Pacific unsurprisingly strong on sustainability rhetoric

PIDF reck­ons the Pacific needs devel­op­ment pro­cesses that are:

• Respons­ive
• Par­ti­cip­at­ory
• Inclus­ive
• Account­able
• Out­come-driv­en
• Able to bal­ance the three pil­lars of development

And PIDF thinks it is the only plat­form than can do this by “bring­ing togeth­er lead­ers from the pub­lic and private sec­tors and civil soci­ety to address region­al devel­op­ment chal­lenges, through mutu­ally bene­fi­cial innov­at­ive partnerships”.

“There is a need for com­pan­ies to cli­mate-proof their oper­a­tions and com­pan­ies that act on this vis­ion place them­selves in the fore­front of sus­tain­able entre­pren­eur­ship,” Mar­tel told del­eg­ates at the India-Pacific Island Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment For­um in Suva, Fiji last week.

The Par­is Agree­ment had been a tre­mend­ous cata­lyst for suc­cess in the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment agenda, he said.

“We saw it at COP21 and again at COP22 and since then busi­nesses and investors have been stand­ing up and send­ing a clear mes­sage that the trans­ition to clean­er energy sources is neces­sary, inev­it­able, irre­vers­ible and beneficial.”

PIDF Sec­ret­ary Gen­er­al François Mar­tel & SPTO Man­ager Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Devel­op­ment Christina Leala-Gale

A pan­el­list at the same event, South Pacific Tour­ism Organ­isa­tion (SPTO) Man­ager of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Devel­op­ment, Christina Leala-Gale, told par­ti­cipants about her new role (since Janu­ary 2017).

“While SPTO has been focused on mar­ket­ing the Pacific as a tour­ist des­tin­a­tion, the min­is­ters of tour­ism in the Pacific in 2015 agreed to the estab­lish­ment of a Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Devel­op­ment Unit of SPTO.”

SPTO’s Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Devel­op­ment Unit is respons­ible for “sup­port­ing the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of tour­ism in the South Pacific in terms of the envir­on­ment­al, socio-cul­tur­al and Eco­nom­ic aspects” via:

• Capa­city building;
• Tech­nic­al assist­ance through SPTO part­ner­ships, and;
• Con­sulta­tion on nation­al plans and policies.

Gale said tour­ism was the main­stay of many of Pacific island eco­nom­ies. “And whilst the region has sur­passed the two mil­lion vis­it­or mark in 2016 we need to look at what is really import­ant if we are to become suc­cess­ful tour­ism des­tin­a­tions in the future.”

What is sur­pris­ing is that the rhet­or­ic isn’t stronger.

Sources: Fiji Times, PIDF, SPTO.