NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga (AP) — First heavy rain and then an earthquake greeted Pacific leaders as they attended their annual meeting in Nuku'alofa, Tonga, on Monday.
While the 6.9-magnitude earthquake was deep enough to cause no damage, the lingering tremors and ankle-deep flooding were a reminder of nature's fragility for many Pacific Islands Forum member states locked in a battle for economic and environmental survival.
It also highlighted tensions at the heart of an event that once drew little global attention but now brings together delegates from dozens of countries around the world, just as a bitter squabble between far-flung powers for geopolitical influence in the South Pacific threatens to eclipse local concerns, often to the dismay of island nation leaders.
“We don't want them to fight in our backyard, we want them to do that elsewhere,” Baron Waqa, the forum's secretary-general and a former president of Nauru, told reporters last month.
Still, more than 1,500 delegates from more than 40 countries are attending this year's Pacific member states meeting, hoping to advance their national agendas in a region where competition for oceans, resources and strategic power is intensifying.
Founded in 1971, the Pacific Islands Forum brings together 18 member nations to discuss and coordinate responses to the challenges facing the remote and diverse region. Member nations know that even nations with populations of as few as 1,500 can gain more attention on the world stage with one voice. Leaders of Pacific island nations (some of which are among the world's most at risk from rising sea levels), as well as Australia and New Zealand, have long been at the forefront of advocating for climate action.
For the first few decades after its founding, the forum's annual leaders' meetings drew little attention. But that has changed in recent years, say regular forum attendees, as China's campaign to forge aid, diplomatic and security deals with Pacific leaders has led to a rapid expansion in the size and scope of the organization and its meetings.
This week's summit will feature the largest Chinese delegation in the forum's history, as well as a large delegation from the United States led by Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell.
The two countries are among the forum's 21 “dialogue partners” – a group of countries with an interest in the region. There is a waiting list for participation, but applications are now closed while the forum reviews its composition. Observers said Monday that a tiered system could be adopted that reflects the partners' genuine interest and engagement in the Pacific.
“We've been aware for some time now that our region has been of great interest from a geopolitical perspective,” Mark Brown, the Cook Islands' prime minister and outgoing chairman of the forum, told Islands Business this month, “but the security issues that our larger development partners consider important are not the same as the security issues that we consider important.”
While big powers may attend the forum looking to exert influence while undercutting others, the focus of the region's leaders remains the same as ever: the dangers of climate change and rapid sea level rise.
In Tonga's capital, Nuku'alofa, signs are everywhere: “One Less Plastic Bottle” is labeled on metal water bottles given to delegates as souvenirs, but bottled water is handed out at every meeting and meal. As in many Pacific island countries, rising seas and natural disasters have left rainwater and groundwater polluted and undrinkable.
This year, the issue has another champion: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who in his opening speech on Monday decried “humanity treating the oceans like a sewer” and praised Pacific leaders and young people for declaring a climate emergency and calling for action.
Some leaders sought to bring pressing domestic issues to the forefront. Tonga's prime minister and incoming chair of the forum, Siaosi Sovaleni, spoke on Monday about the health and education challenges facing his country, a voice echoed across the Pacific.
Other topics on the agenda include the legacy of the nuclear scare in the region, the cost of living and debt, and regional security, including the proposed construction of a Pacific Police Training Centre in Brisbane, Australia, which is seen as a direct challenge to China's eagerness to supply equipment to law enforcement agencies in some island nations.
Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in June called the problems, which also include cross-border drug trafficking, a “multiple crises”, with each exacerbating the others.
But the toughest challenge for the forum may be the ongoing unrest in New Caledonia, where deadly violence erupted in May over a years-long independence movement and Paris' efforts to quell it. Tensions were further exacerbated when Pacific leaders failed to visit the capital, Nouméa, ahead of the summit.
Longtime observers of the forum say the test for major powers here is whether their leaders can engage in the “Pacific way” — a relationship-based, consensus-building approach to politics that centers around the idea of the so-called “Blue Pacific family” of island nations bound together by common cultures and traditions, as distinct from the wider Indo-Pacific region, which is seen as fragmented and isolated by its own interests.
People frown when summit attendees get too loud, pushy or too keen on power. “There is a way Pacific countries do business with each other that we would like the rest of the world to recognise,” Cook Islands leader Brown told Island Business.
But leaders are realistic in thinking that global interest in the Pacific will continue.
“This needs to be something the world is paying attention to. It's not like the old days,” New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told The Associated Press last week. “We're a lucky people, a lucky platform, and we've got to do everything we can to secure it for the long term.”
