SIR PETER KENILOREA - Solomon Islands






At the commencement of the South Pacific Forum (now known as the Pacific Islands Forum) in the early 1970s, the political leaders of the emerging independent islands nations of the South Pacific region, including Australia and New Zealand, considered the Forum as a loose informal organisation for political dialogue and interactions.
In the wisdom of the initiators of the then expanding regional body, they decided to lift the areas of interactions of this group, otherwise a mere platform for informal political dialogue to include the scope of economic and social consideration. 
The result of this turn of events were two specific development initiatives—a Forum Shipping Line, with its office in Samoa and the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) to be hosted by the newly independent country of Solomon Islands in 1979.
At that point in time, Solomon Islands was the only island member country of the Forum which had some development of an offshore fisheries industry in a significant way. It had a joint venture fisheries company with Taiyo Kyokyo of Japan in 1971,for tuna fisheries. With its fleet of 20 pole and line vessels and an onshore processing factory, it employed 2000 people and was easily the largest useful and gainful source of employment, after the public service.
At the 1977 Forum Conference in Papua New Guinea, I instructed my then Minister of Finance, Hon. Benedict Kinika, the Solomon Islands official representative, to submit our bid to host the FFA. As we later learnt, the conditions and obligations of the successful bidder was that it had to provide the requisite staff accommodation and office facilities.
As a nation with only a year’s political independence and with no track record of hosting any regional and international organisations. We found this to be truly a challenge to meet the obligations and responsibilities that went with the privilege of our sincere effort to begin playing our role in important regional issues.
The government decided to commandeer the official residence of the Chief Justice. Some minor works to improve it resulted in having it converted into the Interim Director’s functional office/cum official residence. With this temporary arrangement, the Interim Director was instructed to fast-track the necessary staff recruitment.  However, he soon resigned and we were left with no executive head of this specialised regional agency.
As for a permanent office facility, a high covenant parcel of land which has a panorama view of Iron Bottom Sound above the National Stadium of Lawson Tama was allocated for this prestigious edifice. However, a further complication was later realised when that prime piece of estate was for some reason transferred to a naturalised Chinese entrepreneur.
The government had to compulsorily retrieve it through an expensive litigatory process. In our view, there was no alternative to this cause of action. The government had to have this prime piece of real estate as part of our important commitment to this important regional development.
Following this teething problem, the main office and the director’s official residence were duly completed on the site and the appointment of one of the eminent sons of the Pacific in the person of Samoan citizen Philip Muller as director found FFA in capable hands to meet the demanding challenges and opportunities which this new agency was set to serve. Such development was very important to the islands nation states of the Pacific region following their increased rights and control over their 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in early 1970s. Together, the Pacific nations now claim about 30 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean as part of this declaration.
FFA’s great achievement must be its success in the harmonisation of development of the highly migratory species (tuna) in the 200-mile EEZ of the member countries. It has assisted all member countries, big or small, most of whom fisheries is their only viable economic resource for revenue and export. 
The only challenge to this regional success story, in my experience, is the competing consideration of regional and national sovereignties. How far would a nation subject its most immediate accountability to its citizens to the common and long-term good of the region? This is a leadership reality which no doubt, would continue to show its understandably ugly horn as the nations of the region and the region itself mature politically. However, properly understood in context, this diverging reality can be useful for the harmony of the common good.
Individual islands member countries have also benefitted from the expert advice and professionalism of various other programmes of FFA. Such important capacity building by FFA to islands member countries in their pursuit to maximise economic returns from their resources is what this important and specialised agency has been known for and I am sure it will continue to be known for in the years ahead. My only encouragement is for member countries to realise its value and continue to take advantage of FFA.
During my time as director of FFA (1991-1994), one of the interesting experiences I was privy to was creating strategies for breaches of some of our control measures by foreign fishing boats. While governments often thought of solving these problems through the courts, it is less expensive and with a higher economic success that settlements were delegated to the FFA staff. The mere necessity to have adequate, convincing and water tight evidence for a successful prosecution in a court of law can be very time consuming, difficult and costly—whereas an out of court settlement takes advantage of the perpetrator of the breach’s interest in economic costs and risks. He would rather pay a reasonable financial settlement as soon as possible and return to do his fishing activities to recoup financial losses than incur greater financial loss through waiting for court hearings indefinitely.
According to my observation over the past 30 years, FFA has and continues to make great achievements in its areas of mandate. It has successfully achieved development of fisheries in its member countries. In the area of conservation, it has successfully presented its case at the United Nations against driftnet fishing and banned it in the region. It continues to help negotiate access agreements on behalf of small islands member countries on request. Such assistance is useful in its mandate of harmonisation of maximum economic benefits in the region. Its surveillance network has been a great success and a deterrent against illegal fishing activities by distant water fishing nations and its compliance and licensing process are successful stories.  And of course its Observers Programme contributes as a deterrence against blatant under reporting of catches and contributes greatly to optimum benefits to member countries from their fisheries resources.
May FFA continue to excel in its commendable success in its area of mandate in the region for the next 30 years. Long live FFA.

• Sir Peter Kenilorea was director FFA from 1991 to 1994.