“The Environment and Security in the Pacific Islands Region”

Honolulu, 5-10 August 2012

About APCSS

• APCSS is a Department of Defense educational institution which conducts executive education programs through courses and workshops in Honolulu as well as in-region. These activities building US and partner capacity, improve trust and understanding, and provide security practitioners from across the Asia-Pacific region increased competence across the spectrum of comprehensive security practices.

Purpose of Workshop

• The workshop focused on the security implications of environmental change in the Pacific Islands region with emphasis in identifying key environmental change trends, likely security risks, opportunities and next steps to address issues of concern.

Participants

• Forty-four participants representing thirty-six nations, states, territories and organizations

Intended Outcomes

• Identify the most critically significant processes of environmental change in the Pacific Islands region.

• Identify the priority security risks associated with these processes.

• Identify the opportunities in addressing such risks (met).

Summary conclusions

• While climate change was identified as important, the workshop

identified additional trends as having major impacts and which may act as stressors generating security risks. Constraining responses to these risks were issues such as a lack of trained capacity, resources, and governance challenges (including corruption but relating more to weak interagency coordination and cooperation at a national level, but also a regional level, where weak regional cooperation and leadership was seen as hampering

efforts). While access to more education/training and resources were all identified as helpful, the more challenging issue was seen as addressing governance and leadership issues, within national governments and in the regional architecture. Next steps identified improvements in a range of governance issues, and called for a paradigm shift in thinking about environmental security issues in the Pacific Islands region.

Environmental Change Trends

• Key environmental change trends and challenges identified by participants included: land degradation, pollution, resource extraction (e.g. mining, fishing, logging), a loss of biodiversity, reef destruction, cultural degradation, deforestation, urbanization, a lack and difficulty in accessing financial, technical, human and other resources, a lack of effectiveness of national and regional mechanisms, and the increasing frequency and severity of disasters and lack of preparedness.

Recommended Next Steps

• At a strategic level, participants called for a paradigm shift in thinking where all development in the Pacific Islands region is viewed through a climate-change lens, and where discussion is conducted in terms of the value the region brings to the world, rather than its vulnerabilities. Participants emphasized the need for a more proactive engagement of the Pacific Rim on this basis, and a more explicit recognition of sustainable development as the way forward.

Issues: Marine Resources

Over fishing & Intl fishing disputes - territorial claims, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing

Rapid, large loss, and degradation of coastal habitats

Pacific Islands Key resource for govt revenue, and employment Inshore/Coastal Fisheries - 85% households fish for local consumption Crucial to sustenance of the people

Fish Catches in Western & Central Pacific