[asia-apec 1766] Market Missionaries flock to Pacific

[APEC Monitoring Group]

Market Missionaries Flock To The Pacific

By Aziz Choudry (ZNet Commentary)



"Your nonsense spreads to Pacific beliefs like the
plague bubonic/

speaking tongues parallel to concrete jungle
mumbo."

(Reverse Resistance, by King Kapisi)



Samoan hiphop artist King Kapisi slams colonialism
and missionary beliefs on his Savage Thoughts CD.
Another kind of missionary has been active in the
Pacific for many years. Like their predecessors
they claim that they alone follow the true path,
and that there is no alternative to their vision.
Their articles of faith include reform programmes,
privatisation, and public sector downsizing.
Salvation will be achieved through embracing the
cash economy, attracting foreign investment,
greater integration into the global economy and
debt servicing.  Amen.



At this month's regional consultation on
globalisation debt and trade in Nadave, Fiji,
organised by Pacific Island NGOs, participants
identified three priority concerns - economic
reforms, the power and role of transnational
corporations and free trade.  We heard of
fightbacks against water privatisation in Fiji and
the environmental and social devastation caused by
mining and logging in Papua New Guinea (PNG),
Bougainville, and the Solomon Islands. There were
tales of deals struck between foreign investors
and governments behind the backs of traditional
landowners.  We discussed how Coca Cola-nisation
has devalued traditional diets, values and
societies. We shared strategies for raising
awareness and mobilising communities in the
Pacific.



Sadly, while many international peoples'
gatherings on globalisation have boasted the name
"Asia Pacific", there has been little
acknowledgement of the existence of the Pacific
and its peoples in such fora. Pacific struggles
for economic justice and self-determination are
often eclipsed by issues about Asia, Europe,
Africa and the Americas.



A joint church/NGO submission to Fiji's 1999
national budget asked "are we trying to make Fiji
into something it was never meant to be - a poor
copy of large nations, reliant on an economic
model in which we will always be dependent or
losers? In our current system some may profit but
most are excluded or exploited.  We believe that
this system is not made for us".  Many at Nadave
echoed this sentiment.



Only PNG, Fiji and the Solomons belong to the
World Trade Organisation (WTO). Samoa, Tonga and
Vanuatu have applied to join. Yet Pacific island
nations are under pressure to restructure and open
their economies.



The Asian Development Bank (ADB), whose board of
governors met recently in Honolulu, operates in 12
Pacific Island member countries. Since 1995 it has
promoted a familiar package of reforms, including
privatisation, downsizing the public sector,
cutting government expenditure, and "more open and
growth-orientated" economic policies.



Predictably, the ADB speaks of consulting more
widely with "civil society" and working to
"strengthen the interface and collaboration"
between Pacific member governments and NGOs/civil
society groups.  Its March 2001 report, "A Pacific
Strategy for the New Millennium" states that
"wider NGO involvement and consequent stronger
ownership of Pacific developing member country
governments' development strategies and reform
agenda has become a priority." It emphasises
"poverty reduction" and "good governance". It will
tailor its activities towards "country-specific
strategies" in the Pacific. The buzzwords might
have changed. But the economic fundamentals which
underpin its programme remain unchallenged.



Pacific peoples have little or no input into the
development of macroeconomic policies affecting
them, promoted with little empirical or
independent research on whether or not they are
appropriate or desirable for the recipient
country.



The Pacific Islands Forum (formerly the South
Pacific Forum) represents 14 Pacific Island
governments (Australia and New Zealand are also
members). It plays a key political role in getting
assent and commitment on economic, financial and
trade policy measures. Forum leaders, ministers,
and officials have increasingly focussed on
promoting the economic agenda already pushed by
World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programmes,
ADB loan conditionalities,  the WTO and APEC.



Donor countries like Australia and New Zealand
frequently link future aid commitments to
undertakings by governments to further pursue
economic reforms.  Increasingly bilateral aid
consists of "technical assistance" to implement
new policies.



Previous preferential trade arrangements, like the
Lome agreement between the European Union and the
Africa Caribbean and Pacific (EU-ACP) states have
been replaced with new frameworks aimed at
liberalising trade and investment in Pacific
countries. Last year's Cotonou Agreement, the
successor to Lome, listed the objectives of
economic and trade cooperation: "to promote smooth
and gradual integration of ACP economies into the
world economy; to enhance production, supply and
trading capacities; to create new trade dynamics
and foster investment; to ensure full conformity
with WTO provisions." In reality, few Pacific
countries enjoy preferential access to Europe's
markets.



Last July, Forum economic ministers pledged "we
will, to the extent practicable, implement
domestic measures consistent with WTO and APEC
principles and obligations, and cooperate in
responding to and taking advantage of multilateral
trade developments." A regional free trade
agreement is currently being negotiated among
Pacific island states, although its exact nature
is not yet known.  A draft text should be
presented to the Pacific Island Forum Trade
Ministers Meeting in June, and Forum Leaders in
August, at their meeting in Nauru.



With the Cold War's end, the Pacific's strategic
importance lessened. Aid flows started to
diminish. Bilateral aid programmes had always
reflected donor countries' political and economic
interests.  In many cases, 70-90% of official aid
to the Pacific has returned to donor countries
like Australia, Japan and New Zealand, in the form
of education services, consultants, technical
services and the provision of materials for
infrastructure projects, while creating lucrative
investment opportunities and new markets for goods
and services.



In the Solomon Islands, New Zealand government aid
part-funded a programme to reduce the public
sector by 7-10%.  Since 1997, New Zealand has
supported the ADB Comprehensive Reform Program in
Vanuatu, which includes significant cuts to the
size of the public sector (an estimated 25-30%
reduction), the introduction of value-added tax,
and tariff cuts.  Social services spending cuts
and the introduction of user-pays have seen the
decline of health services, especially in rural
areas, and imposed barriers to the affordability
of education.  Unemployment, especially for youth,
has worsened as the private sector in Pacific
Island countries cannot absorb the available
labour. Public sector "rightsizing" has been
accompanied by a sudden increase in the numbers of
consultants. New Zealand and Australia have
provided assistance in the establishment of a
Privatisation Commission in PNG and its work in
preparing state-owned assets for privatisation.



An export-oriented, exploitative model of
development has become entrenched in parts of the
Pacific. The US-administered Northern Marianas
Islands became best-known for its sweatshops
employing low-waged women migrant workers
producing popular clothing for duty-free export to
the US market. Much of Fiji's textile clothing and
footwear export industry is based on tax holidays
for overseas investors, labour market deregulation
and wages well below the poverty line.



The Solomons and PNG are relatively "resource
 rich" in minerals and forestry, yet local
communities derive little or no benefit from
investment in these sectors. Logging in the
Solomons and PNG has been environmentally
destructive and created few local jobs, with raw
logs being exported for processing offshore. In
1993, Pacific Island countries received US $126
million from a resource worth US $2 billion
annually - tuna fishing - an industry dominated by
a handful of US and Asian companies.



Forced dependency on imports has had dire
consequences for small Pacific Island farmers,
unable to compete with lower priced products from
overseas. While Pacific nations are told to export
more to earn more foreign exchange and repay
debts, commodity prices on world markets continue
to plummet, and the floods of imports of overseas
goods and services continue unabated.



The communal ownership of land, the existence of
the subsistence economy (some 85% of people are
engaged in the subsistence economy in PNG, 80% in
Vanuatu and the Solomons, and 55% in the Federated
States of Micronesia) and strong communitarian
values are celebrated as strengths against the
onslaught of corporate globalisation by its
critics in the Pacific. To the market's true
believers, however, these obstacles must be
overcome in order to entrench the cash economy and
attract foreign investment.



Land is the issue where opposing values of Pacific
societies and corporate globalisation most
obviously collide. In Melanesia, 97% of land is
communally-owned.  The people of Bougainville shut
down the massive CRA/RTZ Panguna copper mine in
1989 after over two decades of environmental
degradation, appalling health problems and the
trampling of Indigenous Peoples' land rights.
Kanak communities have razed tourist developments
to the ground in New Caledonia.  The Freeport gold
and copper mine in West Papua has destroyed the
lands and rivers of the local Amungme, Dani, Moni
and Kamoro peoples, and remains a potent symbol of
the relationship between transnational corporate
greed and Indonesia's colonial occupation of the
territory.



In PNG land is seen as "my life, my bank, my
everything". In 1995, popular opposition including
mass protests by students, churches, and NGOs
against a World Bank-driven programme to register
customary title defeated the government's proposed
Land Mobilisation Bill designed to attract foreign
investment. One local commentator described this
"as little more than a scheme to ready the legal
system and population for massive expropriation of
traditional lands".



Then, this March, PNG Defence Force soldiers
rebelled against plans to restructure the PNGDF,
but made explicit links between their situation
and the structural adjustment programmes imposed
by the IMF, World Bank and the ADB.  Army Captain
Stanley Benny said: "Their foreign ideas have
completely destroyed the nation.  The World Bank,
the IMF and Australian influences -  have denuded
the nation's vast resources under the guise of
assistance." Troops urged that World Bank and IMF
advisors, as well as Australian military advisors,
be expelled from the country.  Students and Unions
also protested the economic reforms.  A joint
trade union/NGO statement read: "The soldiers'
struggle here is part of the people's global fight
against the wanwol gavman" (global government).
The Morauta Government is cutting back the public
sector and introducing privatisation of public
assets such as Air Niugini and Telikom PNG, in
return for US$200 million in soft loans from the
international financial institutions."



Some Pacific leaders are openly sceptical about
the global free market economy. At January's
Pacific Island Conference of Leaders, Niue's Prime
Minister Sani Lakatani and Cook Islands Prime
Minister Dr. Terepai Maoate strongly criticised
globalisation.  Lakatani said. "Small island
nations are vulnerable and are practically of no
consequence when it comes to combating the adverse
effects of globalization and what is emerging is a
new order of colonialism. The uneven distribution
of wealth and power points to the potential loss
of sovereignty by national governments as the
control of their respective economies become more
subject to global forces such as multinational
companies and the pressures of the select global
brotherhood."



There is definitely trouble in paradise.  Watch
this space.