Moving Beyond The Past

Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Secretary General Greg Urwin. Photo: Giff Johnson

The Pacific's regional organization directory reads like an alphabet soup of acronyms: SPC, SPREP, FFA, SOPAC, SPTO and more. With the exception of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), all were created during the post-colonial period. They were established to promote Pacific Island interests in fields as diverse as fisheries and tourism, carving out their own-for the most part large-bureaucracies and spheres of influence, often with the lines blurred as to where one group's role ended and another's began.

Without a doubt they are producing valuable results in many areas. Could they be more focused and effective? Absolutely, says new Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Secretary General Greg Urwin.

"Regional organizations were born at a time of relative optimism after political independence," Urwin has told Pacific Magazine. "The international climate was congenial to the newly independent states (in the 1970s and 1980s). It's less so now. While I don't subscribe to the notion that the region is going to hell in a hand basket, there are a number of problems that have tempered the thinking of the leaders. It has led them to look at the means for getting the most out of the regional organizations."

Urwin says this sentiment for change on the part of the leaders, expressed by the "Eminent Persons Group" through its detailed review of the Forum and by the recent heads of state meeting in Auckland, "is giving a new impetus to reform."

Urwin adds that "a huge amount of resources are tied up in these turf fights and overlaps (of regional organizations). The region can't afford it. We need to look at the way organizations are managed." His observation: "There are a lot of possibilities for improvement."

Urwin says he intends to present a game plan with strategies and proposals for action to the Forum, which meets next month in Apia, Samoa. Dr. Jimmy Rodgers, the Suva-based deputy director of the SPC, is working with the Forum Secretariat on this task, and "I hope to draw in SPREP (South Pacific Regional Environment Program) and others into this initial task force to develop a plan for the leaders." Urwin says.

"Sectoral cooperation is becoming increasingly successful," Urwin adds. "If we keep piling up joint decisions, it'll reach a critical mass and we may need to reach a new way of making plans and decisions."

He also says that the Forum has made a commitment to seek the participation of non-governmental organizations in developing policies for the region. NGOs and what is often referred to in reports as "non-state actors" or "civil society"-meaning, essentially, the communities in each nation-"have got to be more closely associated with the way policy is developed regionally," he says.

Urwin says there are three primary issues facing the Forum:

Sustainable development

The four goals articulated by the leaders in Auckland-economic growth, sustainable development, good governance and security-are "all a function of sustainable development," he says. "Bill Clinton once said, 'It's the economy, stupid.' For us it's sustainable development."

Security requirements

The extensive international agenda of security requirements that the region has to meet is a challenge in light of limited resources available to most Pacific Islands. "There is a great willingness in the region to make sure we meet these requirements," he says. But the Forum's challenge is to understand security needs in the Pacific context. "In the Pacific, security is about daily life and having access to basic services," Urwin says. "The Forum needs to work on a synthesis of specific regional security concerns and those that touch lives in the Pacific." This also links to the growing realization in the region that "a problem for one may be a problem for all," he says. "This is a new way of thinking and I'm not sure how far it goes." But defining what security means to Forum nations is critical to addressing the role that the Forum plays in countries such as the Solomon Islands, Niue and Nauru, he says.

Governance

"We need to define 'good governance' in the Pacific," he says. "There are international standards of governance and democratic values. But this needs to be interpreted to local characteristics." Integrating international standards with local practice is a critical step to improving governance in Forum member nations, he believes. "There are many situations (in the region) where there is an uncertain connection between citizens and their government," he says. "Many people have only a hazy notion of what government should and shouldn't do. There is a gap there." Leadership elites grew out of the colonial period and in some cases were not connected closely enough with the people they govern, he says. Looking at the problem in big picture terms, Urwin says "the central task of governance today is to reexamine the inheritance of the colonial period."