Pacific leaders gathered in Tonga this week to discuss the most pressing issues in the region. The group backed a Pacific-wide police training and rapid-response plan championed by Australia, and also reached agreement with France to allow a fact-finding mission to travel to New Caledonia to investigate the recent unrest. But the final day of the talks on Friday was overshadowed by a dispute over language about Taiwan.
Here are the key takeaways from the Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) summit, the region’s most important annual political gathering, bringing together Australia, New Zealand and 16 Pacific island countries or territories.
Policing plan gets the nod, with fine print
Under the new Pacific Policing Initiative, a multinational police unit will be established to respond quickly to a natural disaster or to provide security for major events.
It includes plans to establish a training and coordination hub in Brisbane, Australia. In addition, police centres of excellence will be set up in four Pacific island countries, including Papua New Guinea. Australia has offered to provide $400m over five years to establish the centres.
Pif leaders formally announced their support on Friday, although consensus was reached on Wednesday – a win that the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, described as “a cracker” in a jovial private conversation with the US deputy secretary of state, Kurt Campbell.
The Pif communique on Friday backed the proposal but also emphasised the need for national consultations in every Pacific country on precisely how each of them would engage with the new scheme.
Solomon Islands – which struck a security pact with China in 2022 – said these consultations would be important to ensure “that it’s owned and driven by countries”. Vanuatu earlier this week said the region should ensure the plan was “framed to fit our purposes and not developed to suit the geostrategic interests and geostrategic denial security postures of our big partners” – a reference to a western desire to box out China.
Australia had always insisted the initiative would be Pacific-led and that no country would be compelled to participate. The region’s police chiefs will meet in Tonga next week to work on a plan for how to implement it.
New Caledonia fact-finding mission
The unrest in New Caledonia was a key issue in discussions during the leaders’ retreat on Thursday. The French territory has seen deadly violence since May after lawmakers in Paris approved a constitutional amendment to allow recent arrivals to the territory to vote in provincial elections. It prompted fears that it would dilute the vote of the Indigenous Kanak people. and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, later announced he was suspending the change.
The prime ministers of Tonga, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands and Fiji are expected to lead the delegation, with the timing yet to be announced. Tonga’s prime minister said the objectives included gathering information to “better understand the situation in New Caledonia through holding interviews and field visit with all stakeholders relevant to resolution of the crisis”.
The terms of reference also call for support for ongoing efforts to achieve peace and stability, de-escalate ongoing violence and promote discussion between the parties. The fact-finding missions will provide a report with “clear recommendations” to Pif members.
Climate crisis takes centre stage – but fossil fuels omitted from communique
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, elevated the climate crisis by attending the first couple of days of the talks and releasing two reports on sea level rise and natural disasters.
“I am in Tonga to issue a global SOS – Save Our Seas – on rising sea levels,” he said, reiterating the need for a fast and fair phase-out of fossil fuels. “If we save the Pacific, we also save ourselves.”
Pacific island leaders see the climate crisis as the “the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific”.
Even so, there was curiously no explicit mention of fossil fuels in the final communique.
Right now, leaders are seeking to build momentum and pledges for the new Pacific Resilience Facility, a Pacific-led and “people-centred” climate and disaster fund. It is an alternative to larger, established schemes such as the Green Climate Fund. Leaders announced this week that Tonga would be where the new fund was based.
Amid US-China rivalry, a last-minute drama over Taiwan
The intensifying contest for influence between the US and China continues to dominate headlines, although Pacific leaders have repeatedly signalled that they don’t want to be seen as pawns in a larger geopolitical struggle.
The US and China are not members of Pif, but they are among its many “dialogue partners” and they routinely send high-powered delegations to build the relationship with countries in the region.
Potentially sensing the mood, the US and China indicated to Pif leaders on Wednesday that they wanted to work together to address the climate crisis – an olive branch that was well received.
The warmth didn’t last long: China’s special envoy for the Pacific, Qian Bo, demanded the scrapping of language about Taiwan in the final communique on Friday. The line effectively rebuffed calls to downgrade Taiwan’s status as a Pif development partner, in language that surprised some observers and angered Beijing. Just three of the 18 members of Pif still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The communique was republished on Saturday without the offending line included.
Pif leaders are yet to settle on a declaration for the Pacific as an “ocean of peace” – a proposal advanced by the prime minister of Fiji, Sitiveni Rabuka. In a nod to their impatience over the big powers’ geopolitical games, the Pif leaders said the emphasis should be on the “peace” element of the “peace and security”.
Tough issues are on the backburner
Several tough issues were held over for future talks. These include deep sea mining, which divides opinion among Pacific island governments.
Pif last year called for deep sea mining to go to a “Talanoa dialogue” – a type of “inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue” that embraces mutual respect and understanding rather than shouting down other ideas – but this hasn’t happened yet. This week, Pif leaders said ministers would hold talks in October.
The prime minister of the Cook Islands, Mark Brown, who supports looking into the industry as a potential economic opportunity, said the Talanoa would be an opportunity to hear from member countries that had concerns, but “also to hear from those countries that have a vested interest in the seabed minerals sector”. The most important point, he said, was “to respect the decisions taken by each of our member countries on whatever positions they will choose to take in terms of seabed minerals”.
On West Papua, leaders merely “noted” an update on the issue from the prime ministers of Papua New Guinea and Fiji, who were last year appointed as “special envoys”. Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, James Marape, speaking for both, apologised that they had not carried out the mission to visit West Papua that they had been assigned last year. Now it is hoped this will happen before the next leaders’ meeting in Solomon Islands in September 2025.
