PACIFIC Ocean Commissioner Dame Meg says in addition to the ongoing negative impacts of climate change on our ocean, we also face challenges arising from intensifying geopolitical and geostrategic competition in and around the region.
These challenges, she says have potentially critical implications for our ability to maintain our solidarity as one Blue Pacific.
“In this context then, the typical challenges the POA (Pacific Oceans Alliance) seeks to address in terms of acting as one interconnected ocean continent and strengthening integrated ocean management of key relevant sectors of fisheries, minerals, transport, tourism, energy and environment become both more complex and more urgent than ever,” Dame Meg told members of the POA at their meeting in Suva yesterday.
The Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum said it was within this increasingly complex and urgent context that Forum leaders met in Tuvalu in August this year in continued and combined efforts to secure the future of the Pacific.
“Leaders noted that securing the future of the Blue Pacific cannot simply be left to chance, but rather requires a long-term vision, a carefully-considered regionalism strategy, and most importantly a collective commitment to achieve it,” she said, noting the leaders’ subsequent endorsement of the development of a 2050 strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.
“One can readily see the synergies between the Forum leaders theme and the 2050 strategy, and the Framework for the Pacific Oceanscape.”
Dame Meg said the ocean featured as a key priority for the 2050 strategy, with leaders specifically identifying the protection of the ocean health and integrity, and the sustainable management of our island and ocean resources as the two cornerstone priorities for the strategy.
As such, she said the principles and priorities of the Framework for a Pacific Oceanscape remained important and relevant to the development and progress of a 2050 strategy for the Blue Pacific.
