Pacific Magazine > Magazine > April 27, 2008

High Tide

Bridging the Gap

A Vision of What Could Be

By SAMANTHA MAGICK

When Guam Governor Felix Camacho recently visited Australia, he traveled down the east flank of the country, meeting with national and local government, business and other community leaders.

By the end of the tour Gov. Camacho was saying he was keen to get a group of Micronesian leaders to Australia to see what trade and other links might be possible. He asked the new Australian government to consider establishing an Australian trade commission in Guam, and told members of the Australia-Pacific Business Council that while the Philippines will supply much of the labor needed for the Guam military and civil buildup, there are opportunities for Australians in engineering, management and skilled trades.

Gov. Camacho heard clear desire in a meeting of Australian businesspeople to get more involved in the economies of Guam and her neighbors, although the limitations of existing air and sea links between the two was cited time and again as a barrier to moving forward. There was also a clear wish to understand much better the details of tendering processes and contracting arrangements around the Guam buildup infrastructure. Governor Camacho couldn't help them too much with that, and even at the Guam Industry Forum in March there was little in the way of concrete information on this front.

Nonetheless the visit was a first salvo in trying to bridge the gap between the northern Pacific and the South. And it was a useful first step, if only to identify the superficiality of knowledge on both sides, and the potential for much stronger relationships.

Bridging that geographic and historical gap is what Pacific Magazine is also about. It's not always easy to make the connections, as those readers who do business across the region, and those policy makers sitting in regional organizations well know. But there is more that unites than divides us. Together we feel every oil and fuel price rise more fiercely. We are united in our need to find a balance between economic development and environmental sustainability-whether it's tourism infrastructure in Palau's unique marine environment or the impact of mining in New Caledonia or Papua New Guinea. We are all of us-from the Compact states to post-crisis Solomon Islands, Tonga and Fiji-struggling with the need to ensure donor assistance doesn't translate into a compromising of sovereignty and control, or worse, a sense of entitlement. Most of us are in the middle of discussions about land tenure, and how to encourage investment and entrepreneurship while ensuring the rights of indigenous landholders. Each of us is trying to better educate our children, and create a society where they can find a place on graduation. Like Guam and Australia, we are separated by distance and often unreliable or non-existent air and connections. And as Lady Carol Kidu-for now Papua New Guinea's only female MP says-"I think we (our cultures) have a lot to teach the world."

Which is also why we continue to bring you the Power 10 and 25 to Watch annual features. While the Power 10 shows us the current reality of regional power dynamics through the domination of non-Pacific Islanders in its ranks, the 25 to Watch is a vision of what could be. It too features national political leaders, but also people forging new paths in other fields, in business, health, education and civil society. It is our hope that from the ranks of these 25 - and those featured in previous years-we will see truly powerful regional leaders rise, and that they too will bridge the gap.