In a sprawling Pacific Ocean region prone to natural disasters, a new multinational response team is streamlining recovery assistance to island nations and territories. Australia’s influential role, meanwhile, enhances its position as the Blue Pacific nations’ primary security collaborator.
The Pacific Response Group (PRG) enables far-flung states to help each other with humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Recovery efforts led by a single coordinating entity within the region also can avoid duplicate efforts and confusion in a disaster’s aftermath.
“There is unquestionably a sense of wanting to provide support and help almost instantaneously,” said Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles. But “sometimes countries can kind of be overwhelmed with the love.”
Australia, the largest Blue Pacific nation, provides transportation, financial resources and military personnel. The Australian city of Brisbane is the base for a PRG advisory unit that assesses needs and coordinates recovery efforts with foreign militaries and local first responders.
Australia’s leadership role could strengthen its status as the region’s primary security assistance provider, Blake Johnson, senior Pacific analyst for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and co-author of the think tank’s report on the PRG, told the Nikkei Asia news group.
The ASPI report includes recommendations for policymakers, including expanding the PRG and involving multiple government agencies. It also encourages Australian defense officials to increase transparency about concerns of a greater Chinese Communist Party presence in the region.
The PRG was established at the South Pacific Defence Ministers Meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, in October 2024, which included leaders from Australia, Chile, Fiji, France, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Tonga, as well as observers from Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Nauru President Baron Waqa, secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum, a consortium of 18 nations and territories, also attended.
The group’s launch came as the region’s high-risk weather season arrived with increasingly frequent cyclones and floods, as well as volcanoes and earthquakes. Pacific island states say their greatest security concern is sea-level rise spurred by climate change. “Geopolitical maneuvering means nothing to Pacific peoples who have cyclones coming over the horizon … [or] who have water lapping at their doorsteps due to sea-level rise,” Waqa said earlier in 2024.
A coordinated, multinational plan is beneficial and cost effective, PRG supporters said. “To make sure we do things once and we do it right, that we all know who’s doing what and we don’t duplicate,” New Zealand Defence Minister Judith Collins told Radio New Zealand.
“We all know that many people helping one country is better than a single country doing it by themselves,” Tongan Armed Forces Lt. Col. Christian Tupou said in a news release.