Russell Marshall draws attention to the ‘largely unrelated and ad hoc activities’ of the Vaka Moana thus far, and expressed his hope that this project might lead to a more coherent strategy for UNESCO’s cultural activities in the Pacific. His views on ad hoc-ery have been widely shared, not least by Mali Voi, who, as coordinator of Vaka Moana since 1992, has been caught between UNESCO’s uncertainties about what culture is and what might be done about it, its bureaucratically-driven definitions and procedures, and the understandings of both political leaders and public servants in twelve very diverse small Pacific countries spread over a third of the earth. The management of Vaka Moana has been fraught with difficulties, and Voi’s chapter is a detailed testimony as to how ad hocery has been the only coherent philosophical basis on which it has been possible to operate. The fact is that in spite its broad ideological proclamations, preambles and volumes such as Our Creative Diversity, UNESCO’s international cultural program has in fact remained fairly firmly tied to specific activities such as museums, archives, folk art, crafts, festivals, traditional knowledge and so forth. These are all worthy and important, and within the funding limits, Vaka Moana has made notable contributions.
The conference had no mandate to come up with resolutions for UNESCO as to what, if anything, might be done about the relationship between culture and development in the region. Freed from this requirement, the speakers and other participants were able to spend a couple of hours each day discussing exactly this point.
The discussions were lively and wide-ranging. From my own notes, there were three topics that provoked the most concern. First, how to bring about changes in the prevailing orthodoxies of development and so prevent, or at least mitigate, the kinds of injustice, victimisation and official indifference that were described in many of the chapters. Mention was made of the difficulties of persuading governments to articulate ‘national visions’, and all agreed that it was necessary to somehow gain access to those who actually make the decisions. Second, there was general agreement that the most industrial and influential nations of the world had no good grounds for urging smaller nations to follow the course that they had taken—given the evidence of crime, social injustice and general anomie in these countries. Third, corruption was the most delicate topic of all, and the one that perhaps provoked the most comments. The devolution of authority to small, localised social units was proposed as one remedy—and then dropped when it was pointed out that corruption was by no means confined to members of national power élites. There was also discussion of the difference between legal corruption, for which there was redress through the courts, and extra-legal or moral corruption, generally centred on money and its accumulation for individualistic ends, in contrast to the basic Pacific redistributive ethic.
The focus of these discussions was a series of ‘agreed-upon suggestions’. None were formally set down in writing and voted on at the time, but there was a general consensus. The first was for a ‘Bill of Cultural Rights’, similar to ‘Action 7’ of the International Program of the World Commission on Cultural Development: ‘Protecting Cultural Rights as Human Rights’ (UNESCO 1995:281–84). The proposed bill involved an independent standing committee, perhaps with an ombudsperson empowered to set the parameters of cultural impact statements and hear complaints. The standing committee could assign particular projects to qualified people who would attempt to mediate cases of grievance.
The second proposal was for a ‘Fono of Wontok Peoples’. Like Action 9—‘A People-Centred UN’—of the International Agenda (UNESCO 1995:285–87), this was based on the idea of gatherings, or a permanent forum, of elements of civil society, rather than government representatives. Such fono or assemblies would fit in with the well-established Pacific practice of touring parties from villages, islands or churches which raise funds for local projects and re-establish links with emigrants. An alternative scenario was to have the fono idea associated with the South Pacific Festival of Arts, providing a venue where traditional leaders rather than government representatives could meet.
The third proposal generally agreed was support for mandatory cultural impact assessments of development projects—which might be associated in some way with the standing committee envisaged by the first proposal. The idea had in fact already been put forward by Englehardt, though he carefully limited it to tourism projects. Burton’s account also supports this idea in its discussion of the realpolitik of social impact studies of mining ventures in Papua New Guinea, and his statement that, in his experience, environmental impact assessments attracted approximately 100 times the financial support given to social impact assessments.
None of the participants would wish the agreed-upon suggestions to cut across any of the Vaka Moana projects already in train, or indeed any of those proposed by Voi. There was general agreement that these projects fit well with the way that culture has been institutionalised within UNESCO, and that they are of intrinsic value. The agreed-upon suggestions are based on a more holistic concept of culture, and more directly political in nature. The problem remains, however, as to how the three practical suggestions which arose might be translated into effective political action. One answer to this, I suggest, lies with the main regional development agencies. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have enormous influence in the region—not only in the aid-receiving countries, but also on the policies of the major bilateral donors. Both have attracted criticism for their economistic mind sets, and over the past few years, perhaps in response to this, they have begun to pay serious attention to social and cultural issues. The Asian Development Bank has published a commissioned volume on the topic (Schoeffel 1996) and the World Bank has published a series of ‘Pacific Islands Discussion Chapters’ devoted to the same issues (Hooper 1998; James 1998; Kabutaulaka 1998; Macdonald 1998; Sutherland 1998).
These initiatives might be usefully endorsed by UNESCO’s Pacific agencies, with the aim of encouraging the banks to incorporate mandatory sociocultural impact reports into their own policy advice. In this manner, cultural issues could be brought to the attention of political leaders in Pacific countries, from where it is only a short step to bilateral donors and to the Pacific Forum, which might then be prepared to consider mandatory cultural impact studies for all development projects. Culture is not in any sense ‘dying out’ in the Pacific. It is adaptable, and is firmly entrenched in the structures of national life throughout the region. What is needed is a mechanism by which the principles on which it is based can be brought forward in the causes of equity and peace.