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The Pacific Community (SPC) is the principal scientific and technical organisation in the Pacific region. It is an international development organisation owned and governed by its 26 country and territory members. With more than 600 staff, the organisation's headquarters are in Nouméa, New Caledonia, and it has regional offices in Suva, Fiji, and Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia, as well as a country office in Honiara, Solomon Islands, and field staff in other Pacific locations. Its working languages are English and French.
Contents
- History
- Present
- SPC programmes and services
- Land Resources Division
- Fisheries Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems Division
- Social Development Division
- Operations and Management Directorate OMD
- Strategic Engagement Policy and Planning Facility
- SPC chief executives
- Directors of services Deputy Directors General Deputy Directors General in charge of Operations and Management from 2013 onwards
- Directors of programmes deputy directors general
- Directors of marine resources fisheries coordinators
- Directors of land resources
- Directors of corporate services
- The Pacific Way
- References
History
The Pacific Community was founded in 1947 as the South Pacific Commission by six developed countries with an interest in the region:
For reasons either of reduced development interest in the Pacific Islands region or a desire to concentrate assistance in other areas of greater poverty, two founding members have since withdrawn from SPC: the Netherlands in 1962 and the United Kingdom in 1994 and – after rejoining in 1998 – again in 2004.
SPC's founding charter is the Canberra Agreement. In the aftermath of World War II, the six colonial powers which created the SPC arguably intended it to secure Western political and military interests in the postwar Pacific.
From the start, SPC's role was constrained, and the invitation from Australia and New Zealand to the US, France, Netherlands and the UK to participate in a South Seas Commission Conference in 1947 included the statement that "the [South Pacific] Commission to be set up should not be empowered to deal in any way with political matters or questions of defense or security" This constraint on discussion (particularly the constraint on discussing nuclear weapons testing in the region) led, eventually, to the creation of the South Pacific Forum (now Pacific Islands Forum), which not only excluded the more distant "metropolitan" powers of France, UK and USA, but also their Pacific Island territories.
Present
Today, SPC is the principal scientific and technical organisation in the Pacific region.
SPC works closely with donor and technical assistance organisations such as AusAID, the European Union, FAO, the United Nations, New Zealand Aid Programme and CTA.
The SPC family includes all 22 Pacific island countries and territories, which since 1983 have been full members:
These were all territories (or, in the case of Tonga, a protected state) of the original founder members of SPC, but most are now independent. Dutch New Guinea, formerly represented in the SPC by the Netherlands, was transferred to the United Nations in 1962 and to Indonesia in 1969. Thus, the Netherlands is no longer represented in the SPC since the end of 1962. The United Kingdom also withdrew from the organisation on 1 January 1995.
SPC today is the oldest and largest organization in the Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific (CROP), a consultative process that is headed at the political level by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. Since the hand-over of co-ordination of regional political issues from the SPC Conference to the South Pacific Forum in the 1970s, SPC has concentrated on providing technical, advisory, statistical and information support to its member governments and administrations, particularly in areas where small island states lack the wherewithal to maintain purely national cadres of expertise, or in areas where regional co-operation or interaction is necessary.
SPC was the first CROP organization to be headed by a woman, Lourdes Pangelinan of Guam who left the organization end of January 2006. Colin Tukuitonga is the organization's current Director-General.
SPC programmes and services
SPC works across more than 25 sectors. It is involved in such areas as fisheries science, public health surveillance, geoscience and conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. Much of SPC’s focus is on major cross-cutting issues, such as climate change, disaster risk management, food security, gender equality, human rights, non-communicable diseases and youth employment. Using a multi-sector approach in responding to its members’ development priorities, SPC draws on skills and capabilities from around the region and internationally, and supports the empowerment of Pacific communities and sharing of expertise and skills between countries and territories.
It has seven divisions: Economic Development, Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems, Geoscience, Land Resources, Public Health, Social Development and Statistics for Development. SPC also has an Operations and Management Directorate, various programmes and other main work areas.
Land Resources Division
The Land Resources Division, based in Suva, comprises two programmes – sustainable management of forest and agriculture systems, and biosecurity and trade facilitation. It operates the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees, which is a plant propagation vault in Fiji. The Secretariat of the Pacific Community's Land Resources Division provides advice, expertise, technical support and training to members on all aspects of agriculture and forestry, including:
Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems Division
This division has seven sections organised into two programmes which provide services to member countries and territories. In the case of the Oceanic Fisheries Programme these scientific and statistical services complement the highly-migratory fish stock management and MCS services provided by other western Pacific regional fisheries bodies, including the Forum Fisheries Agency, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, the Parties to the Nauru Agreement and Te Vaka Moana. The Coastal Fisheries Programme however is the only Pacific Islands regional fisheries body providing monitoring, science, management and development services in reef or nearshore fisheries and aquaculture.
Oceanic
Coastal
Social Development Division
This division covers a broad range of areas and includes the:
Operations and Management Directorate (OMD)
Strategic Engagement, Policy and Planning Facility
SPC chief executives
The following is a list of the Secretaries-General and Directors-General (the title of the chief executive was changed in 1997) of the Pacific Community (the name of the Organization was also changed in 1997, from South Pacific Commission to Secretariat of the Pacific Community, and changed again to Pacific Community in 2015):
Directors of services / Deputy Directors-General / Deputy Directors-General in charge of Operations and Management (from 2013 onwards)
Directors of programmes / deputy directors general
Directors of marine resources / fisheries coordinators
Directors of land resources
Directors of corporate services
The Pacific Way
SPC produces a television show, The Pacific Way. It began in 1995, supported by UNESCO, as a trial for exchanging news stories – with just one tape circulated between TV stations in several Pacific Island nations – and has evolved into a series distributed to 21 TV stations around the region. The half-hour weekly show shares development stories about the Pacific for the Pacific. It covers important topics and key issues, such as climate change adaptation, health, youth employment, innovation in agriculture, fisheries management and the protection of cultural heritage.