Leaders of the region’s smaller island states – Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Niue, Palau and Tuvalu – convened yesterday to discuss the issues closest to their hearts.

Binding the region’s smallest nations are a few common challenges – climate change, sub-regional transportation, coastal erosion, ocean acidification – they face on account of being especially vulnerable and geographically isolated.

”We’re always talking about the Pacific region as a whole, the Pacific is not similar right throughout – there are big island countries like the Solomons, like PNG, (that) have their own challenges but their challenges are on a scale that does not relate to the challenges faced by the small island states,“ Prime Minister Henry Puna said during a press conference convened at the end of yesterday’s smaller island states leaders’ meeting.

Climate change financing featured heavily in the leaders’ discussions, which stretched from 9am to about 3pm.

Forum Secretariat secretary-general Tuiloma Neroni Slade said smaller island states face particular difficulties accessing the funding available globally for climate change mitigation.

”Small islands do not have large bureaucracies to service the documentation and all the other demands of reporting (to the World Bank) and so on, so there was discussion about how this position could be ameliorated to help small communities to tackle these difficult procedural requirements. We are working on ways to be able to assist these countries and their requests might require this sort of assistance to access financing,“ Slade said.

He noted the Forum Secretariat is undertaking a study in Nauru to better understand the impact of climate change on a small island state, but in the meantime is on hand to assist smaller island states in terms of providing technical expertise and the ”necessary people to do the work“.

Small island state leaders yesterday discussed the way the Pacific Plan affects their small islands.

”There is a special place in that developmental effort for the small island states because of their much smaller capacities...for a position of smallness obviously attracts extra and additional vulnerability and so the Pacific Plan implementation provides accordingly,“ Slade said.

There was discussion of transportation within and between small island states, for whom ”transportation is absolutely essential“ because of their distance from main transportation routes.

Puna pointed to a few examples of cooperation amongst small island states, including a shipping arrangement between Tuvalu, Kiribati and Nauru ”which has provided a much-needed lifeline for these three communities“, and the recent collaboration between the Cook Islands and Samoa. The latter, he said yesterday, is ”a development that is very much still on the discussion table“.

”We hope to see some finalisation in terms of moving forward before the conclusion of the Forum.“

Leaders also discussed the declaration of small island states as ‘large ocean states’.

”The reason that the Cook Islands came up with this theme for the Forum is because there is a pervading perception not just among ourselves but also in the international community that we are small, small, small. Yes, this is true of our land size, our land area, but it’s not necessarily true of our actual size, overall size – for example, in the Cook Islands we have a very small land mass...yet when you take our EEZ into calculation, into account, we’re bigger than the state of Texas,“ he said.

”...Let’s start thinking of ourselves as not small in the traditional sense but in fact that we are large ocean states because of our exclusive economic zones.“

Discussions held between small island states leaders yesterday will be compiled into a communiqu and presented before the Pacific Islands Forum.

French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, and Tokelau were present at the small island states meeting as observers.

- Rachel Reeves

- A regional technical support mechanism for accessing climate change funds

- Feasibility study into establishment of another hospitality training centre in the Cooks

- Central Pacific Shipping Commission’s efforts to improve inter-regional shipping

- Support for bid by Republic of Marshall Islands to host next year’s Pacific Islands Forum