
The Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, is undoubtedly one such example of an organisation that clearly shows how regionalism can successfully work to guard the interests of the region as a whole and also show the world the power of collective bargaining power.
The agency was formed with the objective of protecting the rights of Pacific Islanders to farm the parts of the ocean to which they had a rightful access, as vested in them by their Exclusive Economic Zones.
But coming into existence as it did when many of the Pacific Islands were either on the threshold of nationhood or had very recently acquired it, the world’s superpowers took scarce notice of it in its early years. For instance, the United States did not recognise coastal state rights over tuna and on several occasions deliberately went out of their way to subvert the efforts of the Pacific Islands States to assert their exclusivity to access their economic zones.
With little expertise on international affairs and a severe lack of funding, most of the human resources that headed the Forum Fisheries Agency and worked with it in its early years were non-Pacific Islander expatriates.
It is a testament to the hard work and determination of both Pacific Islanders and their collective leadership that now sees almost all functions at the agency manned by individuals belonging to the region, which indeed is a most welcome sign.
Down the decades FFA has had to weather rough seas and storms especially thrown in its path by powerful commercial vested interests but in most cases it has negotiated its way around them to come up trumps keeping the interests of Pacific Islanders at the very top. After all, the value of tuna fisheries from the Pacific Islands countries’ regional waters is a whopping US$4 billion annually—which, by any reckoning, is no small fish.
Tuna and other fisheries remain the wealth of the Pacific Islands region—according to many experts the last healthy stocks of marine life in the world. It is imperative that the biggest stakeholders, the islanders themselves, have the most powerful voice in their sustainability, management and commercial exploitation. The frameworks of FFA has made that happen.
Without doubt, the voice of Pacific Islanders is heard with reverence and respect on the topic of fisheries in the Pacific Ocean by the entire world, thanks to the collective power they have vested in the agency.
The FFA is a beacon for other Pacific Islands regional initiatives and provides ample evidence and confidence that individual differences can be overcome for the greater good and larger weal of the region as a whole.
In all the Pacific Islands nations’ regional organisations, there is none that equals the solidarity FFA has come to stand for. The recent gains it has made in terms of forging regional understanding such as in the Parties to the Nauru Agreement are an excellent example of such cooperation in the interests of solidarity.
FFA has positioned itself well over the years to steer the interests of Pacific Islands fisheries through the continuing storms created by the twin problems of the global financial downturn and environmental and ecological concerns.
While the former would undoubtedly come to an end sooner rather than later, it is the latter, especially in the face of rapidly changing scenarios wrought by the effects of climate change and sea level rise that will test the agency in the coming years.
The changes to the United Nations Law of the Sea that has brought millions of square kilometres of ocean into the exclusive economic zones of individual islands countries will also bring new challenges as regards the management and sustainability of fishery stocks. But going by its impressive track record over the past 30 years and the string of successes it has notched up particularly in dealing with the strong arm tactics of powerful commercial interests of countries far removed from the Pacific Islands, FFA is eminently poised to overcome any challenge thrown its way.
One of the testaments to its success is the proliferation of Pacific Islands-owned and locally and regionally-based fishing fleets that have been commercial successes in recent years.
That success has been attributed to the quality of its highly experienced and extremely committed staff, many of who are Pacific Islanders that have stayed and grown with the agency over the years.
The many successes and tribulations that the agency faced and how it overcame them in the course of its short but eventful 30-year history have been chronicled and commented upon in greater detail elsewhere in this issue.
We congratulate the Forum Fisheries Agency on this landmark occasion.