Japan talks with Pacific Islands focus on climate, while security issues take second place

The 10th Pacific Islands Leaders’ Meeting was attended by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and representatives from 18 member states of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), a regional body that also includes Australia and New Zealand.

The other 16 countries are the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, French Polynesia and New Caledonia.

Kishida said Japan will cooperate with its Pacific counterparts over the next three years in areas including climate change, economic development, disaster resilience and carbon reduction.

Both sides also agreed to strengthen defense exchanges through port calls involving ships and aircraft of the Japan Self-Defense Force, and to intensify cooperation between the Japan Coast Guard and local maritime authorities.

Hideyuki Shiozawa, director of the Island States Department at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, said the meeting’s focus on climate change was not surprising given that Pacific island states have prioritized the issue.

While regional security and military interests were also important, Japan could not tackle such challenges alone and had to cooperate with the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand in these areas, Shiozawa said.

According to Shiozawa, the Pacific island nations in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres have different views on security.

While the former countries – Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau, or the Freely Associated States – had strengthened security cooperation with Japan and the US, the southern hemisphere countries in the region generally emphasized humanitarian response, cybersecurity and illegal fishing, Shiozawa said.

In March, Washington passed legislation providing $7.1 billion over 20 years for the Freely Associated States, intended to counter China’s growing influence in the region.

In February, Japan conducted cyber defense exercises with five island nations: the three Free Associated States, Nauru and Kiribati.

The increased focus of the US and Japan on Pacific island states comes amid China’s growing influence in the region. In 2022, Beijing signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands.

Céline Pajon, head of Japan research at the Center for Asian and Indo-Pacific Studies at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris, said Japan is keen to counter China’s growing influence through security cooperation.

Japan will continue to strengthen bilateral cooperation with Pacific island states in security and defense and within multilateral frameworks, Pajon said.

Thus, Japan, together with its allies, addressed several issues by joining the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) partnership and Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP), both established in 2022.

The first was established by the Quad – comprising Australia, India, Japan and the US – with the aim of monitoring regional maritime spaces and securing open sea lines of communication.

The latter – founded by Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US – is tasked with strengthening economic and diplomatic ties with the Pacific island states.

The fight against wastewater disinformation

Jamie Lee, a WSD-Handa researcher at the Pacific Forum in Honolulu, said Japan needs to do more to address security challenges in the region. He pointed out that China has launched disinformation campaigns targeting Pacific island nations.

“As a trusted partner and ally of the US, Japan could become an active leader in tackling disinformation campaigns targeting the Pacific Islands by funding workshops on identifying disinformation,” said Lee, an analyst of Japanese affairs and regional security.

China is reportedly attacking Pacific island nations online to undermine their democracies and relations with other partners, according to a March report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

At the Tokyo meeting, Kishida expressed concern about the discharge of wastewater from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. He said Japan would continue to reassure Pacific island nations about the safe discharge of its treated radioactive water. Analysts have said the phased discharge of treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean is expected to take three decades.

According to Lee, Japan needs to be transparent in data collection and improve communication with Pacific island nations, and combat disinformation at every stage of wastewater discharge.

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According to a 2023 report from Logically, the UK-based data analytics firm alleged that China and its state media ran a disinformation campaign about Japan’s wastewater discharges. It included placing paid ads on Facebook and Instagram in multiple countries and languages ​​without disclaimers.

Meanwhile, the Global Times reported on Monday that Japan, the US and their allies wanted to transform the South Pacific region into “a military base… and even arm Pacific island states.”

Citing analysts, the Chinese state-run journal also accused Japan of “failing to hide its wild ambitions to expand its influence in the Asia-Pacific region” and accelerating its military expansion far beyond the needs of “self-defense.”

“Pacific island states are now most concerned about climate change, as Japan tries to convince the region to accept its handling of nuclear-polluted waters,” the report said.

Lee said that Japan’s dissemination of accurate information on radiation levels released from wastewater discharges would help determine the position of all Pacific island nations on the issue.

Noting that the purified water has been scientifically proven to be safe, Shiozawa said Japan should carefully explain its wastewater disposal procedures to build confidence in the technology.

“I hope there will be no approach to force Pacific Island countries to understand or accept that other countries say it is safe, so Pacific Island countries have to accept it too,” Shiozawa added.