Gone are the days when summits of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), a political organization for regional cooperation, were held in relative indifference. This year, more than a thousand politicians, diplomats and representatives of various organizations crowded into Nuku’alofa, the small capital of the Tonga Islands (on the island of Tontapu), located in the center of a South Pacific that has become a nerve center of the Sino-American strategic rivalry, from August 26 to 30.
“We are well aware that our region has attracted great interest from a geopolitical point of view in recent years. But the security issues perceived by our major development partners are not the same as those that we consider important.”warned Mark Brown, the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, in an interview with Islands Business.
The warning was prescient. On Friday evening, the summit ended with a psychodrama far removed from the concerns of these countries, among the most threatened in the world by the climate crisis. Beijing’s special envoy, Qian Bo, judged “unacceptable” that Taiwan – a territory considered by Beijing to be a Chinese province – appears in the final communiqué as “development partner”. Although the forum has been using this formula for three decades and China is a mere “dialogue partner” of the organization which brings together 18 Pacific States and associated territories, the diplomat finally won his case.
For five days, PIF members devoted most of their discussions to the crises facing their region, from climate change to security issues related to drug trafficking and illegal fishing to geostrategic competition. They also discussed at length the unrest in New Caledonia, reaffirming at the end of the summit their commitment to send “a high-level mission” on site and their desire to see it restored “peace and stability”.
Welcoming climate refugees
The opening of the summit on Tuesday, August 27, was marked by the SOS on rising waters, launched by Antonio Guterres. The Secretary-General of the United Nations unveiled, in Tonga, a report showing that sea levels had risen by some 15 centimeters in certain areas of the Pacific over the last thirty years, much more than the global average, estimated at 9.4 centimeters.
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