Useful study of regional organisations

regional organisations

Co-operation and Conflict: Costs, Benefits and National Interests in Pacific Regional Co-operation. By Uentabo Fakaofo Neemia. Published by the Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific, Suva, 1986. 172 pp.

Isbn 98 020002 4.

To the outsider, Pacific re gionalism appears to be a maze of different sets of acronyms, overlapping organisations and almost unlimited possibilities for personal and national rivalry.

To regular conference goers in the Pacific, it is a stable framework within which acquaintances are made and renewed, alliances built up, and aid funds acquired.

There really is nothing like it in other parts of the world despite attempts by Uentabo Neemia, the author of this book to place Pacific regionalism within a typology of inter governmental regionalism.

This book provides a useful brief introduction to the South Pacific Commission, the South Pacific Forum and its offshoots the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation, the

Pacific Forum Line and Forum Fisheries Agency. Neemia also includes the University of the South Pacific in his line-up of regional inter-governmental or ganisations and, more con troversially, the East-West Cen ter’s Pacific Islands Deve lopment Program which he sees as arising out of an alliance between Ratu Mara and the U.S. government.

Neemia’s analysis of the fun ding of regional organisations uncovers some particularly in teresting information. While the SPC receives only 3.12% of its funding from the Island mem bers and SPEC gets 33% from this source, the Island member nations of the University of the South Pacific provide 72% of its funding! Although these figures come from 1979 budgets he claims there have been no significant changes in recent years.

Despite the fact that regional institutions could not survive without substantial funds from outside the region, only 1.23% of official development assist ance to the region in 1979 went to regional institutions, the re maining 98.77% went as bilate ral aid to independent or de

pendent territories in the Pacific.

This, Neemia claims, is illustrative of donor countries, ambivalence towards regional co-operation.

“While foreign aid supports regional organisations by paying the costs which island governments could not other wise afford, it can also under mine regional co-operation through bilateral aid which facilitates national programs.”

While I would like to see governments such as those of Australia and New Zealand make a firm commitment to Pacific regional institutions, and make better use of them for the delivery of their aid, Neemia seems to me to pose regional and bilateral aid programs too starkly as alternates, seeing bilateral aid as necessarily weakening regionalism.

His analysis of aid in general is unfortunately rather thin, re lying too heavily on quotes from Ron Crocombe, about aid destined for the Pacific being “hijacked” by metropolitan in stitutions.

A more detailed study of such cases (such as that initi ated by Dr Tupeni Baba at last

December’s Australasian Com parative and International Education Society Conference in Brisbane) would lend weight to his argument about factors leading to a weakening of Paci fic regionalism.

The old arguments about the costs and benefits of regional co-operation have been going on around the Pacific for de cades now, and it is good to see an attempt to quantify these costs and benefits.

In addition to fees paid to regional organisations Neemia does not overlook such un quantifiable costs as the loss of the best talent from a national public service to a regional organisation which can occur when salaries are so much higher in the regional bodies.

In the debate about costs and benefits which accrue to coun tries which host headquarters of regional bodies, Neemia argues very strongly that these coun tries benefit far more than they contribute, particularly in hav ing jobs provided for their na tionals as support staff and, in the case of the USP, collecting tax from all staff.

He further points out that host governments of regional bodies overlook these benefits and continually stress their con

tributions to the organisation, giving as the main example, Fiji’s paper at the conference on Future Directions of the USP in 1984.

The benefits of location are not restricted to Pacific regional bodies and Dr Neemia has also included a discussion of the benefits to Fiji of hosting other international offices including

Undp, Who, Ilo And

Unfpa.

Not all readers will agree with his conclusions on this issue, but they are persuasively argued and coming to be more influential among governments of the smaller island groups.

The scenario advanced is that the University of the South Pacific will go the same way as the Central Medical School, Air Pacific and the Telecom munication Training Centre, and be reduced from a regional institution to a national one, foundering on the reefs of na tional interest and bigger na tion/smaller nation rivalry.

The view that the USP will shortly become a University of Fiji, assisted by the policies of Western Samoa, the Solomons and Tonga, has been a theme of much discussion on the future of the university over the

last five years and was recently articulated by Professor Albert Wendt.

Neemia, a Kiribati national, gives some of the economic background to such arguments although not arguing in favor of such an eventuality. The recent coup in Fiji must place a further question mark over the future of the USP in its current loca tion.

Another important source of conflict in regional bodies, in addition to the economic factor, is the Melanesian/Polynesian cleavage, more significant in the Forum and its associated groupings. Neemia sees both Bigger/Smaller nation and Melanesian/Polynesian tensions as providing the basis for sub regional groupings, groupings which, he argues, represent an extension of national interests and challenge regionalism.

This book then provides a framework within which a num ber of issues concerning Pacific regionalism can, and doubtless will, be debated. Journalists and others wanting a guide through the maze of official Pacific-wide organisations will benefit greatly by reading it but will be surprised to see so little coverage given to the South

Pacific Forum, which is, after all the South Pacific organisation with the highest profile.

This is partly because the Forum, in its structure, is little more than an informal gather ing of heads of government once a year.

They will also be somewhat surprised to see major issues such as the South Pacific Nuc lear Free Zone Treaty and the taking of New Caledonia to the U.N., absent from its pages, evidently due to the long time delay in producing the book.

Co-operation and Conflict should provide a useful refer ence not only to students of South Pacific politics but also those concerned with topics such as higher education as an international commodity, and the politics of international fisheries.

Nor should it be forgotten that Pacific regionalism is not merely a government phe nomenon. In the first paragraph Uentabo Neemia points out that there are now some 200 regional institutions in the South Pacific, most of them non-governmental.

It is perhaps the members of these organisations who will find the book of most interest.

Helen Hill.