By Aziz Choudry
POHNPEI, Micronesia — Following in the footsteps of the missionaries before them, the cheerleaders for the free market have flocked to the Pacific. Like their predecessors, they claim that they alone have the truth, the light and the way, and that there is no alternative to their vision of salvation.
The South Pacific Forum on the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia was yet another opportunity to goad Pacific peoples and governments into getting "their house in order" according to a model of export-oriented, market-driven growth and a narrow set of economic theories which hold that growth is the be-all and end-all of development.
Forum leaders and ministers' meetings have increasingly focused on the agenda promoted throughout the region by World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs, Asian Development Bank loan conditions, free trade arrangements like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and APEC (which only a minority of Pacific countries have joined), and pressure from donor countries like New Zealand and Australia which links future aid to recipient countries' governments undertaking to further open up their economies and decrease government expenditure.
In Madang in 1995, South Pacific Forum leaders endorsed the APEC non-binding investment principles. A report on the progress and implementation of these investment policies is to be completed by the end of this year.
The 1997 Forum Economic Ministers Meeting stated that "private sector development is central to ensuring sustained economic growth, and that governments should provide a policy environment to encourage this". The July 1998 FEMM in Nadi exhorted forum members to implement "domestic measures consistent with WTO and APEC principles and obligations".
Moves to push forum island countries further and faster in this direction ignore the structural causes of Pacific countries' economic, social and environmental problems, and the strengths of traditional lifestyles, values, resource use and social support systems.
They take no account of the realities of these countries, where 55% of people are engaged in subsistence economy, and ignore the diversity of societies which make up the Pacific.
They obscure the political and economic agendas behind the aid programs: 70-90% of official aid returns to donor countries like Japan, Australia and New Zealand in the form of education, consultants and technical services, creating lucrative investment opportunities and new markets for goods and services.
Meanwhile, forced dependency on imports has had dire consequences for small Pacific island farmers, unable to compete with lower priced products from overseas. While Pacific countries are being told to export more to earn more foreign exchange and pay back loans, commodity prices on the world market continue to plummet, and the flood of imports continues unabated.
The forum's narrow economic focus flies in the face of demands from indigenous people from Bougainville to East Timor, West Papua to "French" Polynesia, for the right to self-determination. And it ignores the vulnerability of small, exposed nations to the vagaries of unregulated markets.
Pressure to open up their economies to the global market smacks of the same callous disregard with which the Pacific has long been treated by Pacific rim powers. The region has been used as an unwilling guinea pig for nuclear tests and toxic waste dumping, and as a source for cheap raw materials.
This year's forum theme was "From Reform to Growth: The Private Sector and Investment as the Keys to Prosperity".
A key "practical impediment" to rendering forum island countries attractive to investors is the strength of traditional land tenure systems.
There is fierce resistance to efforts to reform these systems. For example, in Papua New Guinea, where 93% of the land is in community hands, massive popular opposition to a World Bank-driven program in 1995 to register customary title forced the defeat of the government's proposed Land Mobilisation Bill, designed to attract foreign investment.
Throughout the region, the connections between people and the land and ocean are under renewed threat from a vision of development that sees only dollar signs and commodities to be bought and sold on the mythical level playing field of the free market.
The New Zealand government is promoting the key features of "the New Zealand experiment" in the Pacific, an experiment which failed to benefit the majority of New Zealanders.
The Howard government is linking AusAid to the willingness of Pacific countries to restructure their economies to "scale down and refocus the public sector" and "attract reputable foreign investors".
Pacific peoples have proud histories of struggle against colonialism. Market reforms and free trade and investment regimes are resulting in a new relationship of servitude to the economic powerful countries and companies which have their eyes on the region.
After centuries of colonial domination, the Pacific deserves far better than to be locked into a permanent race to the bottom to provide cheap labour and natural resources, and new frontiers for profit at the expense of people and the environment.
[Aziz Choudry, from GATT Watchdog, spoke at the Fourth NGO Parallel Forum held in Pohnpei, August 14-17, prior to the South Pacific Forum meeting. GATT Watchdog can be contacted at <gattwd@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> or PO Box 1905, Christchurch 8015, Aotearoa (New Zealand)]