But the Pacific has never had a voice here.

Despite being UN members, no Pacific island nation has ever served on the UNSC in its 70-year history. Why is this? Is it something Pacific nations should aim for?

So far only Fiji began the process for selection, but withdrew its bid in 2011. The Solomon islands is currently exploring a bid for 2032-2033. To be a member of the UNSC you have to put your name down on the Asia Pacific Group candidature chart and so far APG countries have put their names down until 2042-2043 (Qatar). This suggests that it will be up to the next generation to decide. However if the Solomon is elected unopposed by the General Assembly then it will be a role model for other Pacific island countries to follow suit.

For decades now, there have been growing calls for reform of the UN system and in particular the UNSC. The question often asked is whether the 5 permanent members of the UNSC adequately reflect our changing times. At a time when nations like India, Brazil and Germany have become economic and political powerhouses, why are they not permanent members of the UNSC? Why is Africa, South America and the Islamic world not represented at all? Many would argue that the US, China and Russia remain the most powerful nations in the world, thus their presence is undisputed. But Britain and France?

The realpolitik view is that the current permanent members (known as the P5) would never willingly give up their seats, so the only way forward is to add to the P5, perhaps to have 9 permanent members which better reflect the many centres of power and population in today’s world. This may improve “inclusiveness” but may not make the UNSC more effective. Since each permanent member has the power of veto, which is often exercised, the idea of having a P9 with their own interests could mean even more use of the veto, thus paralyzing UN action on key issues. So far, reform in this area has been glacial and there is little room for the Pacific to wield much influence on the permanent members.

However, there is nothing stopping Pacific island countries from having a go for a non-permanent seat. But to do this requires concerted diplomat efforts and deep pockets since nations must campaign and convince others to vote for them when the seats become available. An additional problem is the way the Pacific is lumped in with Asia. Rules for membership of the UNSC state that one member from each regional block is appointed each year. According to the UN website, the Pacific is not even mentioned by name here – it is considered part of Asia:

Each year the General Assembly elects five non-permanent members (out of 10 in total) for a two-year term. In accordance with the General Assembly resolution 1991 (XVIII) of 17 December 1963, the 10 non-permanent seats are distributed on a regional basis as follows: five for African and Asian States; one for Eastern European States; two for the Latin American and Caribbean States; and two for Western European and other States.

For some time there have been calls to decouple “Pacific” from “Asia-Pacific” as they are in fact different regions and Asian countries usually dominate the process. If there was enough will, Pacific diplomats could take up this issue with the P5 members and the UN Secretary General and seek to create a distinct “Pacific” category, like Africa, which would certainly enable Pacific nations to have permanent representation. Then the only lobbying they need to do is among themselves.

Realistically, no country in the Pacific could wage a campaign on its own under the current rules. But there is nothing to stop Pacific nations from coming together to all get behind one candidate, pool resources and aim for the top. Some have suggested that the Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) grouping would be the best group to help get behind such a bid.

Right now, the world is focused on climate change ahead of the Paris COP21 summit. There has never been a more urgent time for Pacific nations to have a voice at the global table to highlight their concerns and demand action to keep global temperature rise from under 2 degrees Celsius. We have eloquent leaders such as Kiribati’s President Anote Tong who have a high international profile and whose concerns for his country also reflect the concerns of all Pacific nations. Why not get all the Pacific nations behind Kiribati – or another climate-vulnerable nation – to ensure our concerns are not just heard but acted on. Climate change has become a global security issue and to have a Pacific voice at the UNSC for a one year term would give some leverage to improve the awareness of our issues and be part of a process that demands compliance to agreed resolutions.

There is frustration that financial pledges from developed countries to those most vulnerable often don’t materialize. A voice on the UNSC can add pressure to make sure climate change financing – including pledges of $100 billion by 2020 – actually happen. The key for PICs to be in the UNSC is to ensure that climate change and the special vulnerabilities of Small Island Developing States (SIDs) become an integral part of the security agenda. This is opposed to the current view of security meaning ‘boots on the ground’.

And it is not just climate change – increasingly global security issues involving war, peacekeeping operations, refugees and tax avoidance by multinationals also affect the Pacific and we have every right to have input into the way the UN decides on its course of action.

What would be involved if a Pacific nation tried to bid for a seat? What are the challenges?

To begin with, it would require most of the nations’ diplomatic resources to be devoted to UNSC work, which means less on other UN work, such as sustainable development goal (SDG) efforts. It would be a strain on capacity since the government would have to deploy their best diplomats, which may mean important bi-lateral relationships could suffer along the way.

Like many small states, our current disadvantage is that most Pacific UN missions are very small and lack depth of experience in UN matters. Furthermore most of our diplomats are politically employed and when their contracts end they are not retained by the civil service – so experience is lost.

Another factor that counts against island nations is political instability – we need our vision and policies to be stable. Regular changes of government does not allow us to strategically reposition ourselves and maintain long term stability of purpose in the UN arena.

It is fair to question whether there is any real value in bidding for a UNSC seat given the time and expense involved, and to what meaningfully could be achieved by having such a term. Yet many will recognize the need for reform within the UN system and the need for the Pacific to have a greater – and more united – voice in this global institution, and have a stake in the process of reform underway there. In terms of long term vision, PSIDs governments need to reposition themselves strategically in global affairs. This can be done.

A point to remember is that it is not only the concern of the Pacific, but more broadly the SIDS too – including Caribbean and Africa and Indian small oceans states because their development issues are very similar. This could be addressed by the current debate on UNSC reforms – advocating for SIDs non-permanent seats. After all, SIDs issues are global issues (i.e. climate change) but they need to be seen from a SIDs lens, so a seat for SIDs could help.

Australia and New Zealand have both served terms on the UNSC and invariably get the support of Pacific nations to do so. Perhaps it is time to enlist their help in backing a Pacific nation for a change. At the very least, it may be worth exploring the idea of challenging the UN to create a distinct “Pacific” region for UNSC membership so that Pacific nations would have a permanent voice there and the only lobbying they need do is among themselves.

The Pacific is being courted by all the P5 members in various ways and is mostly unaligned – that is, it is friend to all. Enlisting support from the P5 to reform the UNSC and allow for a permanent, rotating Pacific member is one strategy to get our voices heard in the most powerful room in the world.

Photo credit: UN

Thus it is also an honour to be sharing the event with Monsieur Michel Djokovic, the Ambassador of France, given how important French aid has been for this programme.

France and the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Lille (ESJ) played a critically important role in helping establish the journalism degree programme at USP in 1994, with the French government funding the inaugural senior lecturer, François Turmel, and providing a substantial media resources grant to lay the foundations.

I arrived in Fiji four years later in 1998 as Head of Journalism from Papua New Guinea and what a pleasure it was working with the French Embassy on a number of journalism projects at that time, including an annual scholarship to France for journalism excellence.

These USP awards this year take place during challenging times for the media industry with fundamental questions confronting us as journalism educators about what careers we are actually educating journalists for.

When I embarked on a journalism career in the 1960s, the future was clear-cut and one tended to specialise in print, radio or television. I had a fairly heady early career being the editor at the age of 24 of an Australian national weekly newspaper, the Sunday Observer, owned by an idealistic billionaire, and we were campaigning against the Vietnam War.

Our chief foreign correspondent then was a famous journalist, Wilfred Burchett, who at the end of the Second World War 70 years ago reported on the Hiroshima nuclear bombing as a “warning to the world”.

By 1970, I was chief subeditor of the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa, the best newspaper I ever worked on and where I learned much about human rights and social justice, which has shaped my journalism and education values ever since.

I travelled overland for a year across Africa as a freelance journalist, working for agencies such as Gemini, and crossed the Sahara Desert in a Kombi van. It was critically risky even then, but doubly dangerous today.

Eventually I ended up with Agence France-Presse as an editor in Paris and worked there for several years. In fact, it was while working with AFP in Europe that I took a “back door” interest in the Pacific and that’s where my career took another trajectory when I joined the Auckland Star and became foreign news editor.

The point of me giving you some brief moments of my career in a nutshell is to stress how portable journalism was as a career in my time. But now it is a huge challenge for you young graduates going out into the marketplace.

You don’t even know whether you’re going to be called a “journalist”, or a “content provider” or a “curator” of news – or something beyond being a “news aggregator” – such is the pace of change with the digital revolution. And the loss of jobs in the media industry continues at a relentless pace.
Fortunately, in Fiji, the global industry rationalisations and pressures haven’t quite hit home locally yet. However, on the other hand you have very real immediate concerns with the Media Industry Development Decree and the “chilling’ impact that it has on the media regardless of the glossy mirage the government spin doctors like to put on it.

We had a very talented young student journalist here in Fiji a few weeks ago, Niklas Pedersen, from Denmark, on internship with local media, thanks to USP and Republika’s support. He remarked about his experience:

“I have previously tried to do stories in Denmark and New Zealand – two countries that are both in the top 10 on the RSF World Press Freedom Index, so I was a bit nervous before travelling to a country that is number 93 and doing stories there ….

“Fiji proved just as big a challenge as I had expected. The first day I reported for duty … I tried to pitch a lot of my story ideas, but almost all of them got shut down with the explanation that it was impossible to get a comment from the government on the issue.

“And therefore the story was never going to be able to get published.

“At first this stunned me, but I soon understood that it was just another challenge faced daily by Fiji journalists.”

This was a nice piece of storytelling on climate change on an issue that barely got covered in New Zealand legacy media.

Australia and New Zealand shouldn’t get too smug about media freedom in relation to Fiji, especially with Australia sliding down the world rankings over asylum seekers for example.

New Zealand also shouldn’t get carried away over its own media freedom situation. Three court cases this year demonstrate the health of the media and freedom of information in this digital era is in a bad way.

• Investigative journalist Jon Stephenson this month finally won undisclosed damages from the NZ Defence Ministry for defamation after trying to gag him over an article he wrote for Metro magazine which implicated the SAS in the US torture rendition regime in Afghanistan.

• Law professor Jane Kelsey at the University of Auckland filed a lawsuit against Trade Minister Tim Groser over secrecy about the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (the judgment ruled the minister had disregarded the law);

• Investigative journalist Nicky Hager and author of Dirty Politics sought a judicial review after police raided his home last October, seizing documents, computers and other materials. Hager is known in the Pacific for his revelations about NZ spying on its neighbours.

Also, the New Zealand legacy media has consistently failed to report well on two of the biggest issues of our times in the Pacific – climate change and the fate of West Papua.

One of the ironies of the digital revolution is that there is an illusion of growing freedom of expression and information in the world, when in fact the reverse is true.

These are bleak times with growing numbers of journalists being murdered with impunity, from the Philippines to Somalia and Syria.

The world’s worst mass killing of journalists was the so-called Maguindanao, or Ampatuan massacre (named after the town whose dynastic family ordered the killings), when 32 journalists were brutally murdered in the Philippines in November 2009.

But increasingly savage slayings of media workers in the name of terrorism are becoming the norm, such as the outrageous attack on Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris in January. Two masked gunmen assassinated 12 media workers – including five of France’s most talented cartoonists – at the satirical magazine and a responding policeman.

In early August this year, five masked jihadists armed with machetes entered the Dhaka home of a secularist blogger in Bangladesh and hacked off his head and hands while his wife was forced into a nearby room.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in figures released this year, 506 journalists were killed in the decade between 2002 and 2012, almost double the 390 slain in the previous decade. (Both Reporters Sans Frontières and Freedom House have also reported escalating death tolls and declines in media freedom.)

(To be continued next week…)

Caption: French Ambassador Michel Djokovic (third from left), Head of USP Journalism Dr Shailendra Singh (fourth from left) and Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie (fifth from right) with the prizewinners at the University of the South Pacific journalism awards. Image: Lowen Sei/USP

It has been over a year since your declaration of a ‘Decade (2014-2024) of Sustainable Energy For All’ so we are hereby sharing our ideas about the topic.

Mr. Secretary-General, it is apparent to us that as ‘island nations’ we have one vote only in the United Nations and we have no economic power to engage the issues of climate change. This is not a statement seeking pity or money; this is a statement of fact. Island nations contribute very little to climate change, yet we are the ones losing our land.

Mr. Secretary-General, we ask that you consider our words and share them with others with the resources to combat climate change. We know there are still people out there saying climate change is not happening. Well, we can’t speak for people who live in larger cities and continents and have no clue about what is going on in our part of the world. We can only speak for ourselves. We are seeing greater changes to our environments. High tides that used to come to the shore-line next to the mangroves or next to the rock-walls now come into our porch areas and recently, they have come into our homes. We see subtle changes that we cannot explain. We will leave that for the scientific community to answer. Our place here is to bring the voice of island nations to show what we are going through in the midst of a global political posturing.

Island nations are full of creative, loving, hospitable and caring human beings. We are not characters in travel magazines, or some out of the way noble savages. Let us remember the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands which happened years ago but which has seen women continue to give birth to babies bearing the effects of radiation. We are not some footnote in history news reels saying we “agree for the benefit of humanity.” Now humanity is benefiting and island nations are forced to be at the front line of the climate change debate. Mr. Secretary-General, once again we are not writing these words to gain your sympathy, we write them to remind you and the United Nations that every action has a consequence, and we are experiencing it right now.

So we propose a simple vision, one that is taken from the last sentence of the preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of Palau which can be used as a road map to create technology, policy and action to deal with climate change. The preamble states, “In establishing this Constitution of the sovereign Republic of Palau, we venture into the future with full reliance on our own efforts and the divine guidance of Almighty God.” We want to highlight how we can venture into the future with full reliance on our own efforts. Remember the old saying, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he will eat every day.” This is what we propose to create as the vision for the decade.

Climate change and environmental issues can be debated till every expert have had their say but it will not address our problem. We need solutions now and we propose to focus on the following three areas: Human development; low technology solutions; and creating an example of excellence.

Too often we put too much emphasis on economic development believing that a strong economy will create a better society. I beg to differ with this easy and lazy analysis of island nations that we only need to have a more transparent government, a vibrant economy, and a better tax structure to bring in foreign investors and then everything will be better. What this does is it continues to create dependency, not self-reliance. We know no one can be isolated from the global economy but we need to set policies that every nation will try to do for themselves in the best way possible, then incorporate new technology, economy and practices to support what they are already doing. In his book “Foreign Flower” Peter Lamour warns us of the danger of taking one institution and placing it in another country and expecting success. Instead we must seek to understand and respect the values, culture, and practices of a particular nation so an appropriate system can be put in place.

We must focus on human development by training future leaders to be creative, energetic and skilled. These young men and women will be trained to have the skills to address the problems that confront our future. As Albert Einstein said, “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We need to ensure future leaders have a sound thinking process so they can adequately solve our problems.

Secondly, we need to create and endorse low-tech solutions that consider our environment and our resources. This can be accomplished when we take our first goal, human development and identify the priority fields for future leaders. We need to encourage our children to become engineers, scientists, teachers or agriculturalists and who can incorporate traditional knowledge with contemporary technology. The best example is of a young engineer who is able to create a diverse low-tech alternative energy solution for island nations. The outline of this system will be how to coordinate our environmental resources; sun, ocean, wind and bio-diesel to create a power generating plant that will not depend on imported fossil fuels and can meet the demands of a growing economy. The system can use solar panels and bio-diesel to maintain the minimum energy required to operate the power plant. The bio-diesel can be produced by creating an aquaculture plant like algae or seaweed for bio-diesel that uses the ocean’s tidal, wave, current and thermal energy to support the production of power.

Thirdly, we can use the wind with kites and wind turbines to help in power production. Other products that can be developed with low-tech solutions are food and transportation. Specifically the call to eat organic local foods is both economically and medically sound and it is better for the environment as it limits our carbon footprint. We could also revive the canoe tradition to remind people we can travel without fossil fuels. Again, these are just ideas but they can happen.

Finally, Mr. Secretary-General, we need to create a model nation that will be a global example of excellence. Albert Bandura’s work on behavior states, “If you want to change how [people] behave, you have to first change how they think.” Mahatma Ghandi also said, “you must be the change you wish to see in the world.” We envision a vibrant and creative future generation that can come up with this type of alternative energy plan and put it to action. This will be a good example the United Nations can honor and point to as a starting point.

Our islands have abundant natural resources that we can draw energy from in a sustainable way – help us to help ourselves and create low-tech solutions for energy provision that can help mitigate the effects of climate change we are already experiencing.

Thank you.

Photo credit: Last months heavy downpour in Kiribati resulted in the overflow of the pond in Anraei Bonriki leading to the flooding of many homes – Humans of Kiribati

Three years in the making, the new goals set an ambitious agenda to apply to every country over the next 15 years. Now the hard part – implementing the 17 goals and 169 targets in 193 countries.

The new agenda moves us on from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which expire at the end of the year, and which were essentially a tool to focus aid delivery. This time, every country will have to apply the new goals to their own national context. Funding the new agenda will be a mix of domestic resource allocation and new development partnerships.

For small countries it will mean prioritising, without cherry picking, goals. What that means in reality is unclear as we are all charting new territory when it comes to implementing this agenda. What we do know, and the new agenda recognises, is that development is a continuing spectrum – not something that can be achieved by merely copying the practices of others. And history tells us that imposed solutions rarely get traction – no matter how well intentioned or how deep the evidence base may be. So the fact that the new agenda is founded on country stewardship is to be celebrated.

Unlike the eight MDGs, which were conceived behind closed doors, the new agenda is the product of exhaustive intergovernmental negotiations, which included extensive consultations with civil society and business groups. Given the competing national and issue-based interests, it is unsurprising then that the list of new goals is vastly expanded from their predecessors. There were many vibrant debates among UN member states and across civil society about what should and should not be included. Not all ideological differences were settled, and perhaps for the first time the agenda was not dictated by a small group of powerful nations. In fact in some cases, it was a small group of small countries that held sway.

The Pacific bloc in the United Nations (the Pacific Small Island Developing States – PSIDS) championed a goal on oceans, and as part of the Alliance of Small Island States (which was chaired by Nauru throughout the 2014 Open Working Group) led the call for a goal to tackle climate change. For our countries, perhaps more aptly referred to as large ocean states, these two goals are essential elements of sustainable development.

Our regional neighbour, Timor-Leste, defied ardent opposition to be the primary proponent for a goal on peace, justice and strong institutions. Drawing on the reality of building a nation state from scratch, Timor-Leste’s recent experience of peace-building and state-building has demonstrated that without sustained peace there can be no sustainable development. Without capable and accountable institutions we cannot make the leap from goal setting to managing our economies to deliver the services and build the infrastructure our people need. Goal 16 on peaceful, inclusive societies is now widely viewed as being the ‘powerhouse from which all other action will flow’ and underpins the success of the whole agenda. Perhaps not surprising given the state of the world, most recently exemplified by the massive displacement and migration of people from Syria.

Our governments will be the primary custodians of this new agenda, but they cannot operate in isolation of national, regional and international partners. If we are serious about being the first generation to eradicate extreme poverty and the last to suffer the scourge of climate change, then we must hold our leaders to their national and international commitments to properly resource the implementation of this agenda. We will have to track our progress, and share our learning at home and abroad. More than ever, we need an active civil society to be actively engaged in renewed national conversations that will chart our own development pathways.

To start these conversations in the Pacific, PiPP has teamed up with RMIT University to launch a short survey that will tell you about the goals and what they seek to achieve, and give you the chance to rate the relevance of the goals and how your country is fairing against the targets. We aim to continue this survey (both online and offline) over the coming years and to periodically extract information in public reports to national governments and regional organisations. The aim is to get a broad understanding of the goals and how best to prioritise actions in our region, and to provide feedback to our policymakers and implementers on our progress.

We should be very proud of the achievements of our representatives in New York. The contributions from the PSIDS and Timor-Leste were instrumental in ensuring the transformative nature of this agenda. Not only for the inclusion of the goals on peace and institutions, oceans and climate change, but by ushering in a new era of global engagement. By showing that no matter how small and under resourced, small island countries can shape the international agenda.

Now all of us at home need to take the lead and actively shape the means of implementation. Otherwise the hard fought gains will be lost, and it will be back to business as usual – leaving others to determine our fate for us.

Today, it is easy to assume that it is a case of ‘the same old story.’ Simply replace Chan with Somare, and Skate with O’Neil. With falling oil prices, the government is short of liquidity and trying to mortgage the future of its people for cash today; the kina is in decline, and the Central Bank holding back foreign currency. High inflation and the effects of another El Nino event are ramping up food prices.

But some things are different now. For starters Port Moresby is a cosmopolitan city, so physically transformed it is barely recognisable from what was only twenty years ago. Despite all of the challenges, the economy has managed to absorb a population that has more than doubled since independence. There is a significant middle class of Papua New Guineans who are educated, vocal and more than capable of both demanding change, and also determining what that change should be. Even a casual glance at social media shows the depth of talent and debate.

Whilst it remains true that much of the development benefits have been focussed on Moresby, and too little outside of the capital, the country remains blessed with immense cultural and mineral wealth. It also remains a country where hope, courage and luck can always improve the situation. The question is whether these ingredients are enough to enable the country to overcome its current challenges?

As always, there is a core group of observers who seem to view the current economic and political malaise as a hopeless situation. Today’s story – whispered in private or told via social media, but never quite openly discussed – is that through the egregious use of the nation’s wealth in order to benefit the few in Waigani, Prime Minister Peter O’Neil has managed to establish the sort of ‘de-facto’ dictatorship nobody thought possible in a Melanesian state. With next to no political opposition at home, the Manus detention centre has been a brilliant mute on Canberra. As has been the notion, held by some in the Australian capital, that a stable semi-authoritarian regime in Port Moresby is preferable to a government that changes often – albeit democratically. No matter how hard the prime minister may prod DFAT, they are simply unable to respond. With such a free hand, O’Neill has managed to enhance his reputation with his regional neighbours. His international standing will continue to be bolstered as PNG prepares to host the APEC summit in 2018.

O’Neill has managed to keep a hold on power by raiding the numerous cash pots available to the government and by mortgaging the country’s future resource base. This strategy has so far enabled the government to run debt defying budget deficits. The plan to fill the current hole is a combination of a half billion dollar foreign currency loan, the sale of shares to landowners in the National Petroleum Company PNG (NPCP) and potential revenue from the sale of Oil Search to Woodside. Any money raised through the takeover over of Sustainable Development Program (SDP) will be a bonus. These funds are necessary to continue the superficial building (and rebuilding) of roads and other infrastructure in the capital and also funding the K10 million district funds overseen by MPs; thereby keeping the crony capitalists and political elite satisfied.

However, in the same way that much of the analysis twenty years ago was overly simplistic and lacking in context so too is this story. For starters it is hard to place the entire blame for the current state of the economy purely on the current government. Many previous administrations pursued similar strategies, just perhaps not as effectively. Also very few economist predicted the rapid decline in commodity prices or the drastic impact of El Nino on agricultural production. Were it not for these factors, some of the current economic constraints, especially in terms of limited liquidity, would not be as severe.

The private sector and the donors, smelling loans, have been falling over themselves to be the lender of choice and have therefore deliberately not been up front with the government for fear of losing business. Australia has been almost totally silent in terms of the underlying economic situation, with the exception of a few advisers within government. The government itself, meanwhile, simply points to recent GDP growth rates as a sign that things will get better. It has been left to a few independent thinkers to point out that ‘you cannot eat GDP growth’ and that current levels of borrowing has a price that the people of Papua New Guinea just cannot afford – inflation.

There is a phrase used amongst Pacific civil servants – policy moonwalking – which, like the famous dance by Michael Jackson, refers to when the policy of government appears to be moving forward, but in fact is actually going backwards. It appears as if O’Neill’s policy moonwalkers have failed to accept and adapt to the radical change in circumstances. Rather they continue to pursue the strategy of relying on short term financing in the vein hope that things will get better. These analysts are correct in that the country still has many long-term assets that can be mortgaged, but they have missed the fact that with oil prices falling so sharply this strategy can actually be a trap – in that the more you borrow now, the more desperately you have to borrow in the future. The price is inflation, which is fuelling the looming crisis. By printing money to finance the massive deficits, the government has reduced the value of the kina, and this is what has made imports such as rice more expensive. While the economists and academics can argue all day, the reality is that what people can afford to eat has drastically decreased. You don’t need to be an economist to forecast the situation – simply ask any Papua New Guinean. The drought and frost in the highlands has made the situation worse, and while the foreign owners of the hydroponic farms might be benefiting, the population are suffering and this will eventually lead to frustration, anger and potentially violence.

It is unlikely the ‘foreign bond’ of half a billion dollars can be issued unless, like the UBS loan, it is secured against a national asset. At this stage it is not clear what that asset would be. In the same way the government’s financial expectations of the sums of money they would receive from the landowners taking an increased equity in NPCP seems far removed from the financial reality, and all indicators are that the landowners are receiving rational private advice in this regard. So with the state owned enterprises seemingly in debt, and the Central Bank and government building up short term liabilities, the most likely outcome is that – despite the long term outlook for the country being sound – in the short term the government will have no money and inflation will get worse. The potential debt burden is made even worse by the hidden liabilities in terms of debts owed by government entities that don’t yet have audited accounts, but which could still be a drain on future budgets.

There will ultimately have to be some sort of political ramification. What the trigger will be nobody knows, but the tension amongst the rural and urban poor is noticeable. The prime minister might have control over the heads of the army and the police, but if civil servants and people are seriously poor – as seems evident now – the people of Papua New Guinea can and will effect democratic change. Whether it be a motion of no confidence, based on the fact that O’Neill can no longer deliver the financing necessary to keep political stability, or a result of the numerous court actions against him, or a massive turnover at the polls – something will have to give.

As the poor increase in numbers and go ever more hungry, while the political elite continue to flaunt their wealth on the streets of Moresby, the real concern is whether this change will be brought about civil or political unrest.

“The Pacific Ocean is a vital regulator of climate for the whole world and needs a voice.  We, the Polynesian Leaders Group, are the voice for the Pacific Ocean, and wish to carry our strategic vision to deal with the adverse effects of climate change by limiting global warming below 1.5 (degrees Celsius) and having access to tools and means to adapt to the adverse impacts caused by climate change.”

The latest gathering of the Polynesian Leaders Group (PLG) have met in French Polynesia and issued the Taputapuatea Declaration demanding action to keep global land temperature rise at no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.

The group represents Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti and French Polynesia, Niue, the Cook Islands, Tokelau and Tuvalu.

Their leaders say that their collective EEZs amount to 10 million square kilometres and is one of the biggest carbon sinks in the world, like the largest forests. The full declaration can be downloaded from the Samoan government website.

Acknowledging their vulnerabilities, the declaration implores:

“We want the voice of the Polynesians to be heard at the COP21 in Paris with regards to the intensification of extreme weather events, the loss of territorial integrity, the displacements of populations, the deterioration of our natural and cultural heritage and the management of our common ocean.

We, the Polynesian Leaders Group, state that our islands and peoples are at the frontline of devastation from climate change.

We are victims of climate change. We must be heard. We call for justice and our right of survival.”

Their urgent appeal comes amid dire warnings from a new report by former NASA climate scientist James Hansen and 16 colleagues which claim that:

Glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years.

Despite Pacific islanders taking the lead on establishing renewable energy economies at home and demanding action on climate change internationally, they know little can be done to keep targets under 2 degrees if the big players – the US, China and India – don’t get serious. They are also disappointed that two of their most important Pacific partners, Australia and New Zealand, are currently ruled by conservative governments that are paying little more than lip service to climate change and appear to be hostage to the fossil fuel industry.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s recent attempts to cut funding to renewable energy subsidies for solar and wind power, after scrapping the carbon tax on polluters, continue to outrage social and business commentators, even drawing criticism from fellow conservative politicians in the UK.

Aside from the Polynesian declaration, Micronesian leaders are also on the front foot, asking that any looming UN climate deal must be “shorter and clearer”.

“It should be something that people can understand, be able to work with and negotiate from,” said chief diplomat from the Marshall Islanda, Tony de Brum. As this article suggests: “the current version of the draft text is a bewildering 85-page list of options, incorporating the demands of the nearly 200 nations participating in the process.”

Tony de Brum is also named in this list as among the top officials currently working in climate change diplomacy.

France, as host for the 2015 summit in December this year, is mindful it does not want its Paris summit to be characterized by failure like the Copenhagen summit was in 2009, and has been spending diplomatic capital to bring various parties together behind the scenes.

France and the UN face a big challenge bringing the big emitters to some kind of binding agreement, but they will have the Pacific nations on side, as Pacific leaders fight to have their voices heard.

Once the fear and the hype subside, the world’s attention moves on to the next disaster. We often forget to look back. Without the opportunity to reflect, we fail to understand how such events unfold.

Cyclone Pam struck Vanuatu’s islands with unprecedented force. When the accounting was complete, an estimated 110,000 people on 22 islands were severely affected. Now, months later, reconstruction and recovery continue. The cost to the nation is still being calculated, and a policy response is being formulated.

Simply put, Vanuatu is paying the penalty for the sins of the developed world. It is well established that weather events become more severe as climate change advances. Although this country is one of the most vulnerable in the world to severe weather, no cyclone in recorded history has reached the intensity of Pam. Miraculously, few people died. But when all is said and done, the cost of cyclone Pam will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the lead-up to the global climate conference in Paris at the end of this year and in light of the World Summit Humanitarian Pacific consultations currently underway in Auckland, PiPP has undertaken an investigation of how developing countries can respond to such devastation, and how the developed world can shoulder its responsibilities in the years to come.

But before that can happen, it’s necessary to understand the nature of the event itself. We have therefore compiled a timeline of events before, during and after Pam made landfall in Vanuatu. It provides a comprehensive, blow-by-blow account of the disaster.

The timeline (which starts with a short video intro) can be found here.

This project is ongoing. As new information comes to light it will be added. If you have a link, a document, image or video you would like to see included, please don’t hesitate to contact us at pipp@pacificpolicy.org.

Even in the aftermath of cyclone Pam, which directly affected half the population and badly damaged dozens of their islands, Ni Vanuatu people still managed to smile and laugh. I confess that even after a decade living here, I found it astonishing that people would show such grace in the face of adversity.

In the badly affected Malapoa Waetwud neighbourhood, a man calmly described how he and his family would live off fallen fruit for a few days, then they’d dig up whatever hadn’t rotted in the ground; but after that, he wasn’t sure where the next meal was going to come from. On the southern island of Tanna, which was utterly devastated by 230 Kph winds, I sat with a group of mamas in the shade of the only remaining tree trunk in that part of the village, and we laughed and gently teased each other as we passed the time.

And it’s not that they were oblivious. On the contrary. Only half an hour earlier a village elder came up to me, looked me in the eye and spoke with brutal simplicity: ‘I nogat wan samting.’

‘There’s nothing left.’

It took me days—weeks to be honest—to understand how people could remain light-hearted in the face of the loss of everything of value in their lives.

The penny began to drop when I visited Cildo (pronounced SEEL-doe) and his parents in Erangorango, in the foothills overlooking Port Vila. Cildo is a sturdy, plain-spoken, twelve-year-old boy originally from Malekula. His family home had been utterly destroyed by a massive tree which fell at the height of the storm, injuring his father and barely missing Cildo and his mother. I interviewed him for UNICEF, as part of a series of videos taking stock of the effect of the storm on children in Vanuatu.

Cildo was remarkably matter-of-fact:

When the cyclone came we went inside and ate, then we all went into one room. Then a tree fell onto our house, and we all sat in the remaining corner until morning.

That’s it. Plain facts, delivered without inflection or stress. And when I took his photo standing in the ruins, he flashed the brightest smile.

It was only a couple of weeks later, as I was reviewing all the shots I’d taken in the days following the disaster, that I realised his secret: You don’t need a reason to be happy.

Transactionality and causality are so deeply ingrained in the western European psyche that it comes as a revelation that actually, happiness does not need to be pursued. It can be found wherever you happen to be standing.

The rootless and sometimes purposeless nature of consumer societies often stand in the way of such realisations. For my part, I spent the better part of my childhood coping with damage that never should have happened, and spent my young adulthood as a half-formed Angry Young Man. I was ruled by surges of anger, righteousness and cynicism, until circumstances finally forced me to conduct an existential stock-take.

By the time I arrived in Vanuatu in 2003, I was ready to learn. And before eighteen months had passed, I knew that this is a place where I could be happy. I could be happy, not because things are better here; in many ways they’re not. I could be happy because I no longer needed a reason.

Back in 2010, I wrote:

I’ve been stuck in cyclones, got malaria, dengue, been hospitalised from the after-effects of prolonged dehydration, had more parasites in more places than anyone really wants to know. I’ve been stung by things straight out of a Tim Burton movie. I’ve had death threats and constant, insanely unreasonable demands on my time and my pocketbook.

And yet, and yet in spite of it all, I was happy. Further back, in 2008, on the event of the perfectly preventable death of a little boy, I wrote about his funeral:

To an outsider, it’s wildly incongruous to watch the mourners as they approach the deceased’s house, chatting quietly, even laughing amongst themselves as if on some innocuous errand. The only clue about their destination is a cloth draped across one shoulder, to wipe the coming tears.

At the very instant they reach the gate, the wails begin. They are contrived, it’s true, but utterly heartfelt. The display of pain and sorrow at a funeral is more than most people of European descent have ever seen. To hear women moaning and weeping during the vigil and the burial is an uncanny and deeply moving experience. Though ritualised, the depth and sincerity of the emotion is starkly undeniable.

And then, as quickly as it begins, it is done. Life goes on, there’s food to be cooked, children to be tended to, and laundry to be done. The laughter, the scolding and the [conversation] start up again, as they always do.

Everyone in Vanuatu understands the place of things, and the need for everything to be in its place. Respect for public display and private observance of all of life’s events is universal. If someone smiles and jokes with his friends and colleagues just days after his first-born son has died… well, that’s as it should be. The funeral is over, and though there will be other opportunities to look back and mourn over the next hundred days, life goes on, whether one wants it to or not.

But it took a decade—and a cyclone of historical dimensions—for the lesson finally to land: People in Vanuatu are not happy because of anything. They are happy because the alternative doesn’t bear considering. Living as they do in a Least Developed Country with little or no modern technology in village life, with death and disaster around every corner, and people with whom you might or might not get along tucked up nice and cosy next to you (and you’re on an island, remember; they’re not going anywhere)… well, the least you can do is have a laugh now and then.

Vanuatu’s designation as the happiest place on earth was the result of research conducted by the New Economics Foundation, a UK-based think-tank. Their Happy Planet Index actually placed more emphasis on the happiness of the planet than its people. It is a measure of people’s well-being in proportion to environmental footprint. Vanuatu was included in the inaugural 2006 survey, but not in any subsequent studies.

Still, the title endures because it fits. And now, as we face the impact of the developing world’s environmental footprint in the form of rising ocean levels and storms of unprecedented severity, this ability to be happy in the face of adversity will no doubt serve us well.

But don’t for a minute let that lead developing countries to complacence. Just because we smile our way through the hardship doesn’t mean that life is easier here. It’s not easier at all; it’s just better.

And honestly, developed nations would do well to take a lesson from this. Disasters wrought by climate change are inevitable now. The damage is done. The storms will reach you too. You’d better learn to smile through adversity as well, because you might not have much else to smile about.

Speaking about Kiribati, Canadian climatologist Simon Donner commented in the Scientific American: ‘Right now it is clear that no one needs to immediately wall in the islands or evacuate all the inhabitants. What the people of Kiribati and other low-lying countries need instead are well-thought-out, customized adaption plans and consistent international aid — not a breathless rush for a quick fix that makes the rest of the world feel good but obliges the island residents to play the part of helpless victim.’

These same climate scientists who are conducting ongoing research in Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands acknowledge the documented fact of sea level rise in the Pacific, and the potential threat this poses. But they are making the point, as articulated by Donner, that ‘the politicized public discourse on climate change is less nuanced than the science of reef islands.’

A recent report carried in Geology, the publication of the Geological Society of America, says Tuvalu has experienced ‘some of the highest rates of sea level rise over the past 60 years.’ At the same time, ‘no islands have been lost, the majority have enlarged, and there has been a 7.3 percent increase in net island area over the past century.’

To gain international attention to climate concerns and motivate funding to respond to what is described as climate damage, political leaders from the Pacific are predicting dire consequences.

The future viability of the Marshall Islands — and all island nations — is at stake,’ Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony deBrum told the global climate meeting in Peru last December.

‘It keeps me awake at night,’ said Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga in a recent interview. ‘Will we survive? Or will we disappear under the sea?’

Obviously, statements of island leaders at international meetings and the observations of recent scientific reports are at odds. Does it matter?

Comments Donner: ‘Exaggeration, whatever its impetus, inevitably invites backlash, which is bad because it can prevent the nation from getting the right kind of help.’

Scientists studying these low-lying islands should be seen as allies, whose information can be used to focus attention on key areas of need. For example, the New Zealand and Australian scientists working in Tuvalu said their results “show that islands can persist on reefs under rates of sea level rise on the order of five millimeters per year.” With sea level rates projected to double in the coming years, ‘it is unclear whether islands will continue to maintain their dynamic adjustment at these higher rates of change,’ they said. ‘The challenge for low-lying atoll nations is to develop flexible adaptation strategies that recognize the likely persistence of islands over the next century, recognize the different modes of island change, and accommodate the ongoing dynamism of island margins.’

Developing precise information on atoll nations as these scientists are doing is needed to inform policy makers and local residents as people are inundated with discussion about — and, possibly, outside donor funding for — ‘adaptation’ and ‘mitigation’ in these islands.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the Marshall Islands hired internationally recognized scientists and medical doctors to advise it on such things as radiation exposure standards for nuclear test clean up programs and medical conditions deserving of compensation, while evaluating U.S. government scientific studies on the Marshall Islands. These scientists and doctors provided knowledge and advice that helped inform the compensation and claims process.

It seems this nuclear test-related model would be of significant benefit to islands in the region, by linking independent climate scientists with island governments so there is a connection between science and climate policies and actions of governments.

If we want to grab headlines, the ‘disappearing island’ theme is good. But to find solutions to, for example, the increasing number of ocean inundations that are occurring requires well-thought out plans.

‘The reality is that the next few decades for low-lying reef islands will be defined by an unsexy, expensive slog to adapt,’ wrote Donner in the Scientific American. ‘Success will not come from single land purchase or limited-term aid projects. It will come from years of trial and error and a long-term investment by the international community in implementing solutions tailored to specific locales.’ He comments that a World Bank-supported adaptation program in Kiribati took eight years of consultation, training, policy development and identifying priorities to finally produce a plan of action. And even then, when they rolled out sea walls for several locations, there were design faults that need to be fixed. Donner’s observation about Kiribati could equally apply to the rest of the Pacific: “Responding to climate change in a place like Kiribati requires a sustained commitment to building local scientific and engineering capacity and learning from mistakes.”

It is excellent advice.

Image: Low-lying islands, such as Majuro Atoll pictured here, are changing due to storms, erosion, high tides, seawalls and causeways, and sea level rise. But few are disappearing. Photo credit: Isaac Marty

Mr. Trotsenburg was visiting the region at the end of last month. Three solutions for his Pacific approach can be gleaned from the article. The first is that the World Bank needs to work ‘alongside global partners…to do more with Pacific island governments on unified approaches to development needs that promote a common destiny for such a vast and geographically fragmented region.’ The second is the regional approach to ‘provide the opportunities for Pacific island countries to benefit from economies of scale and shared knowledge’. The third is the ‘need to keep the momentum up and to do more, so people in Pacific island countries can see the benefits of these investments.’ The investments that Mr. Trotsenburg referred to are projects already jointly launched to help island countries mitigate impacts of climate change and adapt to the new realities they face.

The first solution rings familiar. The sentiment of course echoes the raison d’ȇtre of existing multilateral agreements, viz: The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the Accra Agenda for Action and the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. Thus, Mr. Trotsenburg’s declaration of working alongside global partners is stating the obvious. It is the commitment made under these multilateral declarations. He did say in his op-ed that the World Bank ‘has worked hard with Pacific Island countries to create an expanding partnership that has grown from a modest engagement a decade ago’. It is hoped of course that the expanding partnership is measured in increased utility and inclusive development and growth in the communities concerned and not in just dollar terms, the quantum of the loans extended.

Mr. Trotsenburg’s second point is essentially a re-enforcement of the regional approach as a means of benefitting from economies of scale and shared knowledge. But we have been doing this since 1971 and encountering intractable constraints in the process. It would have been nice to hear from the World Bank Vice President the lessons from other regional economic communities that can help Pacific regionalism overcome some of these deep-seated hurdles. How can we overcome the diseconomies of isolation, resulting from our fragmented geography, that negate our efforts at regional cooperation and even the gains from economies of scale? How can we attract especially concessionary funding for our regional projects given that the costs of regionalism in the region is naturally and peculiarly too expensive? How can we sort out the obstacles contributed by the political economy aspects of regionalism, for without a solution to these, all our collective efforts are in vain? It would have been nice to hear some pearls of wisdom.

Vice President Trotsenburg’s last point is to keep the momentum up and to do more so that Pacific island countries can see the benefits of these investments – i.e those aimed at mitigating impacts of climate change and adapting to the new realities the Pacific island countries face. This is more of a plea than a declaration of intent. It is akin to deflated optimism. For when it comes to climate change and climate change adaptations, it is evident that all our efforts in the Pacific will be nullified without the firm commitment of the major powers and global economy in reducing carbon emissions.

In a paper I had submitted to the Fiji Institute of Accountants 2014 Congress on ‘Today’s Vision: Tomorrow’s Reality: a Blue-Green Economy’, I have concluded: ‘In the absence of global commitment, this paper submits that it may only be a false sense of reality that will evolve. The paper further proffers that, in this context, and despite all our commendable efforts and noble intentions, the evidence of climate change and its associated global warming, environmental degradation, alarming poverty and escalating global disparities and resultant inequality and inequity will continue to be ‘an inconvenient truth’ that will not cease pricking the collective conscience of the global community in decades and generations to come.’