Textbook Notes:

[Some maps may be difficult to read. To see a clear image, RIGHT CLICK on the image and select VIEW IMAGE]

BRIEF OUTLINE Chapter 12 THE PACIFIC REALM   DEFINING THE REALM 561 The Pacific Realm and Its Marine Geography 562 The UNCLOS Convention 563 Regional Issue 566 REGIONS OF THE REALM 567 Melanesia 567 Micronesia 572 Polynesia 573   A Final Caveat: Pacific and Antarctic 574

MAJOR GEOGRAPHIC QUALITIES OF THE REALM

• The Pacific Realm's total area is the largest of all geographic realms. Its land area, however, is the smallest, as is its population.
• The island of New Guinea, with 8.4 million people, alone contains over 80 percent of the Pacific Realm's population.
• The Pacific Realm, with its wide expanses of water and numerous islands, has been strongly affected by United Nations Law of the Sea provisions regarding states' rights over economic assets in their adjacent waters.
• The highly fragmented Pacific Realm consists of three regions: Melanesia (including New Guinea), Micronesia, and Polynesia.
• Melanesia forms the link between Papuan and Melanesian cultures in the Pacific.
• The Pacific Realm's islands and cultures may be divided into volcanic high-island cultures and coral-based low-island cultures.
• In Micronesia, US influence has been particularly strong and continues to affect local societies.
• In Polynesia, local cultures nearly everywhere are severely strained by external influences. In Hawaii, as in New Zealand, indigenous culture has been largely submerged by Westernization.
• Indigenous Polynesian culture continues to exhibit a remarkable consistency and uniformity throughout the Polynesian region, its enormous dimensions and dispersal notwithstanding.

DEFINING THE REALM

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

• Total land area is about 376,000 square miles
  • equal to the size of Texas + New Mexico
  • 90% is the island of New Guinea
  • Includes the Hawaiian Islands
  • does NOT include Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, or New Zealand
    • although prior to European colonization Australia and New Zealand WOULD HAVE BEEN included because of Aboriginal population in Australia and the Maori population in New Zealand
• Total population is over 11.5 million (9.2 million without the Indonesian province of Papua)
  • fewer people live in this realm than live in the Sahara desert of North Africa

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

• Colonized by the French and British
• The US annexed the Polynesian kingdom in the Hawaiian islands

 

CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY

• Complex Political Geography
  • made up of independent states, colonies, dependencies, and even the 50th state of the US
  • Under foreign control:
    • France still controls New Caledonia and French Polynesia
    • The US controls Guam, American Samoa, Line Islands, Wake Island, Midway Island, and several smaller islands
    • Great Britain has responsibility for the Pitcairn group of islands
    • New Zealand administers the Cook, Tokelau, and Niuw Islands
    • Chile has Easter island
    • Indonesia controls the western part of New guinea
  • Independent states:
    • Fiji
    • Solomon Islands Vanuatu
    • Tuvalu,
    • Kiribati
    • Nauru
    • Palau

  QUESTION: Explain why the political geography of the Pacific realm could be described as "complex".

• High-Island vs. Low-Island Cultures
  • the physical and cultural (especially economic) geography differs on high, and low, islands
  • High-Islands
    • Volcanic
    • fewer
    • High elevations / rugged relief
    • more precipitation
    • Good soils
    • Agricultural diversity
    • Tend to have larger populations and higher incomes
  • Low-Islands
    • Include the majority of the realm's islands
    • Composed of coral
    • Low elevation/relief
    • Drought is common
    • Fishing and coconut palm are primarily means of a livelihood; poorer
    • out-migration is common

  QUESTION: Compare and contrast "high island" and "low island" cultures

 

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

• Tourism is the economic mainstay; some minerals, fishing
• From table G-1, p. 41

  PACIFIC REALM
  Birth rate:	28.9
  Death rate:	8
  Rate of natural increase (population growth):	2.1 %
  Infant mortality:	47 per 1000 births
  Life expectancy:	58 years
  Percent urban population:	22%
  Per capita GNI:	$2,291

  QUESTION: Based on the data above would you classify the Pacific Realm as "more developed" or "less developed"? Why? REVIEW: Online lecture on Measures of Economic Development

• Marine Geography
  • A sub-field of geography concerned with the spatial arrangement of the seas, its resources and maritime boundaries
  • coastal countries compete for jurisdiction (control) over the waters around them and for the resources found in, and under, those waters
  • Key terms:
    • UNCLOS
      • Territorial Sea (12 Mile Limit) where the coastal states has complete control
      • Exclusive Economic Zone - EEZ - (230 Miles) - coastal country has some rights:
        • resources on and beneath the sea floor
        • substantial fishing rights
        • but they must cooperate to conserve highly migratory fish species
    • High Seas - waters that are "free, open, and unfettered by national interests"
    • Median Line Boundaries are drawn when territorial seas overlap at the midpoint between the two land bodies
    • Continental Shelf (Down To 600 Feet And Out To 200 Miles) - offshore continuation of coastal plains
  • EEZ
    • make foreign control over Pacific islands potentially very important
    • disputes arise when EEZs overlap some solved through bilateral negotiations, some ongoing
      • examples:
        • East Timor and Australia
        • Japan and Russia
        • Japan and South Korea
        • Japan and China
        • China and Vietnam
        • China and the Philippines
        • Spratly Islands
    • new, small, independent islands can sell their EEZ rights
  • possible extension of EEZ rights to the edge of the continental shelf

REGIONS OF THE REALM

• regions based on differences in ethnic, linguistic, and physical characteristics

  

• Melanesia- ("Mela" Means Black)
  • Melanesian are dark-skinned
  • Includes:
    • Papau Province (Indonesia),
    • Papua New Guinea,
    • Solomon Islands,
    • Vanatu,
    • New Caledonia (France)
    • Fiji
  • What are "New Guinea", "Papua New Guinea", and "Papua Province"?
    • New Guinea is an island that includes Papua New guinea in the east and Papua Province in the west
    • Papua New Guinea is an independent state (country)
    • Papua Province is a part of the country of Indonesia
  • Melanesia is culturally diverse: 700 languages
  • 7 million people making up most of the Pacific realm

   

  • Papua New Guinea (PNG)
    • largest state in the region and in the realm
    • 6 million people
    • 90% of the land area of the realm
    • ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
      • 80% of the people live in a self-sufficient subsistence economy by farming, hunting, and gathering
      • only 15% urbanized
      • Oil discovered in the late 1980s; state's largest export
      • minerals: gold, copper, silver
      • timber
      • coffee, cocoa

       

      • EEZ and the mining of minerals
        • underwater chimneys in the Bismarck Sea (see map below)
        • very rich in copper, silver, gold, zinc, and other minerals
        • within PNG's EEZ
        • contract signed with Australian company to begin undersea mining
        • opposition by environmentalist
    • CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
      • complex; hundreds of languages
      • Two main groups
        • Papuan - by far the majority
        • Melanesian
      • separatist movement on the island of Bougainville and island in the Solomon group
        • CAUSES OF THE REBELLION:
          • CULTURAL: irredentism elements in the Solomon islands (Melanesian)
          • CULTURAL: people of Bougainville are Melanesian; most of PNG are Papuan
          • ECONOMIC: copper
          • HISTORICAL: legacy of colonialism: when Australia granted PNG independence they included Bougainville to provide the PNG government a source of revenue from the copper mine
          • See the following and scroll down to "Independence / Separatist Struggle/Truce"
            : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/3028825.stm

    

    • QUESTION: Discuss the term "irredentism" using Bougainville as a case study REVIEW: Online lecture on "Cultural Conflict"

  • Solomon Islands
    • 500,00 people
    • ethnically homogenous until WW!II when occupied by Japan and thousands of people from the island of Malaita were brought to the island
    • conflicts between the original inhabitants and the Malaitans
    • Australia getting involved

     

  • New Caledonia
    • still under French rule
    • 45% Melanesian; 34 % of French ancestry (many descendants of former French penal colony established there
    • economy based on Nickel mines
    • Melanesian demands to end colonial rule; violence

     

  • Fiji
    • 800,000 people
    • 52 % Melanesian; 42 % South Asian Indians
    • south Asians were brought to Fiji during British colonial occupation to work on sugar plantations from Britain's South Asian colony
    • at independence in 1970
      • native Fijian (Melanesian) were in control of most of the land and the government
      • Indians were concentrated in the commercial retail sector
    • trouble began after an election where the politically active Indians outvoted the native Fijians and took control of the parliament
      • military coup d'etats followed
      • future is uncertain

   

• Micronesia- ("Micro" Means Small)

  Includes: Palau, Federated States Of Micronesia, Northern Mariana Islands, Republic Of The Marshall Islands, Nauru, western Kiribati, Guam (US)

  • 2000 + small islands
  • some "high islands"; mostly "low islands"
  • HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY:
    • until the mid 1980s, Micronesia was largely controlled by the US: now changed
    • US still provides foreign aid in return for international support and military bases
  • Guam is still and American territory with military bases
  • Nauru has one of the Pacific Realm's highest per capital incomes: $11, 500 from exporting phosphate
  • Summary: farming, fishing, and foreign aid = poor

   

• Polynesia ("Poly" Means Many)

  Includes: Hawaiian Islands (US) Samoa, American Samoa, Tuvalu, Tonga, eastern Kiribati, Cook Islands and other New Zealand administered islands, French Polynesia,

  • New Zealand, to Hawaii, to Chile's Easter Islands
  • Variety ("poly"):
    • high and low islands
    • mountains and coral atolls
    • lighter skin color
    • European and Oriental influences
    • complex political geography
      • US state
      • independent states
      • French, New Zealand, US, Chile, and British controlled islands
  • Why is it a geographic region?
    • similarities in vocabulary, technology, housing, and art
    • including sea travel before the arrival of the Europeans and inter-island trade

 

QUESTION: Review the conflicts, or potential conflicts, in the realm and discuss WHY they are occurring Try to use our four class themes: physical geography cultural geography economic geography historical geography

ANTARCTICA

• Southern Ocean
• Is Antarctica a geographic realm?
  • Physically: YES - large size; separated from other areas
  • Culturally,historically, and economically: NO
• "white desert"
  • very little precipitation = a desert
  • ice-covered continent
• 5.5 million square miles
• The partitioning of Antarctica
  • The Antarctic Treaty
  • National claims to Antarctica (Map)