Incoming Pacific Forum chair wants tighter focus

Transcript

TUILAEPA SA'ILELE MALIELEGAOI: We tend to deal with too many things. The problem that we continually face is that we have the Secretariat that needs to be strengthened as well. And if we want to become more effective we have to do something about our Secretariat - strengthen the Secretariat as well - the arm of the Forum leaders.

DON WISEMAN: What specifically would you want the Secretariat to be doing that it's not doing at present?

TSM: Well it needs good research officials to carry out our mandates. Of course when you talk about good people it means you have to pay for them as well.

DW: Which has been an issue for some time hasn't it - funding at the Forum? 

TSM: Yeah.

DW: When you say you want it to be more effective can you give us some idea of the areas you would like it to really focus on?

TSM: Well we have a lot of issues now, particularly climate change - issues related to climate change. Climate change of course is the biggest problem facing the world now and those who are in the forefront of the fight against climate change are the Pacific islands for the simple reason that we are talking about our survival. The bottom line of all the climate change issues that we speak about is the rise in the sea level. And if we fail to control that rise and the sea level does rise because of the ice in the North and the South Poles turning to water then almost all of the small islands will be under the ocean. So this is the biggest problem that we face and what we ought to do and when we talk about that we talk about renewable energy and a host of other things. We also talk about the ocean, the blue ocean - the conservation and management of the resources that we depend upon. We talk about how we should get rid of a lot of the diseases impacting on the people of the Pacific etc, etc - there are a lot of things. Trade, agriculture, labour mobility, many many issues, that we will need to make definitive decisions on, now. We have been talking for a long time about our Partnership Agreements with the European Union as we are getting into the renewal of the Cotonou Agreement. And now those EPA negotiations have been postponed for three years because of the lack of progress. And much of the lack of progress is related to issues, related to fishing, illegal fishing and many other issues, like the overfishing of Pacific waters. So there are a lot of issues that we need to resolve and this year I will try to put into action what we had always wanted - the leaders - and that is to be more focussed.