Until July this year, the Pacific Islands Forum was a little known intergovernmental organisation that advocated for cooperation between, and the interests of, its Pacific nation members. Yet with the Forum’s 2022 Meeting, held in the Fijian capital of Suva, having just concluded (its first in-person meeting since 2019), it has shed its tag of “little known”. Given that it is comprised of 17 member states (including Australia) with an approximate collective population of only 38 million people, that the Forum has captured the attention of the international community may seem surprising.
But in the time that has passed since the COVID-19 pandemic suspended in-person meetings, Pacific issues have been global issues. The international community is increasingly aware of the need to tackle climate change, which affects Pacific island nations more urgently than most. Furthermore, China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, and its increasingly aggressive stance towards Taiwan, has the international community concerned for the region’s security. These two issues dominated the Forum’s agenda.
Yet despite the newfound global significance of the Forum, its 2022 Meeting was almost derailed before it began. Last year, the Forum’s Micronesian members — those being the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau — threatened to leave the Forum, citing their dissatisfaction with the appointment of former Cook Islands prime minister Henry Puma as secretary-general of the Forum. A deal to ensure the Micronesia region would receive the next secretary-general posting in 2024 seemed to have ensured that the region’s five nations would stay.
However, the same week of the 2022 Meeting, Kiribati announced it was withdrawing from the Forum “with immediate effect”. It had not been represented at the meeting that brokered the deal to keep Micronesia within the Forum, and did not accept its terms. Its withdrawal weakens the Forum’s ability to present a united front on behalf of the region on climate change and geopolitical disruption. It may foreshadow a deepening of its relationship with China, which may open the door to China’s increased presence in the region.
At the same time, the Meeting saw considerable success in other critically important issues. Chief among these was the Forum finally giving its agreement to the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent; in broad terms, this is the Forum’s strategy to advance the wellbeing of its member states and peoples. The Strategy has seven core goals, known officially as “thematic areas”. These are: political leadership and regionalism, people-centered development, peace and security, resources and economic development, climate change and disasters, ocean and environment, and technology and connectivity. The Strategy — which is “the culmination of several years’ work and many consultations” — will now move to a practical implementation plan.
Significantly, the Forum also made progress on climate change, as documented by the Forum Comuniqué. The Forum reaffirmed its commitment that it would, as a collective, reach carbon neutrality by 2050. But it also set its sights on the international community more broadly; it committed to working with the President Delegate of the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 27) “to ensure that COP 27 delivers an ambitious outcome”. Specifically, the Forum is seeking to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, more funding to developing countries to adapt to climate change, more work on the ocean-climate nexus, and progress on deliberations to minimise and address loss and damage caused by climate change.
On the issue of climate change, Australia was unsurprisingly singled out. Yet while, in the past, Pacific island nations have singled out Australia for negative attention on the issue, this time, the attention was positive. The Forum Comuniqué “welcomed and fully supported Australia’s renewed commitment to the Forum’s climate change priorities”, and welcomed Australia’s interest in hosting a Conference of the Parties in partnership with Pacific island nations. The “renewed commitment” to which the Forum refers stems from the result of Australia’s federal election in May. The Australian Labor Party won government, defeating Australia’s Liberal/National Coalition. The Labor Party had taken a policy of a carbon emissions cut of 43% against 2005 levels by 2030 to the election, compared to the Coalition’s policy of a 26-28% cut by the same date.
From a multilateral perspective, the success of the Meeting was thus a mixed result. The fissures that opened up and led to the withdrawal of Kiribati obviously limited the Meeting’s success in this regard. But in the approval of its 2050 Strategy, and the confirmation plan to push for climate action on the international stage, the Forum had more to celebrate.
Yet the diplomatic challenge to Australia was not limited to climate change. The region’s ongoing power politics — most notably, the influence of China — was another challenge Australia had to meet. For Australia, the Meeting took place against the signing of an infamous security pact between China and the Solomon Islands in April. The pact dominated Australia’s election campaign, with then Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison declaring that a Chinese military base in the Solomon Islands would be a “red line” for Australia. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was infuriated by Australia’s response; he described criticism of the pact as “very insulting”, accused Australia of being “theatrical and hysterical”, and accused Australian peacekeepers deployed to the Solomon Islands to quell riots against the pact of deliberately refusing to protect Chinese-built infrastructure.
Notwithstanding the tensions, Australia performed well at the Forum on this issue. Sogavare greeted the new Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, with a hug, and after a meeting with Albanese, confirmed that Australia was still the first “security partner of choice” with the Solomon Islands.
However, another manifestation of the region’s power politics could create diplomatic headaches for Australia in the future. In September last year, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States signed a security pact known as AUKUS, pursuant to which the US and the UK will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines. Pacific island nations are uneasy about the pact, which they believe increases the risk of conflict in the region. But they are also worried about the environmental implications of nuclear proliferation. Though the pact was not high on the Forum’s agenda, its potential dangers did not completely escape the Forum’s attention. In the Forum Comuniqué, Pacific leaders “reiterated their strong concerns for the significance of the potential threat of nuclear contamination to the health and security of the Blue Pacific”.
All things considered, Pacific leaders should be cautiously optimistic about the future of the region. Serious climate action is starting to take shape, and the region’s security is a concern of the international community. Australia, the Forum’s most populous country, is now a much more constructive member, a far cry from its performance at the Forum’s infamously acrimonious 2019 meeting. But the region’s leaders shouldn’t be too excited just yet; the Forum eschewed some difficult questions, such as the future of Australia’s coal and gas projects, and what to do with China’s proposed economic and security deal for the region. Pacific leaders can take comfort in what they have achieved, but should not lose sight of how much still needs to be done.
