The Mini – States Of South Pacific And Their Vulnerabilities

Abstract

The South Pacific is a vast sub-region of Asia and the Pacific consisting of two developed countries of Australia and New Zealand and twenty-two island countries delineated by the South Pacific Commission. Definitionally, that collectivity of island groups which participates in the work of the main regional bodies such as the South Pacific Forum and the South Pacific Commission is accepted as the South Pacific. The island nations of the South Pacific are scattered around the vast expanse of Oceania in the southwest, south, and west central Pacific. The geographical limits of this sub-region are represented by Papua New Guinea and the former United States Pacific Trust Territories to the west, Hawaii and Easter Island to the north and east respectively and Australia and New Zealand to the south.

Only nine island countries of South Pacific have attained the status of independent nations. In order of the time of their independence, they are Western Samoa (1962), Nauru (1968), Tonga (1970), Fiji (1970), Papua New Guinea (1975), the Solomon Islands (1978), Tuvalu, formerly the Ellice Islands (1978), Kiribati, formerly the Gilbert Islands (1979), and Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides (1980). Out of the four island groupings placed under the United States administration as Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands by the United Nations Organisation in 1947, the Northern Mariana Islands sought the Commonwealth status in association with the US, through a referendum in 1975, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia voted in favour of a Compact of Free Association with the US which was also joined by Palau (Belau) in 1994. American Samoa and Guam are the "Territories" of the US, while French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna are French Territories in the South Pacific. The Cook Islands and Niue came into Free Association with New Zealand in 1965 and 1974 respectively. While Tokelau is a dependency of New Zealand, Pitcairn is the last British dependency in the South Pacific, which is administered by Britain's high commissioner to New Zealand.

The principal physical characteristic of the South Pacific is dominated by a vast maritime space punctuated irregularly by small island groups. The total population of the South Pacific region was 5,660,500 in 1987. Populations were unevenly distributed, numbering less than 100 in Pitcairn, 1,600 in Tokelau, 2,500 in Niue and 8,500 in Tuvalu while exceeding 3.46 million in Papua New Guinea. The area encompassed by the maritime boundaries of island states is 29.5 million square kilometers of which .55 million square kilometres are land. The countries of the region also vary enormously in terms of their size. The Tokelau Islands has a land area of only 10 square kilometres while Papua New Guinea, with a total land area of approximately 460,500 square kilometres, is the state with the largest land mass in the region. The islands of the South Pacific comprise a wide range of geological types. These range form high volcanic islands as in the case of Tahiti and Rarotonga to low coral atolls, varying in size from the world's largest atoll, Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands (with a lagoon over 110 kilometres in length) to clusters of small isolated coral atolls that characterise much of the central Pacific nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu