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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 370–382
doi: 10.1002/app5.75
Original Article
Development Strategies for Pacific Island Economies: Is There a
Role for the Cultural Industries?
David Throsby*
Abstract
1. Introduction
Amongst the range of possible strategies to
deal with ongoing development challenges
facing the Pacific Island economies, one that
has some potential is a policy focus on stimulating the creative or cultural industries. This
article reviews the rise in interest around the
world in the concept of the so-called creative
economy and its role in sustainable development. This interest has particular relevance at
the present time in the light of international
efforts to raise the profile of culture in development, especially with the replacement in
2015 of the Millennium Development Goals
with a new set of sustainable development
objectives. The article outlines the current
state of the cultural industries’ contribution to
growth in the Pacific region, and discusses
opportunities and obstacles affecting their
further development. The article concludes by
identifying some important considerations to
be taken into account in the design of effective
policy strategies in this area in the future.
Over recent years the Pacific region has continued to face significant development challenges
associated with the region’s high degree of
economic instability, infrastructure shortages,
commodity price fluctuations, susceptibility to
natural disasters and climate change impacts.
These challenges were exacerbated by the
global economic crisis of 2008–09, with the
result that re-establishment of a sound foundation for economic development in the years
ahead has been slow in many parts of the region.
Rates of real gross domestic product (GDP)
growth across the Pacific Island developing
economies fell from around 7.6 per cent in 2011
to 4.0 per cent in 2013, although these numbers
are affected by the inclusion of results for the
resource-rich economies of Papua New Guinea
and the Solomon Islands; most of the Pacific
Island states have not fared as well as the aggregated data suggest—in 2013, for example, real
growth in Palau and Samoa was negative and
many other island economies recorded growth
rates of less than 3 per cent.1 There have been
some signs of recovery in 2014, but growth
rates in the Pacific generally remain variable.
Growing inequalities continue as a significant
issue across the region.
Amongst the range of possible strategies to
deal with problems of sluggish development in
the Pacific Island economies, one that may
have potential application is a policy focus on
Key words: creative economy, cultural industries, sustainable development, intangible heritage, Pacific Island economies
* Department of Economics, Faculty of Business
and Economics, Macquarie University, Sydney, New
South Wales 2109, Australia; email: ⬍david.throsby@
mq.edu.au⬎.
1. See UNESCAP (2014, pp. 11, 55); see also Samson and
Miller (2012), Ch. 4.
© 2015 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License,
which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial
and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Throsby: Strategies for Pacific Island Economies
stimulating the creative or cultural industries
sector. This sector comprises those industries
in which creativity figures as an important
input and which draw their inspiration from
the traditional cultures of the region. As a
group these industries have come to be known
as the creative economy. Interest in this
subsector as a possible source of economic
dynamism in developing countries has been
stimulated particularly by the appearance in
2008 and 2010 of the Creative Economy
Reports published by the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD 2008, 2010). These reports promulgated the harnessing of creativity and the
deployment of cultural resources in developing
countries as a means towards growth, employment creation and export expansion.
Concern for the role of culture and the creative industries in development has taken on a
heightened significance since 2012 with the
UN’s search for a new set of international
development objectives to replace the Millennium Development Goals which expire in
2015. The initial draft of a set of ‘sustainable
development goals’ for this purpose produced
by a UN System Task Force in 2013 highlighted the importance of cultural diversity and
the need for a more holistic approach to sustainable development, but fell a long way short
of a full appreciation of the role of culture,
either as the context within which development occurs, or as a positive contributor to
development through the economic functioning of the cultural industries. As a result a
significant effort has been mounted by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and by a
number of groups and agencies within and
outside the UN system to raise the profile of
culture and the cultural industries in the post2015 development agenda.
Taken together, all the above circumstances
make the present moment an opportune time to
consider whether the model of the creative
economy, or more generally the paradigm of
culturally sustainable development, can offer
Pacific Island countries some prospect of
addressing their ongoing development problems. In this article we consider these issues in
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light of the current state of the cultural industries in the region. The article is structured as
follows. Section 2 sets the scene by describing
the extent and nature of the cultural industries
in the Pacific Islands. Then in Section 3 the
origins of the creative economy model are outlined and its practical implications are discussed. Section 4 focuses on the concepts of
sustainability and sustainable development,
with particular reference to the incorporation
of culture into the sustainable development
paradigm. In Section 5 we consider the question: do the concepts of the creative economy
and culturally sustainable development offer a
means to interpret and analyse the potential
role of the cultural industries in the development of the Pacific Island economies? We
discuss the strong foundations that Pacific
Island countries can build upon in developing
their cultural industries, but we also point to a
range of obstacles that need to be addressed if
the full potential from integrating culture into
sustainable development strategies in the
region is to be realised. The final section of the
article puts forward some conclusions.
2. Cultural Industries in the Pacific
To begin with we need to define the industries
with which we are concerned. The cultural
industries can be defined as those industries
that produce cultural goods and services,
where these commodities can be distinguished
as possessing three common characteristics:
• They require the input of human creativity in
their production or presentation.
• They carry some form of symbolic meaning
that elevates them beyond a purely utilitarian
function.
• They contain, at least potentially, some intellectual property that may possibly provide a
source of revenue for those who produce
them.
In developing countries, the cultural industries are seen to be particularly reliant on the
traditional knowledge, skills, practices and
narratives that form the body of intangible cultural heritage that is possessed by the people,
whether that knowledge is specific to particular
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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
national or local cultural traditions, or understood as something more diffuse, referred to in
the Pacific case as ‘Pacific culture’. In economic terms this heritage forms a component of
the intangible cultural capital owned by the
people2; in the production processes of the cultural industries, the capital services yielded by
this asset are combined with labour and material inputs to yield cultural outputs for own
consumption or for sale, or as intermediate
products in the generation of further output.
The rich body of intangible heritage in the
Pacific comprises the following components3:
• language, oral traditions
• traditional expressions such as music and
dance
• social practices, rituals, festive events
• traditional knowledge about the natural
world
• traditional skills and craftsmanship.
In cases where these intangible cultural
resources can be interpreted as of value to
humanity at large, they may be eligible for
protection under UNESCO’s (2003) Convention for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural
Heritage. To date, amongst the Pacific states,
Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia,
Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
Tonga and Vanuatu are signatories to this Convention. The Convention provides for the
inscription of nominated items onto a ‘Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’. Examples of heritage items
that have been inscribed onto this List as ‘masterpieces of intangible cultural heritage’ are
the Vanuatu sand drawings, and the Lakalaka,
dances and sung speeches of Tonga.
Underlying the cultural industries are the
core creative expressions that draw their inspiration from intangible heritage resources; these
include traditional music, dance, visual art and
handicrafts. The latter cover a range of artistic
genres including carving, pottery, weaving,
2. For more detail on the definition and interpretation of
intangible cultural heritage, see UNESCO (2003); for a
discussion of the concept of cultural capital in economics,
see Throsby (1999), Rizzo and Throsby (2006).
3. See further in UNESCO Office for the Pacific (2011)
and Nemani (2012).
May 2015
tapa making, ornaments, tattooing and so on,
often utilising traditional natural materials,
dyes, motifs and designs. In the Pacific Islands,
one of the most important industries through
which these cultural goods and services are sold
to consumers is tourism. The market for cultural tourism covers a range of activities such
as: cultural performances in hotels, resorts and
cruise ships; sale of handicrafts and other
goods; festivals that attract international audiences; visitation to heritage sites; and smallgroup cultural tours to enable interaction with
local people in their own communities. In addition the Pacific cultural industries have some
connections into global cultural markets in
areas such as music, film, visual arts, handicrafts, publishing and fashion.
The size of the cultural industries and their
contribution to output, employment, exports
and other macroeconomic variables would normally be indicated by national accounts data
and other statistical sources. However, for the
Pacific Island economies, such measurements
are not possible because these industries are not
identifiable either individually or as a specific
subsector in the national accounts or in industry
statistics. Likewise it is difficult to compile
employment data for the cultural sector because
the occupational classifications used by statistical agencies do not provide sufficient detail
that is specific to the sorts of activities that the
cultural industries entail. Data from many
economies around the world, including from
some developing countries, suggest that with
some exceptions the cultural industries typically comprise around 2–3 per cent of nationallevel GDP, perhaps a slightly higher percentage
of aggregate employment (Mikić 2012). It is
probable that in the Pacific Island countries the
size of the cultural industries is unlikely to
exceed these proportions. More concrete estimates await the improvement of statistical services for the cultural sector in the region, as
discussed further below.
To sum up, an illustration of the current state
of the cultural industries in the Pacific is provided by Fiji,4 a country rich in the traditional
4. For a detailed case-study of the Fijian cultural industries in 2011, see George (2012, pp. 43–6).
© 2015 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd
Throsby: Strategies for Pacific Island Economies
crafts of costume making, wood carving,
weaving etc., and with strong creative heritage
in music, dance and visual art. There is a heavy
reliance on the tourism and entertainment
industry for the employment of performing
artists, and for the sale of locally made cultural
products. However, marketing infrastructure is
weak especially for the export sector and
although national institutions such as the Fiji
Arts Council, and industry associations such as
the Fashion Council of Fiji, do provide support
for creative development, the cultural industries struggle to survive in a difficult economic
environment (George 2012, p. 44).
In the next section we consider the development of the so-called ‘creative economy’
model and discuss the extent to which it might
be applied in the Pacific.
3. The Creative Economy Model5
The cultural industries as defined in the previous section can be seen as a subset of a wider
classification identified as the ‘creative industries’, interpreted as relying only on the first of
the three characteristics noted earlier, namely,
creativity. The creative industries category
defined on this basis includes activities whose
products do not contain any particular cultural
content but which utilise creativity as an input,
such as the software industry. The term ‘creative industries’ first came to prominence with
the establishment of the Creative Industries
Task Force by the Department for Culture,
Media and Sport (DCMS) in the United
Kingdom in 1997, although the idea of linking
creativity and culture with industry development had been put forward earlier in the Australian Government’s cultural policy statement
Creative Nation of 1994 (Commonwealth
of Australia 1994). The DCMS model
(Department for Culture Media and Sport UK
2001) comprises 13 industries,6 a classification
of the creative economy which is still used in
5. This section draws on material contained in Throsby
(2015) where more detail can be found.
6. The industries are: advertising; architecture; art and
antiques market; crafts; design; fashion; film and video;
music; performing arts; publishing; software; television
and radio; and video and computer games.
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the United Kingdom today. The model, which
includes both creative and cultural industries
according to the above definitions, is focused
predominantly on the cultural sector and was
influential during the first decade of the
twenty-first century in the formation of cultural policies in a number of countries, particularly in Europe. The concept of the creative
and/or cultural industries that took shape
during this period in academic and policymaking circles was subsequently consolidated into the collective term the ‘creative
economy’. This term is now widely used to
describe a subsector of the macroeconomy that
is reputed to be a source of dynamism in generating output and employment growth in otherwise under-performing economies. Data
derived from various countries indicate that
in many cases this sector has been growing
more rapidly than traditional sectors such as
manufacturing.7
The role of the cultural industries in development was strongly asserted in the influential
Creative Economy Report, published by
UNCTAD in 2008 and updated in 2010.8
These reports were particularly oriented
towards talking up the development potential
of cultural industries in countries of the global
South as a means towards the economic and
cultural empowerment of the people and as a
panacea for poverty alleviation. The reports
had much to say about the scope for increased
trade in cultural goods, although the lack of
data on trade in cultural services such as audiovisual product meant that an important component of cultural exports and imports was not
adequately covered. In 2013 responsibility for
producing the report shifted from UNCTAD to
UNESCO.9
How can the creative economy model be
interpreted in a way that is useful for policy
analysis in the Pacific Island economies? A
7. For example, recent data on the growth performance of
the UK creative sector is contained in Department for
Culture Media and Sport UK (2014).
8. See further in Barrowclough and Kozul-Wright (2008).
9. The 2013 Creative Economy Report (UNESCO 2013)
is subtitled Widening Local Development Pathways and
has a focus on cultural development in an urban and
regional context.
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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
prerequisite to considering this question in any
country is an understanding of the economic
structure of the cultural sector and its relationships with the rest of the economy. A number
of possible models exist.10 A common
approach is to interpret production and distribution of cultural goods and services as a
supply or value chain, a sequential process
whereby raw materials are transformed into a
finished product. Within this sequentialproduction framework, the structural features
of the cultural industries can be interpreted
in various ways, for example in terms of the
contractual relationships existing between
successive stages. Caves (2000) follows this
approach, identifying the characteristics peculiar to cultural goods and services which give
such contractual arrangements their distinctive
nature, including the ‘nobody knows’ characteristic which encapsulates the radical uncertainty regarding the likely market success of a
cultural product such as a movie. Contractual
conditions also affect production because each
unit of an original cultural good is unique—an
extreme case of product differentiation—
although copies are infinitely replicable. The
latter property has serious implications for the
safeguarding of intellectual property rights
in cultural goods in an increasingly digitised
world.
The UNESCO Institute of Statistics (2009)
has proposed a framework for interpreting the
structure of the cultural industries by dividing
cultural activities into several ‘domains’, comprising six ‘core’ domains:
•
•
•
•
•
•
cultural and natural heritage
performance and celebration
visual arts and crafts
book and press
audiovisual and interactive media
design and creative services
together with two ‘related’ domains:
• tourism
• sport and recreation
and three ‘transversal’ domains:
10. See Throsby (2008a), Mikić (2012).
May 2015
• education and training
• archiving and preserving
• equipment and supporting materials.
In principle the relevance of the UIS Framework to analysis of the cultural industries’ role
in the Pacific appears straightforward, with the
region’s strong resource base in cultural and
natural heritage, its active engagement in
performance and celebration and in visual arts
and craft production, and in its reliance on
cultural tourism as a significant export industry. However, whether the framework provides
a template for the re-design of cultural statistics collections in the various countries of the
region is a more uncertain question.11
Turning to the inter-industry linkages
between the cultural sector and the rest of the
economy, we note that an input–output model
is an obvious first step towards identifying
such inter-relationships. However, even if an
up-to-date input–output table were available
for any of the countries in the region, it is most
unlikely to specify the industries comprising
the cultural sector at a sufficient level of disaggregation to enable meaningful analysis.12
An alternative approach to structural modelling of the role of culture in the economy is one
based more directly on the cultural processes
involved. An example is the so-called ‘concentric circles model’ of the cultural industries,
which is framed in terms of the generation and
diffusion of creative ideas that stimulate cultural production and innovative processes both
within the cultural sector and in the wider
economy (Throsby 2008b). Industries in the
model are arranged in descending order of the
cultural content of their output, or equivalently
in increasing order of the industries’ degree of
commercialisation. The model assumes:
11. See further in Secretariat of the Pacific Community
(2011).
12. The ideal methodology to apply in measuring interindustry linkages for the cultural industries is via a set of
cultural satellite accounts; progress in this direction is
being made in several countries—see especially projects
in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2014) and the
United States (National Endowment for the Arts US
2013).
© 2015 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd
Throsby: Strategies for Pacific Island Economies
that cultural content springs from the incorporation of creative ideas into the production and/or
presentation of sound, text and image and that
these ideas originate in the arenas of primary
artistic creativity. This is an assumption that
accords primacy to the processes of artistic (as
distinct from scientific) creativity, and is the
reason why the creative arts—music, drama,
dance, visual art, literature—lie at the centre of the
model, with successive layers of the concentric
circles defined as the ideas and influences of these
creative activities diffuse outwards. The economic
content of the model is represented by the market
and non-market value of the goods and services
produced as either intermediate or final products
in the various layers of the system (Throsby 2010,
p. 91).
The diffusion of ideas and influences in this
model can be interpreted as operating through
the processes of knowledge transfer that are
familiar to economists studying the generation
and adoption of innovation in the economy at
large. But it is not only ideas that move, it is
also creative workers themselves. Thus some
part of the diffusion process depicted in the
concentric circles model occurs through the
fact that workers who gain their training or
experience in the core may find employment in
the wider cultural industries or outside the cultural sector altogether, applying their creative
skills in often innovative ways.13
A model such as this that interprets the
structure of the cultural sector as a system built
around a creative core is likely to have particular relevance in the Pacific because it connects
primary artistic and cultural activity to the
channels through which that activity can yield
an economic return, yet does so in a way that
acknowledges the cultural significance and
respects the cultural integrity of the production
process involved. The model implies, for
example, that the provision of authentic cultural experiences for tourists, or the continued
generation of original creative product for sale
into export markets, depends on the maintenance of a healthy and well-supported creative
core. Such a conclusion has clear implications
13. The latter are described as ‘embedded’ workers in the
so-called ‘creative trident’ model (Cunningham & Higgs
2009).
375
for the links between cultural and economic
policy; support for the arts and heritage needs
to be seen as having an economic rationale in
addition to whatever artistic or cultural motivations it might have.
4. The Sustainability Paradigm
As noted in the Introduction, the concept of
sustainable development has become the
overarching paradigm for development thinking since the work of the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (the
Brundtland Commission) in the 1980s. The
Commission’s well-known definition of sustainable development as ‘development that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs’ (World Commission on
Environment and Development 1987, p. 43)
has been translated into operational policies in
various ways in different countries, although
all have a common focus on long-term viability and equitable delivery of outcomes.
The cultural dimensions of sustainability
were considered by the cultural successor to
Brundtland, the UN World Commission on
Culture and Development, whose report (World
Commission on Culture and Development
1995) pointed clearly to the applicability of the
sustainability model to cultural development.14
Policy implications were made explicit in the
recommendations from UNESCO’s ‘cultural
summit’ held in Stockholm in 1998 (UNESCO
1998), and were further elaborated in the UN
Convention on the Protection and Promotion of
the Diversity of Cultural Expressions that was
adopted in 2005 and entered into force in 2007
(UNESCO 2005). Article 13 in this standardsetting instrument encourages signatories to
integrate culture in their development policies
at all levels to create ‘conditions conducive to
sustainable development’.15
14. These concerns within UNESCO were discussed in
relation to the Pacific at a conference ‘Culture and Sustainable Development in the Pacific’ held in Suva in July
1997; see Hooper (2005).
15. For a discussion of the origins and implications of the
sustainability provisions in the 2005 Convention, see
Throsby (2012).
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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
The parallel between cultural sustainability
and its counterpart in the environmental arena
derives from the close parallels between
natural and cultural capital where the latter, in
its economic interpretation, is defined as assets
which embody or give rise to cultural value
in addition to whatever economic value they
may possess. Natural capital includes natural
resources, ecosystems and biodiversity; similarly, cultural capital contains cultural
resources (both tangible and intangible), cultural networks and support systems, and cultural diversity. These cultural resources are
also renewable and non-renewable. Thus, it
has been possible to spell out a set of principles for cultural sustainability that mirrors
what can be specified for ecologically or environmentally sustainable development, leading
to the relatively new concept of culturally sustainable development (Throsby 2010, p. 195).
These considerations provide the context
within which current concerns about the role
of culture in development are being expressed.
As already noted, the UN’s Rio+20 Conference of 2012 was given the task of beginning a
process leading towards the formulation of a
new set of sustainable development goals for
the international community. The Conference
report The Future We Want contained some
references to cultural diversity, cultural heritage, cultural tourism, and the importance of
culture to indigenous communities, but it fell
well short of a full comprehension of the
potential role for culture and the cultural
industries in sustainable development. Moreover, although the UN General Assembly has
expressed appropriate sentiments about the
need for stronger recognition of culture’s role
in development from time to time,16 these resolutions do not appear so far to have had much
influence on the drafting of the new set of
goals.
16. Resolutions on the importance of culture in development have been carried by the UN General Assembly each
year since 2010; the 2012 resolution is typical (see UN
General Assembly Resolution N.66/208 of 2012, ‘Culture
and Development’). In addition, during 2014, the UN
Development Group has overseen national consultations
on ‘Culture and Development’ in five countries: Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Ecuador, Mali, Morocco and Serbia.
May 2015
It has been left to UNESCO, as the UN’s
lead cultural agency, to take up the challenge
of promoting the integration of culture into
global development policies. It has done this
particularly via a series of forums and conferences, the most elaborate of which was an
international congress under the title ‘Culture:
Key to Sustainable Development’, held
in Hangzhou, China, in May 2013. The
‘Hangzhou Declaration: Placing Culture at the
Heart of Sustainable Development Policies’
argued that culture should be seen as both a
facilitator and a driver of development, and as
an important contributor to peace, reconciliation, social development and poverty reduction. Somewhat similar recommendations
emanated from another international meeting
held in the same year entitled, ‘The World
Culture Forum: The Power of Culture in Sustainable Development’, convened in Bali by
the then President of the Republic of Indonesia, Dr H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The ‘Bali Promise’ of 2013 approved at this
meeting called on governments ‘to commit
themselves for the integration of culture in the
Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda’.
Yet another gathering on the same theme was
organised by UNESCO in Florence in September 2014 as the third of its World Forums
on Culture and Cultural Industries. The
declaration arising from this conference,
which bore the subtitle ‘Culture, Creativity
and Sustainable Development: Research,
Innovation, Opportunities’, reiterated the now
familiar arguments for according culture
greater attention in international development
policy-making.
Where are the Pacific Islands placed in this
unfolding international debate? Clearly they
can make their voices heard in the sorts of
meetings described above, although given the
costs, their participation can generally only be
contemplated if some financial assistance is
forthcoming from conference organisers or
from some other source. More particularly
Pacific Island states can engage in the international debate through their membership of
UNESCO and through their representation
on the floor of the UN General Assembly.
However, their capacity to contribute more
© 2015 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd
Throsby: Strategies for Pacific Island Economies
directly in the UN environment is significantly
limited by the fact that none of them is a signatory to the 2005 Cultural Diversity Convention. Not only does this exclude them from the
ongoing discussion on cultural policy development that parties to the Convention participate
in, it also means that they cannot access assistance from the International Fund for Cultural
Diversity that the Convention has established.
In short there is a danger that Pacific Island
countries may not be able to realise their full
potential for linking their cultural and economic development in the future if they are not
adequately connected into ongoing policy
developments in the international arena.17
5. Opportunities and Obstacles
The creative economy model and the concept
of culturally sustainable development as discussed above paint an attractive picture of the
potential for the cultural industries to contribute to national development in countries of
the developing world. Can this potential be
realised in the Pacific Island economies?
On the positive side it is clear that all the
Pacific Island countries, from the largest to the
smallest, possess significant cultural capital
assets in the form of their traditional knowledge, skills and creative talents. They can also
point to a range of cultural goods and services
that are already produced, with the possibility
on the horizon that new forms of cultural
expression based on new media technologies
will emerge in the future. Moreover, since a
major existing and potential market for cultural output is tourism, it is reassuring that
most of the countries in the region have reasonably well-developed tourism capacities
17. In May 2013 Fiji held a national workshop to discuss
the Convention, at the conclusion of which the Minister
for Education, National Heritage, Culture and Arts, Filipe
Bole, said ‘Cultural industries in Fiji remain informal and
disorganised which leads to missed opportunities for business growth. It is hoped that upon the ratification of the
convention, necessary measures are put in place to provide
an enabling environment for the industry to flourish.’
(See
www.fiji.gov.fj/Media-Center/Press-Releases/
NATIONAL-WORKSHOP-DWELLS-ON-CULTURALDIVERSITY.aspx.) Thus it is possible that Fiji might
become the first Pacific nation to join the Convention.
377
with some degree of connection into the
expanding international market. Further positive signs are that some cultural events and
festivals are attracting regional and international audiences, and some top-line artists
from Pacific countries are establishing a presence on the world stage. In addition to tourism,
the Pacific diaspora forms a strong consumer
market for cultural goods and services produced in the region. All of these factors
suggest that the Pacific Islands are well placed
to adopt the creative economy paradigm in
seeking to exploit the potential for their cultural industries in their future development
planning.
However, there are a number of obstacles in
the path of a full realisation of this potential.18
Many such obstacles derive from the inadequacy of the infrastructure and institutional
capacities needed to support industry development. For example, the marketing of cultural
goods and services suffers from poor market
intelligence and lack of connection with
market expansion opportunities, especially in
the export sector. Much of the output of the
cultural industries is produced by micro- or
small-to-medium enterprises, but establishment of business start-ups in the cultural
sector tends to be constrained by lack of
entrepreneurialism and a hesitation about
taking risks in an environment that is not
friendly to the cultural industries. Government
engagement with the cultural industries is
variable across the region, with considerable
untapped scope for development of financial
services, market promotion, copyright protection and enforcement, strategic industry assistance measures, and so on.19 Indeed cultural
policy is not seen by most national governments as an important policy priority, with
the result that support for artists and individual cultural practitioners for example—an
important means for maintaining a healthy creative core—is generally inadequate, and there
18. The following discussion draws particularly on the
extensive lists of weaknesses facing the cultural industries
in the Pacific outlined by George (2012, pp. 25–7) and
McComb (2012, pp. 29–30). See also Hezel (2012).
19. For a discussion of the financing of creative industries
in developing countries, see Cunningham et al. (2008).
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appears to be insufficient coordination
between arts/culture administration and other
public sector departments and development
agencies. In short, although NGOs, civil
society organisations and regional cultural
institutions play an important role in filling
some of these gaps, there remains considerable
scope for deliberative action by national governments to encourage the expansion of the
cultural industries within their own economies.
Despite these various obstacles, however,
there are a number of areas that can be seen as
presenting opportunities for consolidation and
expansion of the cultural industries in the
Pacific Island economies in the future. Chief
amongst these would appear to be the existence of significant market potential, particularly in the tourism sector. The growing
worldwide demand for tourist products driven
particularly by the emergence of new waves of
wealthy consumers in Asian countries requires
a supply of distinctive tourist experiences such
as those offered by the Pacific Islands’s attractive natural environments and unique cultural
offerings. Not only is an increasing tourist
demand likely to provide stimulus to the cultural industries, it can also be expected to lead
to a positive impact on economic growth
(Narayan et al. 2010).
It may be thought that development of cultural tourism in the Pacific could be constrained by the distance of island tourist
destinations from major centres. However, it
can be argued that remoteness can actually
be an advantage in the emergence of distinct
cultural forms that are not influenced by
the standardisations inherent in mainstream
culture (Gibson 2010). Scheyvens and
Momsen (2008) make this argument specifically in regard to tourism in small island states.
They suggest that far from being vulnerable
because of their remoteness, such states can
demonstrate their strong social and cultural
sustainability that acts as a counter to the
homogenising effects of globalisation in the
presentation of their tourism product.
Nevertheless the engagement of the cultural
industries with tourism carries with it a danger
that the integrity and authenticity of traditional
cultural forms may become weakened by the
May 2015
need to package cultural experiences in a
manner acceptable to the undiscriminating
tourist market. For example, Prasad (2014)
draws attention to a dance troupe in Nadi, Fiji
that presents performances derived from a
variety of cultural sources; he concludes that
there is a loss of identity when the cultural
presentation is tailored to meet the expectations and stereotypes that make for easy tourist
consumption.20 This is a specific case of a
more general problem facing the Pacific states,
that of balancing the preservation of traditional
cultural values and ways of life with the inevitable processes of cultural evolution and the
demands for innovation that characterise the
modern cultural industries.
Market opportunities beyond tourism exist
for the products of Pacific Island cultural
industries via export markets in the global
arena. For example McComb (2012, pp.
12–26) points to openings in Europe and
Pacific Rim countries for handicrafts, interior
design, visual art, music, dance and fashion. A
capacity to access these markets, and indeed to
take advantage of the opportunities offered by
the global marketplace generally, is clearly
dependent on a level of Internet connectivity
that some countries in the region have yet to
achieve. For example, UNESCAP reports that
although the expansion of mobile telephony in
the Pacific has been significant, broadband
penetration remains very limited, with only
five economies (Cook islands, Fiji, Palau,
Tonga and Tuvalu) having more than one fixed
broadband subscription per one hundred
inhabitants (UNESCAP 2014, pp. 166–167).
Expansion of the cultural industries’ presence and effectiveness in the Pacific can be
supported by targeted assistance programs
implemented by a range of aid agencies and
international financial institutions. The New
Zealand government, for example, initiated a
report in 2011 to advise on how best to recognise and support the arts of the Pacific Island
peoples, both in New Zealand and in the
Pacific more generally (Creative New Zealand
2013). Included amongst the recommendations was a recognition of the need to target
20. See further in Desmond (1997).
© 2015 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd
Throsby: Strategies for Pacific Island Economies
capacity building and infrastructure development, with funding for the whole support
program extending through to 2017–18. In
addition there is a continuing hope for aid
for cultural industry development through
AusAID, European Union and other donor
channels. There is also scope for Pacific Island
countries to access World Bank and Asian
Development Bank lending to support creative
economy and heritage rehabilitation projects
in the coming years; movement on this front
would seem to depend on enhancing the countries’ capacities to generate attractive project
proposals.21
Finally, an important avenue for advancing
the role of the cultural industries in national
economic and social development planning in
the Pacific is through regional cooperation.
There have been several worthwhile initiatives
in this area, such as UNESCO’s 1997 conference on culture in sustainable development in
the Pacific referred to above; proposals arose
from that meeting that it was hoped would
provide a ‘road map’ for the South Pacific
economy (Ayala 2005). More recently the
European Union funded a workshop in 2011
as part of a major project, Structuring the
Cultural Sector in the Pacific for Improved
Human Development, initiated by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in partnership with the Pacific Islands Forum. This
program has looked particularly at cultural
mapping, planning and policy developments
to strengthen the cultural sector in the region,
and has involved a series of sub-regional
workshops.
Amongst other things, regional cooperation
may offer opportunities to address a serious
disadvantage arising from the small size and
relative remoteness of the Pacific Island countries. These characteristics mean that cultural
producers find great difficulty in accessing the
sorts of agglomeration economies that are
typically available to cultural industries in
other countries.22 It may be that collaborative
21. For a discussion of the potential for the arts and creative industries in the agenda of the World Bank Group,
see Kabanda (2014).
22. See, for example, contributions to Power and Scott
(2004), especially Part IV.
379
measures that do not depend on locational
proximity such as Internet-based strategies
could enable the exploitation of synergies and
network economies by spatially separated producers in a range of cultural industries across
the region. Such strategies may also provide a
pathway towards circumventing the considerable cost of participation in international meetings that we referred to earlier.
Perhaps the most far-reaching initiative in
regional cooperation to advance the cultural
industries in Pacific Island economies has been
the Regional Cultural Strategy Investing in
Pacific Cultures 2010–2020 developed by the
Council of the Pacific Arts and Culture (Secretariat of the Pacific Community 2012). The
Council brings together all the heads of culture
departments and ministries and has oversight
of the Festival of Pacific Arts. The strategy was
endorsed in 2012 by the Ministers of Culture at
their second meeting held in Honiara at the
Tenth Festival of Pacific Arts, and is currently
under implementation. The strategy sets out 10
goals—seven for the national level and three
for the regional level—which cover a range of
components of the cultural sector. One of the
goals is aimed at expanding the Pacific’s
cultural industries, with specific objectives
relating to administration, marketing, trade,
training and evaluation. The last of these
objectives involves the development of indicators and measurement tools to assess the existing and potential contribution of the cultural
industries to national and regional development; the importance of such data collection
initiatives to ensuring the long-term effectiveness of development strategies cannot be
overstressed.
6. Conclusions
In recent years there has been an increasing
interest in the potential for the creative
economy, and particularly the cultural industries, to contribute to economic growth,
employment creation, social cohesion, poverty
alleviation, and sustainable development
across the developing world. These considerations provide an appropriate context in which
to recommend a stronger focus on the cultural
© 2015 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
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380
Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
industries in the development strategies of the
Pacific Island economies.
In this article we have discussed the underlying model of the creative economy and the
concept of culturally sustainable development,
and we have drawn attention to the opportunities and obstacles in implementing these ideas
in the Pacific region. It is clear that, despite
differing circumstances facing the various
countries making up the group of Pacific
Island economies, certain key issues emerge
that need to be addressed. Mapping the extent
of cultural resources available and exploiting
existing areas of comparative advantage in cultural production, distribution and marketing
are obvious initial requirements. At the same
time countries need to look to identifying
longer-term development opportunities in this
field and address the constraints that might
inhibit their growth. One of the most significant areas to be addressed is capacity-building
in infrastructure across a range of industry
needs, from business start-ups to financial
services.
Of course governments cannot do it all, and
productive partnerships between the public
sector, private enterprise and civil society
organisations remain vital ingredients in any
strategy mix. Nevertheless there remains a
central role for governments to facilitate a
coordinated process of local, national and
regional policy development that recognises
and exploits the significant contribution that
the cultural industries can make to island
development. In this respect, effective policymaking and linkage into international development agendas would be greatly enhanced
if countries of the Pacific were to ratify the
2005 Cultural Diversity Convention, a proven
instrument providing a template for guiding
cultural policy-making that has been widely
utilised by developing countries around the
world.
January 2015.
The research on which this article is based was
supported by a grant from the Crawford
School of Economics and Government at The
Australian National University. The article
has benefited from stimulating discussions at
May 2015
the conference on creative industries in the
Pacific held at The University of the South
Pacific in March 2014. I am grateful to Renee
Jessup for research assistance in the preparation of the article, to Laura Billington for editorial input and to two anonymous referees.
My thanks are due particularly to Elise Huffer
for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the
article. All views expressed in the article are
my own.
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