Pacific diplomats at sea

The United Nations

By Ian Williams

IN March, the Pacific was fighting a rearguard action in one of the UN’s more exotically named conferences. The UN conference on Straddling Fish Stocks and on Highly Migratory Fish is a life and death matter, not just for the fish, but the island nations whose main economic resource is their EEZs, exclusive econ omic zones. The talks are chaired by Fiji’s Satya Nandan, but at times that seems the closest the islands get to power in the talks designed to protect the world’s rapidly disappearing marine fish stocks.

Off the record, Pacific diplomats are

complaining bitterly about the Japanese

and Korean negotiators, who want to have their sushi and eat it. “They are citing International Law, the Law of the Sea, the Ten Commandments, the Bible anything to avoid giving an inch,” one diplomat told PIM. The South Korean delegate claims that 50,000 families were affected by the ban in drift netting, but seems to show little aware ness that unlike the two Asian tigers, the Pacific islands do not have car and computer factories to absorb their people when the fish stocks are gone.

The weak position of the islands is demonstrated m the drafts of the text so far. It provides much stronger protection for the “straddling” fish stocks, the cod and similar species whose habitat covers several nations’ territorial waters. It is much weaker on protecting the highly migratory species like tuna, where at present the Japanese and Koreans are, in the words of another diplomat, “poach ing the stocks on the nigh seas. The Japanese and Koreans are, he complains, offering a compromise that offers noth ing. They would “look at” measures to protect fish stocks, but only if they are admitted to the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency. It would allow them to make a “sea grab” giving them access to the islands EEZs but offering no commit ment in return. Slightly more tangible but only just is language in the draft offering “new and additional” but un specified aid to developing countries to maintain surveillance and protection of the stocks. The result is that “we are not happy with the draft so far, but we can live with it,” Pacific diplomats say, hoping that they can improve it before the final sessions in September.

The talks are, in some ways, a precursor of the Small Islands Confer ence. International waters, like the atmosphere, belong to nobody, and the opportunities bring out the most selfish aspects of national behaviours. However, collective action by the small islands has had some effect. It would have much

Pacific in for a fight with big nations in protecting fish stocks

more if all South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) countries took the conferences seriously.

From being the guiding genius behind AOSIS, Vanuatu was initially unable to have its delegate, Dorosti Esrom admit ted to the fisheries conference because the new UN ambassador, Jean Ravou Akii, a close friend of PM Maxim Carlot, had not presented his letters of accreditation to the UN. Indeed for three months, he had not presented himself, either at the Vanuatu Mission, the Forum, or the UN itself, until he finally presented his credentials to Boutros Boutros Ghali, the UN Secretary General on March 25.

While welcoming the progress, his col leagues point out that his new office has yet to be connected to a telephone.

Although he was the most outstanding example, there are other strange and undiplomatic absences. His Pacific col leagues have also been wondering at the absence of Marshalls Ambassador Carl Heine, who, they allege has not been seen in the United Nations or at the Forum meetings. Originally this began as a protest at the absence of Australian Ambassador Richard Butler, but while the latter has now begun to attend, Heine’s continuing absence has caused such ribald commentary that the SOAPC Chair Samoan Ambassador Neroni Slade refused to take apologies at the last meeting of the group.

At least he has been in New York, while Niue, Cook Islands, Tonga and even Palau have been attending the various meets. Tuvalu has been con spicuous by its absence from these events, and organisers of the Small Islands Conference in Barbados were scathing when they heard that Tuvalu PM Bikenibeu Paeniu, who has toured the world for Greenpeace, will not be attending. In contrast, it is lucky that the rest of the world seems to be treating the small island states more seriously than some of their representatives. UN Secre tary General Boutros Boutros Ghali in opening the final Barbados Preparatory Committee Meeting in New York called on the world to recognise the needs of small islands for “special assistance because of their economic and ecological vulnerability, their size, geographical isolation and limited resources.”

The committee secured a consensus on the first 14 parts of the conference document. Unfortunately, the most sub stantial areas of disagreement are in the final fifteenth, the section which deals

with the mechanism and financing for the development and protection of the islands in the face of climate change.

Trinidadian Ambassador Annette Des Isles and the new president of AOSIS, lamented that the meeting had done little to ensure the availability of funds.

AOSIS members were “disappointed but no discouraged,” she said, looking for ward to more positive results in Barbados itself.

The industrialised nations promised in Rio, in the euphoria of the ‘Earth Summit’ that they would be putting, in the now traditional phrase “new and additional resources” into the environ mental protection of the small islands, but they now seem to be backtracking and saying that such funds would come from existing overseas development funds. Within AOSIS as well there are divisions between the Pacific and Carib bean. The latter are much pushier and radical over funding questions.

At least the $2 billion dollar Global Environment Facility was finally off the ground, as 87 countries approved its final form in Geneva in March after months of wrangling between North and South.

While the headquarters of the fund will be in the World Bank in Washington, and its Chief Executive Office, Moham med El-Ashry, is the bank’s environment officer, the GEF is officially jointly run by the bank and the UN Development Programme. The 32-member governing council will be split between 16 develop ing “recipient’’ countries, 14 donor countries, and two from the former Eastern bloc. The islands will have to fight for seats from the Asian quota of six and the Latin American and Caribbean quota of four.

The compromise proposal in effect ensures that decisions need to compro mise between donors and recipients, since proposals need to win majorities of 60 per cent in two ways, the first on a vote depending on the size of financial contribution and the second by the council.

But once again, if the islands want to be taken seriously then they have to behave seriously and send serious rep resentatives rather than friends or rela tives with a liking for metropolitan pastimes. As we reported last month, the Pacific has deprived itself of experienced voices at the UN in the last few months at a time when they are needed more than ever before. Our next report comes from the Barbados conference itself, where we will observe with interest the attendance record of some large del egations of politicians from the Pacific who will be bringing their families along as well. □