Indonesia’s policy of engagement with the Pacific region

Arto Suryodipuro, Jakarta | Thu, 09/08/2011 8:00 AM A | A | A |-Klipping the Jakarta Post

Members of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) are regrouping on Sept. 7 and 8 in Auckland, New Zealand, and will be followed by a meeting with the PIF’s dialogue partners on Sept. 9. Indonesia and 13 other entities will
participate in the Post Forum Dialogue (PFD).

The PFD is a forum for non-PIF entities to convey their cooperative and developmental assistance. Indonesia will be represented by Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who will reiterate the importance of Indonesia’s relations with the Pacific and convey technical cooperation projects with the Pacific islands.

The PIF and the Pacific in general do not feature in Indonesia’s foreign policy as much as other parts of Indonesia’s neighborhood, such as Southeast Asia and Australia.

What are Indonesia’s interests in the Pacific? What are the features of Indonesia’s foreign policy in
the Pacific?

First, Indonesia is strengthening relations with all its neighbors, including the Pacific. It’s a strategy to ensure a stable and productive neighborhood, which in turn will support Indonesia’s interests. Indonesia is, for example, strengthening relations in Southeast Asia through ASEAN, as it is with Australia through the establishment of the annual heads of government and defense and foreign affairs ministers meetings.

Southeast Asia and the Pacific are also areas of strategic interest to the major powers, which makes the creation of a stable and predictable environment in Asia and the Pacific even more vital for Indonesia.

Second, Indonesia’s relations with the Pacific are multilayered.

At the bilateral level, Indonesia has bilateral diplomatic relations with 15 Pacific island countries and is in the process of establishing diplomatic relations with three more Pacific Islands countries — Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu.

Participating in the PIF Post Forum Dialogue in 2001 was another component in strengthening relations with the Pacific. Indonesia is one of 14 of the PIF’s dialogue partners, the others being Canada, China, the European Union, France, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the
United States.

The Pacific Islands Forum was founded in August 1971 and today comprises 16 states — Australia, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Its goals are “to stimulate economic growth and enhance political governance and security for the region through the provision of policy advice; and to strengthen regional cooperation and integration through coordinating, monitoring and evaluating implementation of leaders’ decisions”.

Indonesia is strengthening relations with the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). The MSG Summit last March in Fiji admitted Indonesia and Timor Leste as observers of the MSG.

The group consists of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of New Caledonia. It was established in 1983 as a political and solidarity group and in 2007 transformed into a regional organization with broad purposes — to further economic growth, sustainable development, good governance and security.

The group is not only an ethnic-based grouping; it is also a natural sub-region that connects naturally with Indonesia’s eastern boundaries and holds significant trade, investment, tourism and connectivity capacities in the South Pacific.

Indonesia also initiated with Australia the establishment of the Southwest Pacific Dialogue in 2002. It meets annually at the foreign ministers level. The membership also includes the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and New Zealand. Its focus of work is on people-to-people contact, sociocultural issues and connecting Southeast Asia with the South Pacific.

A recently-added layer of Indonesia’s relation with the Pacific was the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI). Established at the sidelines of the World Ocean Conference in 2009, it is a multilateral partnership to safeguard the rich marine resources of the Indo-Pacific region for future generations. It covers the territories of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste.

Third, Indonesia’s relation with the Pacific is built on a broad range of common issues. It departs from the fact that Indonesia is a natural part of the Pacific. Indonesia’s eastern provinces share common geographic location, biogeography and ecosystems as well as cultural and ethnical similarities.

There are also common challenges. Foremost among them are natural disasters, including global warming and rising sea levels, earthquakes and tsunamis, typhoons and volcanic eruptions.

Food security is another area of common concern, especially when it comes to the sustainability of fishery resources.

Connectivity and economy of scale are issues in the Pacific that Indonesia also shares, such as distance between ports and adequacies of ports, availability of various transportation means, small population and density and small trade volumes.

Because of the similarities, Indonesia and Pacific island countries also have a lot of strategies to share in addressing those challenges.

Finally, Indonesia’s relation with the Pacific is thus far government-driven, but it needs to be broad-based, involving greater participation from the private sector and business community, academia, media and other elements of society. The idea is to increase their participation as diplomatic relations,
and regional institutions are being put in place.

The writer is director for intra-regional cooperation in Asia Pacific and Africa at the Foreign Affairs Ministry.