By MICHELLE AUAMOROMORO
THE Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) launched the ‘2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent’ which was a new long-term strategy setting the vision and direction to address the challenges that the people in the region were faced with.
The strategy was endorsed by the heads of 17 members of the PIF’s 18-member countries on Thursday last week.
The launching was the highlight of the 51st PIF Leaders Meeting that was held in Suva, Fiji from July 11-14.
The 2050 strategy, which was developed over the last three years, focuses on seven thematic areas: political leadership and regionalism, resources and economic development, climate change, ocean and natural environment, technology and connectivity, people-centered development, and peace and security.
Leaders welcomed and endorsed the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent as the overarching blueprint to advance Pacific regionalism for the next three decades, articulating the region’s long-term vision, values, and key thematic areas and strategic pathways.
With the signing of the 2050 strategy, the leaders made the commitment to nurture collective political will and deepen regionalism and solidarity, collectively deliver for the people, embed their Blue Pacific identity, secure the well-being of the people, protect the people and their place, accelerate their economic growth aspirations, guarantee the future of the children, secure a future for the people, protect the ocean and environment, and ensure a well-connected region.
PIF Chairman and Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama said the new regional blueprint was about ‘Who We Are’.
“The 2050 Strategy is about what we share in common, our challenges and our opportunities about what we need to do together.
“This is why the 2050 Strategy focuses on our people.”
“It is our people who have sent us here to deliberate on their behalf and we owe them strategic response to their greatest challenges especially our youth, our children and grandchildren, who will inherit this strategy and our collective ambitions,” he said.
Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations Patricia Scotland, in a brief press conference commended PIF for adopting the 2050 strategy.
“This overarching strategic document will allow us as partners to better align our work to support our Pacific members and bolster regional effort to address the multiple global challenges we all face,” she said.
With the 2050 strategy now being endorsed, PIF Secretary-General Henry Puna said the forum will now focus on its delivery and implementation.
“My promise is to ensure that we take the strategy forward as it is intended,” he said.
