Where To From Now?

Having declared their Pacific Ocean policy, the region's leaders need a strategy for making it work.

The Suva Ocean meeting was the first cog in the wheel to begin turning to produce one.

Further up the line is CROP‹the Council of Regional Organisations. All organisations belong to this. Its purpose is to prevent members from tripping over each other. CROP will have the ultimate bureaucratic say about the strategy recommended for the Pacific Islands Forum's approval. This process could take a couple of years, but something could be ready for the Forum's blessing later this year.

Remember, as Alfred Simpson says, it took the world 20 years to agree on the landmark Law of the Sea Convention, a document that gave the Pacific Islands ownership rights over a lot of their ocean.

As the former director of the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, a regional agency sharply focused on ocean resources and coastal conservation matters, Simpson, a Fiji geologist, was, and still is a vocal advocate for the Pacific Ocean's defence. He was an asset for the Pacific at meetings the Law of the Sea Convention convened at its Jamaica headquarters.

He chaired the Pacific Ocean meeting.

"In my view nobody came here with a flag behind them," he said. "Some came from governments, some from foreign affairs, NGOs, United Nations organisations, community participants; we even had some private sector people. So we can say we had a full consultative progress. If people expected to leave after five days with a full integrated strategic action plan, I don't think it was realistic. What we had was a consultation. The report card from all countries was basically that our management of the ocean in our region is not good. Obviously, some positive things have happened, but in general, the state of the ocean is not good." The basic policy struck by the 2002 Pacific Islands Forum meeting was "non-negotiable" for a five-year span, after which it might be adjusted, he said.

All input at the Suva meeting will appear as a "cleaned up strategic framework". This will be circulated to islands countries and eventually to CROP.

What issues emanated from the Suva meeting?

Simpson said: "If you look at Australia's presentation, degrading water quality is the big issue for most countries because that's the one they have interaction with. Overfishing came up from country after country as the big issue. Whether the decline of stocks is due to overfishing or some other environmental impact, so that the fish are going elsewhere or dying, that is the type of thing we need to address in the framework policy for better understanding of the ocean environment. They who shout loudest get what they want, and in the Pacific fishing issues always gets the limelight. Is that the real issue behind it? Maybe not. There may be things like the absence of national ocean policies, the absence of national ocean offices, the absence of legislation and the ability to enforce any legislation. The issues of governance will surely come through. It would be nice to call it something else. Governance sounds a bit dry, but issues of policy and legislation and capacity building came through time after time. For most countries, this is the biggest issue. They have this vast ocean, but they don't have any capacity or resources with which to manage it. So they depend on the goodwill of others for, I presume, capacity building. Then, of course, what people are saying is that you just can't focus on one species, like tuna, and manage the ocean. There are other things in the ocean besides tuna, so how do you do that?"

How far can Pacific Islanders go in protecting their ocean without much money?

"Well, the region has done quite a lot without money. The region is fighting well above its weight at the global level. What we have is the kind of unity which no other region has. We work far better outside the region than in the region. Whether at Johannesburg or New York, we are really one group. What we get from treaties and getting things on the international agenda, we've done really well because we work together. It's when we come home that we squabble a little bit, or a big bit.

"To move forward, you need innovative ideas. Everybody's got their own box; I look after tuna, or marine pollution, or toxic waste, and everybody wants to keep their little boxes. But if we want to manage in an integrated way, we have to find a new way of co-operating. If it's nobody's job, it becomes nobody's business and nothing happens.

"Eventually it must go to the leaders and the leaders have to say yes, this is the way we want to work."