The challenges faced by small island states

In an interview, Satish Chand discusses the unique challenges facing small island developing states – most obviously from rising sea levels, but also from the economic dynamics created by their small size and isolation

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The Pacific island states are roughly divided into states that have volcanoes, and the low-lying islands which are reefs, and I guess it’s the low islands that face the real challenge from climate change?

That is true, although the challenges of development are much larger than the challenges of geography. One of the things that we cannot change is geography. So, the islands which are low-lying have problems which are very specific to them, and the problems of climate change are the most severe for the low-lying islands, but for those that are volcanic have unique challenges in terms of transportation, and in terms of access. So, for example, if you think of a country like Papua New Guinea, around which the sea is extremely choppy, then providing basic services in that kind of a context is difficult, if not also very, very expensive.

Funafuti, the main island of Tuvalu | Photo: UNDP

Let us also remember that many of the problem island states are not just only in the Pacific, we have island states in the Indian Ocean, we have island states in the Caribbean, and the problems are very similar. So, many of the problems that we may talk about for the Pacific, apply equally to the rest of the planet, wherever these island states are. Many of the problems of island states are also the problems of landlocked, small developing countries. So, think of Gambia, in Africa, as an example. Many of the problems that we have in the Pacific are similar to those that are experienced by landlocked countries in Africa.

That is an interesting idea. Sort of the opposite situation, where in one case you are surrounded by water, and in the other case you have no access to the water.

These are interesting issues to look in. One is basically that of scale. So, if you are small it creates problems of economies of scale, because you don’t have the critical mass to be able to provide the services that you would otherwise provide. The other is that being landlocked impedes trade and communication, just as much as being isolated out in the ocean. So, if you think about migration, if you think about telecommunications, many of the problems faced by small island states, located deep in the middle of oceans, are very similar to the transportation challenges of landlocked countries such as Nepal. Many of these economic problems are similar, but obviously all of them are not the same. If you are thinking about water, if you are thinking about shipping and so on, then the issues are very different.

We started of by talking about climate, and then detoured a little into the notion of landlocked states and the similarities. But I wanted to come back to climate. Which states are most vulnerable in the Pacific?

That’s a very easy question to answer. It’s basically a function of geography for those islands that do not have mountains. Those that are low-lying are the most vulnerable to a rise in sea level. It is not that they would be inundated by water; it’s more that a rising sea level of even a few hundred centimeters basically covers the freshwater lenses, the freshwater resources lying beneath the ground. In a lot of places, the alluvial plains and the freshwater lenses are in the coastal areas. Much of the settlement is also in the coastal areas because this is where the land is most fertile. So, if you have a rise in sea level and freshwater lenses are covered by sea water, then it becomes extremely difficult to sustain habitation.

Which states are facing that situation?

Tuvalu, a coral atoll, is a very little island state of something like 10,000 people located deep in the Pacific Ocean. But we also have the Marshall Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a former trust territory of the US, which is more or less in an identical position. The highest point on Marshall Islands is about two meters. So, all you need is a sea level rise of less than a meter and you would have covered most of the freshwater lenses on the island.

No. Just remember, the Marshall Islands is a country with a total population of 50,000. Obviously, you are not going to have much of a voice if you are a president of a country of 50,000 people. But I think there is also a moral and ethical issue behind this, and this is what the people of Tuvalu or the Marshalls, say. Many of the residents of these islands still live in the past century. They still depend on firewood to cook their food; they still depend on fishing which constitutes the bulk of their diet. So, by any count they are the least responsible for emission of greenhouse gases, but then they are the victims if you like. They are the ones who are going the be the first who are going to pay the price of a rise in sea levels, even if it is by a few centimeters.

Aside from climate, one of the common traits of some of the states is that they are on the edge of becoming what are being called ‘fragile’ states. Tell us about the nature of fragile states among the Pacific island states.

Majuro, Marshall Islands: Volunteers preparing to plant native trees in their community to promote reforestation as a solution to climate change and to urge politicians to pass clean energy policies | Photo: Benedict Yamamura/350.org

One of the major characteristics of state fragility – we are talking of fragility of the nation state – is having divisions within the state. So, whenever you have a contest for power within a state, that’s the beginning of fragility, and particularly if the contest is violent. Now, small island states are particularly vulnerable to having highly divisive forces within them principally because they are divided geographically. So, if you come from two separate islands, and these are small states to begin with, then that, in itself, would have created a division within the community.

Let me use a specific example. The Solomon Islands is a very good case, and is just recovering from a fairly severe civil crisis. Not a war but very close to a war, and a war that probably was stopped through international intervention. Now, again I am oversimplifying, but much of the division there was between people from two major islands. The major infrastructure in terms of the airport and the capital are on Guadacanal — a result of World War II because the airport was put in place during the war. You have people that have migrated from Malaita, the most populated island, to Guadalcanal, and there has been a contest for land, for space, for jobs. That was the seed for the conflict, but it’s much more than that. It has been brewing for many years, for decades, partly because of uneven development, and partly because of migration.

In the case of Fiji, there has also been unrest. Can you tell us about that?

I think I know a bit more about Fiji than I do about the Solomon Islands. But Fiji’s problems are very different to those of the Solomon Islands. In Fiji you had an indigenous population and then, going back into history, Fiji was a British colony. Britain then was looking for places to grow cotton and Fiji had fairly fertile land. But they needed labour, and in those days India was also a British colony, so they took indentured workers out of India to Fiji. As a result of that, again I am sort of oversimplifying a hundred years, we have a country made up of two fairly distinct ethnic groups. Here ethnicity is a fairly clear definition, in terms of people coming out of India and having a language, culture, and customs, very much linked to India. But these guys have been there more than a hundred years, so they have sort of assimilated to a large degree to the local environment, but then you have the indigenous population and they look very different. And that in itself creates a very clear divide between the two groups. One of the determining factors for conflict is in being able to mobilize groups, and ethnicity provides a fairly clear basis for mobilizing populations.

If I am recalling correctly you did some interesting work on education and migration in Fiji, taking it as a natural experiment. Can you tell us about that?

A big debate within migration literature particularly, has to do with ‘brain drain’. And I say ‘brain drain’ in quotes because I think there is very little truth to brain drain. However, there is an ongoing debate in the literature about whether the migration of skilled workers leads to depletion in the stock of skills in the source country, and the belief has been that it always does so.

And you are saying this is not the case?

Not necessarily the case. For example in the Philippines, they are saying the departure of nurses out of the Philippines leads to bad health service outcomes in the Philippines… Look, at my own case, the day I catch the plane and move out of Fiji, does it mean that you now have one less trained person in Fiji? The minute I board the plane, sure it does, but if me boarding the plane induces another person to invest in education so that they can fill my shoes, fill the position left vacant, then it may actually mean that one for one,  it will just offset it altogether. But if it was more than one person who gets trained in anticipation of migrating, then what you can actually have is an increase in the stock of trained people as a result of having this exit option of migration.

So, you say more people go to university if there is a chance to go overseas eventually with that degree? Then you wind up with a more highly educated population than if you didn’t have the emigration option?

Yes, you are doing a great job of explaining this. So, in the case of Fiji, I think we can show quite convincingly that the result is exactly as you explain. The access to emigration of skilled workers has led to a rise in the stock of tertiary-trained people in Fiji, more so then would have otherwise been the case.

And this comes back to the ethnic difference we discussed, because you have the population divided essentially into two groups?

In the case of Fiji, we have had close to a sort of natural experiment. We have a country, a small island state, which has got a division, a 50-50 division between two ethnic groups. Fiji had a military coup, actually two coups, in 1987, and these were coups carried out by a military which is largely indigenous, about 95-98% indigenous, and the coup was executed in the name of protecting the indigenous people’s rights. As a result of that, we have seen one of the largest exoduses of skilled people out of any country, ever. About a third of the tertiary-trained, skilled Indo-Fijians emigrated. So, what you would expect is that, as the result of this migration, the stock of tertiary-trained Indo-Fijians would fall in Fiji. Now, when we compare what happens to the stock of trained Indo-Fijians vis-à-vis the indigenous population — remember we started 50-50 — what we showed quite clearly in the data is that, if anything, the stock of trained Indo-Fijians went up compared to what happened with the indigenous population. We actually have these two groups, and we can compare before and after the coup, and we show fairly convincingly that the stock of trained people following migration actually went up for the group that was exposed to migration.

When you say exposed to migration, why were they more exposed to migration than the indigenous people? So was it that they were bared from certain jobs?

Yes, the policies were highly discriminatory on the basis of ethnicity. All of the policies brought in following the coup discriminated against Indians, including access to scholarships, access to training facilities, having access to funds, to businesses and so on. So, that induced one group, the treatment group if you like, to invest in education for migration.

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• Satish Chand is professor of economics at the Crawford School of Economics & Government at the Australian National University of Asia and the Pacific.

• The above is an edited and abridged version of an interview conducted by Lawrence MacDonald for the Centre for Global Development, and broadcast as part of the Centre’s Global Prosperity Wonkcast series.