Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Minister for Fisheries, Hon. Jelta Wong emphasized that the Pacific Island can’t be spectators in our own waters.
Minister Wong, at the 2025 Honiara Summit, spoke on the Pacific Islands region response to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.4, saying; “we all acknowledge that SDG 14.4 outlines what needs to be done to ensure the sustainability of fisheries and that we need to think of the future.”
He said as long as there is demand for fish and fisheries products, SDG 14.4 will continue to remain in effect.
“I echo the sentiments of my Prime Minister, James Marape in saying that we’ve talked enough.
“This came about when the Minister of Kiribati Fisheries, Hon. Ribwanataake Awira and Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources of Solomon Islands, Hon. Nestor Ghiro, said that they were the tuna capital of the world, but they didn’t have any tuna and fish.”
He added that our founding fathers had the idea to consolidate us all, but in the years to come, we’ve never gotten anywhere, we’re still spectators.
Minister Wong posed a question, “Do we continue to be spectators?”
“The narrative has to change. The status quo has to change. We’re all looking for what we can do best for our countries, but as a Pacific nation, as a Pacific region, if we stand together, we can achieve more,” he said.
“I take the words of our good fisheries Minister from Niue, Hon. Mona Ainu’u, it doesn’t matter how small you are or how big you are.
“If you have the dream, that the generations after us can have something, then it’s the leadership of today that will forge the path for the future of our people,” said Minister Wong.
“We supported the SDG 14.4 because we believe that we should follow what the Western world wants us to follow to ensure our fishing stocks, the prices are correct and everything. But it means nothing to us.
“If you go back to our people who come from the islands, (2:49) who fish every day just to sustain themselves, their life is so simple,” he said.
He added that our generation of children today have no inclination of what’s happening outside their world.
“That is what the Pacific people feel like every time we are dictated to on how to control our tuna or the price of our tuna or the price of the resource that flows in our waters,” he said.
“I am a big believer of the Eastern New Britain Initiative (ENBi), an initiative forged out of Pacific people.
“We have been told so many times that we cannot do it. We have been told so many times that you cannot manage it yourself. That is the thing of the past. We have leaders in the Pacific now that are more focused, more driven, and want to build a future for our people, not as only one nation but as one region. That is the message that we will be taking wherever we go.
“When we put ENBi and we work with the SDG 14.4, we will achieve the goals that we all dream of making,” Minister Wong said.
By AGNES MENANOPO
Solomon Star, Honiara
