BY JOHN HOUANIHAU

Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele has shared the GNUT’s vision for the tourism industry at the recent World Government Summit held in Dubai.

The theme for this year’s summit is Shaping Future Governments.

Speaking to local media after his return on Sunday Manele said in his remarks at the tourism roundtable, that he shares the government’s vision for tourism in the coming decades to foster a model of tourism that ensures environmental sustainability, cultural preservation and community empowerment while driving economic growth.

He said he also highlighted the GNUT 2035 goals to increase visitor arrivals to 100,000 per annum, secondly, boost tourism’s contributions contribution to GDP, thirdly increase employment opportunities for local Solomon Islanders in the tourism sector, expand and improve quality room inventory and build a highly trained and skilled tourism workforce.

He said that he also further highlighted to partners present that to achieve these targets the government has prioritised six pillars of interventions.

He said that the six pillars are an investment in infrastructure and connectivity, sustainable tourism development, destination marketing and promotion, regulatory and policy reforms, public-private partnerships and international collaboration and invite global partnership and investment.

He said that more than 30 heads of state and governments, over 80 international organisations, 140 government delegations, and 6,000 participants, including leading global experts, attended the summit.

He said that the third edition of the WGS focused on six key themes including effective governance and accountability, financing the future and the global economy, climate crisis mitigation, and resilient cities, human-centric futures and capacity building, global health transformations and emerging frontiers and the future.

PM Manele said that addressing various aspects of these themes were eight plenary sessions with each plenary covering between four to six topics and speakers with 21 forums with each forum covering six to eight different topics presented by multiple speakers.

More than 40 roundtable sessions and multiple dialogue sessions according to PM.

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By Loretta B Manele

The upcoming “Honiara Summit 2025: Umi Tugeda Delivering on SDG 14:4 Achieving Sustainable Fisheries” will focus on a sustainable development goal based on three pillars.

Collin Beck, permanent secretary for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAET) stressed this during a press conference with the media at the Friendship Hall.

He said these three pillars are economic growth, social development and environment protection all interlinked.

Moreover, Beck stated that over time with our man-made crisis, we have overfished, extracted so much from the ocean.

He added that with the impact of climate change the ocean has gone warm, there is also sea level rise and fish have moved away from certain jurisdictions resulting in the shift of fishing grounds.

Henceforth, Beck highlighted that the summit is nearly like a technical and scientific gathering basically to measure where we are, what we need to do in terms of ensuring we restore depleting fish stocks in different parts of the world, learn from each other, share technology and to share knowledge in terms of doing that.

He emphasized that when it comes to the management of fisheries, we can also make an outreach to other parts of the world to share our experience in terms of how we manage fisheries from a scientific perspective.

Beck said a number of leaders will be attending the summit which begins on Monday 24^th at the Friendship Hall.

The summit set for 24^th to 27^th February is organized by the Solomon Islands government in partnership with the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO), the Special Oceans Envoy of the UN Secretary General and Pacific Community (SPC).

It is an international conference on the Sustainable Development Goal 14.4 which is to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.

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By Loretta B Manele

The summit will be about building partnerships to implement sustainable fisheries in the region.

Collin Beck, the permanent secretary for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and External Trade (MFAET) spoke about this during a press conference with the media.

He was referring to the “Honiara Summit 2025: Umi Tugeda Delivering on SDG 14:4 Achieving Sustainable Fisheries” which will take place from 24^th to 25^th February at the Friendship Hall.

Beck stressed that the summit is about building partnerships with everyone on we can take corrective measures and share with each other how we can best deal with sustainable fisheries.

He said the summit will be a place where scientists and policy leaders will more or less come together in terms of trying to accelerate implementation on the Sustainable Development Goal 14.4 which is to “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

Beck emphasized that this summit is important for Solomon Islands and the pacific region.

He mentioned that nearly all our people live close to coastal areas so having this summit means having discussions that relate to our livelihood and our future.

Beck also stated that the second aspect of the summit is to also issue a political declaration of where we are, what we need to do and going forward, the key messages we would like to put out there not only for attention but for action.

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BY INDY MAEALASIA

THE United Arab Emirates (UAE) is seeking to sign a comprehensive economic partnership agreement, known as SEPA, with the Pacific Islands Forum countries.

Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele voiced his support for the proposal following his return from the UAE on Sunday.

Manele noted that the Solomon Islands, together with Fiji and Papua New Guinea, will lead consultations with PIF countries at the upcoming Ministers of Trade Meeting to convene in Fiji, in two weeks’ time.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and External Trade will be our lead ministry,” Manele explained.

 “I will be speaking with the minister to ensure our people with expertise in these areas, including the Director of Trade, our heads of missions in Suva and Beijing, are involved in the process. Our goal is to expedite the completion of the SEPA, which we aim to sign during the Forum meeting in Honiara this September.”

Manele also mentioned that work is ongoing on the Solomon Islands-United Arab Emirates agreement, which will be incorporated into the SEPA.

This agreement, too, is expected to be signed at the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in September.

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BY INDY MAEALASIA

THE United Arab Emirates (UAE) is seeking to strengthen its relationship with the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) by becoming a Post-Forum Dialogue Partner.

Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele shared the news with local media upon his return from the UAE on Sunday, stating;

“The United Arab Emirates wishes to become a Post-Forum Dialogue Partner. They are becoming a significant player in the Pacific region.”

As the incoming host and chair of the Forum, Manele assured the UAE that the government would carefully consider their request.

“..we will try to see the Forum process dealing with this can be expedited to ensure the forum can make decisions on which countries to be admitted as Dialogue Partners,” Manele said.

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