Off the coast of Majuro, Marshall Islands (Credit: Cameron Diver)
I often think the Pacific region is, unjustly, treated as the poor cousin of international development. The Pacific is miles away from a major centre of international influence, and is a gigantic ocean space with very little land and, globally speaking, very few people. The attention of world media and, more often than not, the international community only focuses briefly on the Pacific when there is either a major natural disaster or an exceptional sporting event, before the gaze turns away once more. In addition, the Pacific gets the lowest regional share of total net overseas development assistance, lagging far behind Africa, Asia, America and Europe.
So why then, you might ask, does the Pacific matter?
Read the rest of this blog by Cameron Diver on DevpolicyBlog: http://www.devpolicy.org/why-the-pacific-matters-20180605/