Time Running Out? The Pacific Islands and Globalization

The Pacific Island countries (PIGs), the independent developing countries of the South and Central Pacific, which are today grouped in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)in large measure take their collective identity from it, are facing serious challenges from globalization processes, few of which they are well placed to deal with. In particular, across the Melanesian "arc of crisis" in the South West Pacific the PIF must deal with chronic and recently escalating ethnic conflicts which variously threaten established constitutional democracy (armed "civilian" coups in Fiji and Solomon Islands), and/or the integrity of state boundaries (secession movements in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea). In its evolving relationships with the Kanaks of French New Caledonia, the West Papuans of Indonesian Papua/Irian Jaya and the post-Indonesia East Timorese, the PIF also faces a parallel challenge to become more responsive to regional movements of national liberation and prepare to accommodate new members, thus potentially expanding received definitions of the Pacific islands as well as the scope of the regional agenda and the potential for regional assertiveness. The Forum PIGs are responding to these challenges by showing a new willingness to intervene against delinquent member states to uphold constitutional and democratic norms. But ore outside help is urgently needed to combat widespread civil disorder and state breakdown n Melanesia. This disorder poses a dire threat both to established export industries (including tourism) and domestic economies generally, and to effective implementation of the globalization agenda which the PIF has set for itself in terms of promoting regional as well as global trade, building a Pacific information economy, achieving global action on global warming with its special threat to small island states and reducing regional dependence on special aid, trade and immigration relationships with Australasia and Europe