Pacific Reflections
By GABRIEL McCOARD
Guam is the capital of Micronesia. That's hardly a unique observation.
Whatever you want to call the reason—Great Power Geopolitical Play, Trappings of Empire, Expansionism, Injustice—the simple fact remains Guam is the economic and social center of Micronesia. This is in spite of, or perhaps because of, America's Pacific backyard perimeter cutting right through the freely associated states' jurisdictions and their open travel rights.
I don't travel much these days. My 10-year visa to China will expire before I can squeeze out one more trip. I suppose it's fitting since it's written on an expired passport. Over the past few years, the closest thing I've come to a junket was an annual update session I run in a suburban hotel.
Wait, did I just say junket out loud? Pardon me—more meat training conference.
There is an emerging school of skepticism over well-heeled heading global agencies and spending inordinate percentages of their budgets on travel. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's heard stories about hospitals that can't run vital equipment because the budget is spent on executive travel, or the courts that languish while judges attend judicial development and case management conferences.
My own gripes about travel are simple: the most visible elements of an international development industry that remains desperately needed and in desperate need of a policy reset.
Donald Trump's MAGA world has introduced a parallel school of skepticism over the fundamental purpose of development or whether anyone should care about the not-well-off.
On many fronts, development is undergoing such a change. In the wake of wealthy countries cutting back on aid commitments, there is a new focus on greater interaction between less wealthy nations. Such movements are not new. Think of the Bandung Conference and the Nonaligned Movements during the Cold War, whereby nations said they would not follow either the U.S. or Soviet Union. Think also of the whole notion of "Third World" and the many organizations across Africa and South America that emerged following independence.
Foreign Policy magazine, for one, devoted its fall edition to what it called "The End of Development." Among its themes were increased cooperation among the emerging small- to mid-sized economies and the role of China as a game changer.
I have said numerous times an economy cannot be improved until you continue to see at least glimpses of optimism on the economic improvement front.
A recent edition of the Pacific Newsagency Service contained a piece on the Solomon Islands, titled "Value-added products to open new income streams from households." Its gist was to orient food producers and farmers toward export markets with longer shelf-life, which would be more valuable than raw materials. For example, fruit jams instead of raw fruit or cassava flour marketed toward value-added consumers instead of raw roots — kind of thing — items with a higher profit margin.
Nations that, over the past few generations, went from poor to wealthy in certain traits. Many used commodity-based initial industrialization. Growing cotton created the material for textiles. Exports of those textiles brought in money that when reinvested funded other industries and grew the economy and employed more people, creating a broader tax base which, in turn, allowed for services like comprehensive health care.
I previously proposed small-scale projects, like creating emergency medical services in the island, funded and staffed locally. The idea is similar: use local resources to address local problems and, hopefully, generate some economic activity in return. A modest proposal.
Perhaps the most significant development reset has been an acknowledgment that sustainable development needs to be internal. A nation must make a conscious policy choice to improve the lives of its citizens, and then complete that last-mile link between that high-level policy and improving the lives of ordinary people.
The islands have limited resources. The land base is limited, minerals are scarce—at least those easily extracted—and tourism only gets you so far. Local self-interest—you could say corrupt self-interest—tends to get in the way of, say, private exports as national revenue to fund public endeavors that could ultimately be used to make aid or high-interest loans.
Palau, under current conditions, might be able to develop a Monaco-type economy by catering to a global elite, but its neighbors would likely be left behind.
That's just a dream. It will never happen. Come back in six months to see if this actually happens. Wishful thinking. We shall hope it does. ... Too many unnecessary purchases that too many leaders are approving led us to this state.
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the editorial position of the Pacific Islands Times.
A foresaw potential disaster at Palisades project last year just because there hasn't been any public debate in the past with the cliff area does not mean it'll always stay that way. Whenever land excavation is done and natural land is messed with, something is bound to happen. There is nothing supporting the cliff wall and this must be the main issue that should have been given the most urgent consideration before any project is approved. Lately, these problems have been occurring too often and someone must answer as to why. Even if engineering is flawed, the government is ultimately the approving authority. So who signed off on this project? — Jesse Munoz