Regional Organizations
What Difference Have We Made?
An interview with SPC Director-General Lourdes Pangelinan
Pacific Magazine: When you began with SPC, there was a reform movement afoot?
Lourdes Pangelinan: Yes, the secretary-general was Dr. Bob Dun of Australia and the director of programs was Jimmie Rodgers of the Solomon Islands. The three of us, spearheaded by Bob, led a major reform of the organization. It was struggling back then. It was beginning to lose the faith and confidence of its members and donors. So there was a great attempt to get the organization back on track. Everybody recognized SPC has a very valuable role to play in the Pacific and it is the leading technical agency that is owned by the Pacific countries.
 |
|
|
PM: What were the results?
LP: We made all kinds of changes to SPC. One of the major changes was the name. We got rid of the word “South” in SPC, largely in recognition that quite a number of the members are north of the equator, Guam included. It was a pleasure being involved in that effort.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
PM: Is there any significance to the fact that someone from Guam was elected to your position? It’s a little surprising.
LP: Guam is part of the Pacific region and, over the years, it has participated in regional organizations, in particular SPC. Going back 20 or 30 years there would always be representatives from Guam attending SPC meetings. So Guam has demonstrated that it is part of the region.
All the countries in the region take their participation in the SPC seriously. In recent years, Guam’s participation has been minimal, but one of my objectives in being here (in Guam) is to talk to Gov. Felix Camacho, who himself recognizes the value of Guam’s active participation as a player in the region. He has indicated his desire to see, not only Guam’s active participation in the governance of SPC, but certainly to take advantage of what technical services SPC has to offer. As I mentioned, we’re fortunate in that we’re a nonpolitical agency. We are technical in nature. We work with the various countries to address whatever it is that they are in need of in the various sectors that we work in.
PM: How were you selected?
LP: In my earlier life as chief of staff to Gov. Ada, I also had a very active interest in Guam’s participation in regional organizations. I personally was involved in organizing a South Pacific Conference that was held on Guam in 1989. I personally chaired meetings of the SPC and was also chair of a subcommittee that looked at SPC membership issues. I have been actively involved and so I was fortunate enough to be known to some of the countries.
PM: What do you see as being the role of SPC today?
LP: SPC was established 55 years ago and its role then remains its role today. Our primary mission is to help countries and territories in the region make and implement better-informed decisions about their own future. It’s all about technical assistance and the provision of technical services to enable countries to develop. You’d think that eventually SPC would work itself out of a job. But here we are 55 years later, still seeing a great need for a regional approach to development. One of the other benefits of going regionally is that it maintains the unity of the region. And, in a world of major conflicts, that has its benefits.
PM: It sounds like the role is primarily education and facilitating education?
LP: Most of our work is in human resources development–that means training in whatever sector we’re involved in. Our core function is that of capacity building. We work in fisheries, we work in agriculture, we work in public health and all the various social areas like women’s development and youth programs. Our primary focus is capacity building.
We have some small countries whose economies prevent them from having expertise in certain areas and it becomes more cost effective to follow a regional approach in pursuing many of these functions. Take a look at census, for example, it doesn’t make any sense for a small country to build up its capacity in census. It only occurs every 10 years. It becomes more cost effective for an agency like SPC to assist countries in running their census and ensuring that the data is adequately analyzed for their own purposes.
Another core function is transboundary in nature. With fisheries for example, we’re involved in the study of highly migratory fish in the western and central Pacific region. The fish don’t stay in their own exclusive economic zone, they migrate from one side of the Pacific to the other. In order to be effective in trying to determine how healthy the yellowfin are, for example, in the waters of the Pacific—which is extremely important for a country that has to sit across the table from distance water fishing nations that want to come in and fish within those waters. It’s also extremely important for those whose economies and lifestyles depend heavily on the consumption of fish. The advice that’s given has to be as accurate and as up-to-date as possible. That’s what SPC does on behalf of the Pacific countries. We work with other regional organizations that sit down with the countries and help them then negotiate with the distance water fishing nations.
There are other things that we do. Take a look at how the world is opening up. You’ve got globalization that is all of a sudden requiring quite a number of things from these small island states. Complying with international standards in dealing with maritime, for example, or in dealing with trade or in dealing with quarantine issues. These are all rather difficult for a small nation to ensure that they put into place. But they have to be there to enable their seafarers to go to work on fishing vessels elsewhere in the world, for example, and in order to ensure that they are trained to international standards.
PM: What are your biggest priorities, you mentioned areas SPC is involved in, but what is your biggest area of concern?
LP: To answer that you really need to look at what the priorities of the region are and, again, you have to talk about the diversity of the region. What is the priority for one country is not necessarily the priority for another. And because we serve all 22 Island countries, it is important for us to ensure that we respond to the priority needs of the various countries. I suppose from a servicing standpoint, what I need to do is make sure SPC is well-positioned to deliver the kind and the quality services countries and territories expect of it. That would be as director-general, what I would need to ensure.
PM: What are the biggest obstacles to that?
LP: Our ability to deliver services is based on our ability to obtain the financial resources that would enable us. Fortunately SPC has been doing relatively well in terms of retaining the confidence of many of our donor members. So our traditional donors in the Pacific, who are Australia, New Zealand and France, have been very actively participating and financially supporting our activities. I’m also looking at opening up new partnerships for financial support to the region and one of my objectives in the next year would be to go and make ourselves a bit more known with the private sector foundations in the United States, for example, many of whom have an interest in the Pacific.
PM: Are there factions within SPC?
LP: We’re a very non-political organization. When people from the countries in the Pacific come together for our meetings, they take a look at what the agriculture program is doing in the area of quarantine, what our public health program is doing in the area of the area of the fight against HIV/AIDS and STDs. They take a look at what the Women’s Bureau is doing to try to insure the convention for the elimination of discrimination against women is adhered to by the countries of the region. So it’s really a focus on the work of the organization.
PM: What about big successes?
LP: One of the things that I’ve continued to strive to answer is “Are we really making a difference as SPC?” We’ve been in business 55 years because of the value of the services we provide and the role we continue to play. I see that SPC will likely be in business for many years to come, but at the end of the day I have to ask myself, “What difference have we made? What impact have we had with the services that we have provided?”
There are, in fact, numerous success stories. One is in the area of agriculture. We recently went into Nauru at their request to assist in the eradication of fruit flies. Nauru is a country that has already gone through quite a substantive change over the years with phosphate mining and then the vegetation that remained, particularly the fruit trees, being attacked by these pests. Fortunately we were able to assist by coming in and setting up the traps and being able to ensure that the various fly infestations were in fact eradicated. Those types of success stories occur all the time and there are many examples in fisheries and public health. But I still have this nagging concern. I want to be able to very easily say, “Yes, we have in fact made a dramatic difference in the overall development of the region.”
The SPC Web site is at: www.spc.int.
Lourdes Pangelinan began her second two-year term as Director-General of the New Caledonia-based Secretariat of the Pacific Community in January 2002. She was first employed by the then-South Pacific Commission in February, 1996 as director of services. Prior to that she was chief of staff for Guam Gov. Joseph Ada during his eight-year administration. She was interviewed by Pacific Magazine Guam correspondent Frank Whitman.
