Pacific Profiles
Making A Difference
Why Simpson Wants Islands To Capitalize on Their Strengths
In the words of SOPAC Director Alfred Simpson: “You have to be Blind Freddy not to be able to see that island countries on their own have no negotiating power.”
Director for the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission for just over three years, Simpson has firm ideas about regional cooperation. He believes that island countries don’t recognize their strengths and often do not exploit resource availability to their long-term advantage.
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Simpson’s SOPAC career began in 1995 as deputy director to Philipp Muller. Jioji Kotobalavu was the first SOPAC director for six years as the organization switched status from a United Nations-like project to an inter-governmental organization in the 1980s. It has been 15 years since the Suva-based regional body changed status, although it has been around since 1972. SOPAC’s overall vision is to maintain the health, wellbeing and safety of member countries, which includes water and sanitation, economic programs, and disaster management.
Simpson, whose second three-year term began February 1, is on secondment from the Fiji government. He notes the fallacy of globalization, a point also raised by Telecom Fiji Limited’s Taito Waradi, at the 2001 Pacific Telecommunications Council conference in Hawaii. While Waradi’s perspective was based on relevant technology, Simpson says that island countries are driven by an outside agenda on what they should be doing — all under the guise of globalization.
“Unfortunately a lot of our member countries feel that we can’t do anything, but really we can,” he says. “The point is we go along with what we’ve been told to do. How can we do something about it?
“There’s talk of an unlevel playing field with regard to trade, for instance. Some people don’t realize ‘Okay, if we’re going to play this game and sit at the negotiating table then we have to figure out what position we’re negotiating from.’ We may be small and vulnerable, in physical terms, but you have to look at what we have.”
And what does the region have? A massive ocean with countries in the Pacific possessing sovereign rights over resources within their Exclusive Economic Zones.
Simpson believes that island countries should push the resource availability subject as a political issue and not a resource issue.
Some of the Pacific’s best prospects are on land. The largely untapped deposits in the region may not be an issue now, but they can be addressed at the negotiating table.
“We’ve got to look to where our strengths are and I’m afraid that one, we’re not identifying them and two, we’re not using them in the proper way. Our development is short-term focused, ‘Let’s see what we can get for the resources we have now.’”
Simpson likens it to poker. Once you’ve played your main card there’s no other card to play. He talks about selling the region as a package. Some countries may have minerals, others marine resources or tourism. These assets could be sold as a package. The spin-offs the region gains become a force in the globalized arena.
“Making a Difference” (to SOPAC-member countries) has been a catchphrase during Simpson’s first three years as SOPAC director. Making a difference to standards of living and raising awareness about development. During his final three years Simpson wants to consolidate all this.
“The idea is to have in place a process so that we’re (Secretariat) not thought of as some kind of technical organization, which is above good organizational structure and management. We want to implement a proper business planning process so everything is transparent and all stakeholders can see what we’re doing and have ownership of the process,” Simpson says.
