Physical Features
The Pacific Ocean is the earth's greatest single geographic entity, Expanding over one third of the planet's surface. The islands that lie within this area vary greatly in their physical geographies. The Melanesian countries of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia comprise large, mountainous and mainly volcanic islands. They are endowed with considerable natural resources; fertile soils, large forests which are home to varied and abundant animal life, mineral deposits and rich ocean resources.
Micronesia and Polynesia are characterized by much smaller island countries. Most are made up of small atolls with poor soils, with elevation usually between one or two metres (Kiribati, marshalls, Tokelau and Tuvalu); there are also some islands of volcanic origin with more fertile lands (Western Samoa, Tonga, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Cook Islands). Natural Resources are mostly limited to the ocean; the seas of Micronesia and Polynesia are generally rich in living resources (petroleum, natural gas, minerals) (SPREP 1992).
The People
The Pacific Islands are merely a collection of islands stretching from the Commonwealth of Northern mariana Islands in the north-west Pacific Ocean to Pitcairn in the south-east, but of various forms of grouping. The broadest of these are based on ethnic, cultural and linguistic concepts - the sub regions of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Political developments of the 1960s saw the majority of Pacific countries emerge as sovereign states, which represent another and quite recent type of aggregation.
There are distinct differences in social organisations and cultural practices between the three broad sub-regions (even allowing for some variations within countries) . For example throughout Melanesia social and political status and power are usually acquired on the basis of individual merit and effort. In most of Polynesia they are achieved on the basis of patrilineal descent. In Micronesia, the situation is more complex: on high islands and more fertile atolls, there are close similarities to the Polynesian system, whereas on less endowed atolls, age plays a more prominent role with political control traditionally exercised by a council of elders.
Although containing merely 0.1 per cent of the world's population, the Pacific region contains one-third of the world's languages, testimony to enormous cultural, social and behavioral complexities. This situation is most pronounced in Melanesia, where some 700 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea alone and more than 100 each in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu
Island Economies
Agriculture and fishing are the main activities in the vast majority of the region's population, and for some countries are their only source of exports. Virtually all countries produce and export copra and other coconut products; with markets for this products severely limited, most countries have reduced their outputs considerably in the recent years. As copra has been the major source of export income for many countries, these developments have seriously affected the economies of most outer islands and remote rural areas where copra earning have traditionally been the sole source of household income
Some countries, such as Tonga, Western Samoa and the Cook Islands, export a wide variety of agricultural products to their Pacific Rim neighbours New Zealand, Australia and the United States; Tonga in recent years has also developed a successful squash export industry to Japan. Fiji's main export is sugar. Timber constitutes another important resource in the the large forested countries of Melanesia, with aggressive harvesting by mainly foreign operators having caused considerable controversy in the recent years.
A combined exclusive economic zone of 30 million square kilometers represents a major economic resource in the region. Large-scale commercial fishing is limited to some countries, while others earn substantial export earning by selling fishing rights to their waters.
Few countries are endowed with other resources: The exploitation of minerals is largely restricted to Papua New Guinea (copper, gold and petroleum), Fiji (gold) and New Caledonia (nickel). Phosphate mining has both made Nauru a prosperous country and completely destroyed the island of Banaba in Kiribati.
Other important sources of foreign exchange earning are tourism and principally in Polynesia, remittances from national residing overseas.