When Pacific leaders meet next week for the Pacific Islands Forum summit, they need to drastically overhaul their regional E-Commerce Strategy.
That's the view of the Pacific Network on Globalisation, or PANG, which said the strategy, commissioned by the Forum last year, denies Pacific countries their sovereign right to manage their digital domains, including data.
PANG has now released a new critique of the strategy, written by emeritus law professor at Auckland University, Jane Kelsey.
She said the Pacific needs strategies that are by, and for, the region.
"At the core is the control of data but also the dominance of big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Alibaba, and even geopolitical competition in the region. Now this is crucially important to Pacific Island countries but sadly the current e-commerce strategy does not address any of those questions," she said.
Kelsey's report is called "Re-thinking the Pacific's E-commerce Strategy: Putting Cooperation, Digital Sovereignty and Development at the Core."
She said that "regional strategies are needed to address the challenges of scale and interoperability, encourage common standards, and share technologies and infastructure. They must also be holistic enough to serve countries' social, cultural, development, economic and democratic priorities, and avoid giving priority to commerce over these broader considerations."
"They must also be robust enough to withstand the mounting geopolitical turbulence in the region and around digital and data regimes," Kelsey said.
Her review has sparked a call for Pacific leaders to also look again at the Pacer Plus agreement in trade and services.
Photo: RNZ / Kim Baker Wilson
The Pacer Plus deal, which has taken the best part of 20 years to get across the line, is now coming into force.
But PANG said change is needed.
Kelsey said, after reading the Forum's strategy, she was shocked at the commitments the island states had been forced to make in trade deals.
"Especially in Pacer Plus. And they can only benefit Australia and New Zealand. So it's time, especially in the current discussions about how to regenerate those relationships in the Pacific, that Pacer Plus is reviewed through a development lens to ensure that the Pacific Islands retain their regulatory sovereignty over the digital domain," she said.