New group to foster regionalism in Pacific

Transcript

The Pacific Islands Forum Leaders have appointed eight people to a new group aimed at implementing greater cooperation throughout the region.

The Specialist Sub-Committee on Regionalism meets next week in Suva.

Lopeti Senituli is a member and he told Koro Vaka'uta about the new group.

LOPETI SENITULI: The Pacific plan for strengthening regional cooperation integration which the Pacific Island Forum leaders had approved in 2005, in 2013 this plan was reviewed by a select team and the review team presented their report to the Pacific Islands Forum leaders with a number of recommendations and one of the recommendations was the setting up of this select committee. We are supposed to help with these recommendations and how we can implement the recommendations from the review team. Currently, the review team's main recommendation is that we should be moving away from a Pacific plan for the Pacific as such towards a new framework for Pacific regionalism. It's a subtle difference for what is politically possible.

KORO VAKA'UTA: I guess it's a vitally important role given the recent discussions over the last months about the format of regional cooperation?

LS: There are various examples of regional cooperation. Apart from the Pacific Islands Forum itself, there are numerous other regional organisations. Of course, there's a new one, the Nauru Agreement Group. So there is for example, the University of the South Pacific is a concrete example of regional cooperation in terms of tertiary contributions, so there are in existence concrete examples. The Pacific Islands Forum's review of the Pacific plan is just moving towards a more regional framework for Pacific regionalism, as opposed to having, say, one Pacific plan which all Pacific island countries must surrender their sovereignty to.

KV: I see on this board that there have been various members that will represent parts of the region and that you yourself will be representing Tonga, obviously, but also Polynesia as a whole. That's a great responsibility.

LS: It is a huge responsibility because I'm assuming that not only representing the Polynesian countries that are full members of the forum, including Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue and Tonga and perhaps Tuvalu, but it also includes the forum observers, for example French Polynesia.

KV: I note that the subcommittee's going to meet, what are the I guess regional initiatives that are going to be considered?

LS: The impact of climate change through the incidents of more violent tropical cyclones. I would assume that would be a priority issue and the possibility of West Papua also being an issue.