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Opinion Opinion

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has ratified PACER Plus.

THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC

ORDER: LEARNING FROM HISTORY

By Ambassador Kaliopate Tavola is this regional architecture that is the face of regionalism and
necessarily the counterpart to the rest of the world. This thus
Post-COVID-19 propositions for various sectors of the earns its ‘NIEO’ lexicon in Aqorau’s perspectives.
economy currently abound. Credit to those who are churning But all this rings a loud bell. The regional leaders, way back
out these fine ideas for public consumption. One in particu- in 1971 at the first ever meeting of the then South Pacific Fo-
lar, by Dr. Transform Aqorau: ‘Imagining a new post-COVID-19 rum, were also deeply immersed in imagining the various solu-
international economic order (NIEO) for the Pacific Islands’ is tions to the challenges they faced. Then, the unprecedented
essentially regional in essence and in application. Dr. Aqorau challenges for the five Pacific Island Countries (PICS) related
refers to it as ‘a single custom and development union’, or to their newly independent state. A solution, they imagined,
alternatively, ‘a single economic and development union’. was ‘the possibility of establishing an economic union for the
His article goes on to describe this NIEO for the Pacific area.”
Islands. In the lexicon of regionalism, Aqorau’s NIEO is es- ‘The area’ in this specific instance can be deduced from the
sentially regional economic integration, with a degree of formulation of the leaders’ decision as trading between and
specificity on extractive industries, structured on the basis amongst the five PICs, ‘whose senior officials were to meet
of a free trade agreement, and which has progressed to a within three months’ to progress the establishment of an
customs union, common market and economic union. But it economic union; and officials from Australia and New Zealand
goes beyond that to include advanced regional integration were to join this task by way of promoting ‘trade and eco-
measures to coordinate policies beyond economic, including nomic cooperation in the region.’
the coordination of institutions through a regional parliament, The sense of creativity and adventure that characterised
for example. the decision-making above is worthy of notice. It all came
Professor Biman Chand Prasad had earlier suggested some- about notwithstanding the two-caucus approach to conferenc-
thing similar: a ‘Pacific community and Pacific Parliament.’ It ing that existed then. This two-caucus approach, however,

26 Islands Business, November 2020