Science and technology in Pacific Island countries
In Fiji and Papua New Guinea, for instance, there is a need to adopt automated machinery and design in forestry and to improve training, in order to add value to exports.
Growth in Internet access since 2010 has levelled out the disparity between countries to some extent, although connectivity remained extremely low in Vanuatu (11%), the Solomon Islands (8%) and Papua New Guinea (7%) in 2013.
To benefit from modern digital and other technological tools, regulatory bodies have adopted social media platforms and messaging systems in official protocols to disseminate disaster warnings in Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Niue, as well as weather forecasts and information on climate change.
Efforts are under way to assess cybersecurity capacity in Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, in tandem with the United Nations International Telecommunication Union and other partners.
[4] Both the largest and smallest Pacific nations acknowledge that taking a regional approach to science and technology offers them greater opportunities for institutional development.
[1] The other six partners are: the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Institut de recherche pour le développement in France, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, a joint international institution of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States and the European Union, the Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação, United Nations Industrial Development Organization and Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Ecology in Germany.
PACE-Net Plus focuses on three societal challenges:[1] PACE–Net Plus has organized a series of high-level policy dialogue platforms alternately in the Pacific region and in Brussels, the headquarters of the European Commission.
[1] A conference held in Suva (Fiji) in 2012 under the umbrella of PACE–Net Plus produced recommendations for a strategic plan for research, innovation and development in the Pacific.
[1] It was intended for the policy role of the Pacific Islands University Research Network to be informed by evidence gleaned from measuring capability in science, technology and innovation but the absence of data presents a formidable barrier.
Such efforts include the PRISM database from the SPC Statistics for Development Division[6] and the national and regional environmental data portals created by countries with the support of the Inform Project.
Scholarship schemes like National Toppers, introduced in 2014, and the availability of student loans have made higher education attractive and rewarding in Fiji.
[1] According to an internal investigation into the choice of disciplines in school-leaving examinations (year 13), Fijian students have shown a greater interest in science since 2011.
[1] Over the six years to 2012, government expenditure on health remained fairly constant but low in Fiji, at about 5% of the total for research, according to the Fijian National Bureau of Statistics.
The Fijian government plans to diversify this sector through aquaculture, inshore fisheries and offshore fish products such as sunfish and deep-water snapper.
Relative to many other South Pacific Islands, Fiji has a fairly reliable and efficient telecommunications system with access to the Southern Cross submarine cable linking New Zealand, Australia and North America.
Countries around the Pacific Rim are seeking ways to link their national knowledge base to regional and global advances in science.
[1] Climate change is a parallel concern, as the Pacific Rim is also one of the most vulnerable regions to rising sea levels and increasingly capricious weather patterns.
Climate change mostly concerns marine issues, such as the growing frequency and severity of storms, rising sea levels and the increased salinity of soils and groundwater.
A shared regional asset, the centre has four mutually reinforcing functions: knowledge brokerage; applied research; capacity-building; and innovation to promote climate change adaptation and mitigation.
The centre also houses a research node of Australia’s University of Newcastle in partnership with the Pacific Regional Environment Programme; it has offered PhD scholarships since 2018 and hosts an ‘innovation incubator’.
Research undertaken at the centre aligns with the four priority areas defined by the Pacific leaders, namely: climate change resilience; ecosystems and biodiversity protection; waste management; and environmental governance.
The Samoa Pathway focuses on, inter alia, sustainable consumption and production; sustainable energy, tourism and transportation; climate change; disaster risk reduction; forests; water and sanitation, food security and nutrition; chemical and waste management; oceans and seas; biodiversity; desertification, land degradation and drought; and health and non-communicable diseases.
As a result, product ranges are limited to sawed timber, veneer, plywood, block board, moulding, poles and posts and wood chips.
Policy-makers need to turn their attention to eliminating these barriers, in order for forestry to make a more efficient and sustainable contribution to national economic development.
In Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Vanuatu, renewable energy sources already represent significant shares of the total electricity supply: 60%, 66%, 37% and 15% respectively.
The increase was attributed to investments in imported, plug-in solar home systems, supported by the Vanuatu Rural Electrification Project in 2016.
[4] The centre facilitates a financial mechanism offering competitive grants for start-ups to spur the adoption of renewable energy by the business sector.
For example, the European Union has funded the Renewable Energy in Pacific Island Countries Developing Skills and Capacity programme (EPIC).
[1] Limited freedom of expression and, in some cases, religious conservatism discourage research in certain areas but the experience of Pacific Island countries shows that sustainable development and a green economy can benefit from the inclusion of traditional knowledge in formal science and technology, as underlined by the Sustainable Development Brief prepared by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in 2013.
A new set of guidelines are now in place in Fiji to help build endogenous capacity in health research through training and access to new technology.
