by Arlo Hemphill, Communications Specialist 

Suva, Fiji.  Thunderous clapping from the seated meke dancers, a solo chant and then silence as a lone dancer, dressed in the grass skirt-like liku vau, delivers a bowl of kava to Meg Caldwell, Center for Ocean Solutions' Executive Director and one of a dozen special guests of honor at this traditional Fijian ceremony.  Ms. Caldwell is seated next to Joketani Cokanasiga, Fiji’s Minister of Fisheries, Forests and Agriculture, who greets the guests assembled from across the Pacific basin with a call to arms, a challenge for all the Pacific - nations and citizens alike - to work in unison in response to the major threats on the largest of our planet’s oceans.  The call now made, the bowls of kava are downed, and the dancers retake center stage, leading the group into a night of revelry and celebration of our shared future.

 This was the opening ceremony for the Pacific Ocean 2020 Visioning Workshop, which began Wednesday evening and was organized by IUCN Oceania.  On Thursday, a rainy morning brought the diverse group of individuals back to more practical matters.  Representing Pacific governments, academia, non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, these professionals have assembled in Fiji to answer one question:  Can we work together across this great expanse of water to address the major challenges to maintaining this as a healthy and productive ocean?  Or is it too big?  Are there too many players and issues at hand to tackle this with any real sense of international cooperation?  Or can we?

 A number of regional efforts are already in motion throughout the mighty Pacific and the participants of the Workshop spent this first morning of meeting reviewing the experiences of some of these including the Micronesia Challenge, the (U.S.) West Coast Governor’s Agreement, ASEAN, the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) and a collection of Oceanscapes.  But each of these valuable efforts cover just a small portion of the wider Pacific.  Is it possible to both coordinate them as well as to fill in the gaps, representing wide expanses of water, that are currently overlooked by such collaboration?

 The Pacific Ocean accounts for half of our planet’s total ocean area and a full one-third of the planet’s surface.  The Center for Ocean Solutions synthesized over 3,500 peer-reviewed science papers addressing Pacific threats, impacts and solutions – the Pacific Ocean Synthesis - and organized a companion Scientific Consensus Statement now signed by over 450 scientists from throughout the Pacific.  The high level conclusions of this report and Consensus Statement indicate that four major threats are common throughout the ocean:

•  Overfishing and Overexploitation 
• Habitat Destruction 
• Pollution  
• Climate Change

 These four threats were found to be ubiquitous - common to rich and poor countries alike, big and small, and without regard to geographical placement within tropical, temperate or polar climes.  Now, with the knowledge in hand that we are all essentially dealing with the same collection of problems, can we work on them together and learn from each other’s successes and failures?  The nation of Fiji thinks we can.