“Pathbreaking” trade study by Tongan scholar, wins award [1]
Friday, October 7, 2005 - 13:00. Updated on Sunday, March 16, 2014 - 12:50.
Small Pacific islands are being marginalised in the process of trade liberalisation, says Tongan scholar Halahingano Rohorua who has won an award from the New Zealand Association of Economists (NZAE) for her analysis of a small Pacific island community under threat from global trade liberalisation.
Her work has been called "pathbreaking" and will have significant policy implications for Pacific Island governments.
Rohorua, who is completing a doctorate on fisheries exports and sustainable resource in Tonga, received a $500 grant towards her graduate study.
"Fisheries is our strength," she says. "It's significant not only as a livelihood, but as something that's uniquely ours here in the Pacific. If we don...t watch how we use our natural resources, we run the risk of overexploiting them. So the sustainability of both our resources and our communities is at risk here."
Rohorua has carried out a detailed survey of a small outer island community which is dependent on fishing. What worries her is that the locals take their fisheries resource for granted. "People don...t realise that if they don't look after this resource, it could disappear," she says.
"For example, tourist developments may offer local jobs, but they also have an impact on resources that local people currently enjoy for free. Tourists want beaches, not mangroves, but the mangroves are important breeding grounds for fish. People need to understand the impact of changes so they can decide what...s sustainable and what isn't."
Rohorua has also collected data on commercial fisheries exports and analysed the barriers to trade ... these include distance from markets, and lack of capital and infrastructure to meet new packaging and quality control regulations.
Marginalised
"We are being marginalised in the process of trade liberalisation," she says. "Most of us in small islands survive on revenues collected from tariffs. If these are removed, what can we do to survive?"
Rohorua says pressures on ecosystems are likely to increase with trade liberalisation, and this will mean island nations will have to make difficult choices.
"I'm building a model which makes the links between resource ecosystems and community lifestyles, and examines the costs and benefits of open market access," she explains. "This will help other Pacific island countries make decisions about how they use their natural resources, whether it...s fisheries in Tonga or timber in the Solomon Islands."
Rohorua's supervisor at the Waikato Management School, Dr Steven Lim, says the NZAE award is an outstanding achievement for a PhD student. "Hala's award reflects the originality and importance of her work," he says. "Her research is path-breaking in terms of the environmental sustainability issues that it addresses and in terms of the modelling that it undertakes. Hala's work will have significant policy implications for Pacific Island governments."