[Check against delivery]
Delivered by the Incoming Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, President of Palau, H.E Surangel Whipps, Jr
Palau National Gym, Koror, Palau
31 August 2026
The Honorable Rick
Houenipwela, Minister for Foreign Affairs and External Trade and representative of the Outgoing Forum Chair,
Your Excellencies, Heads of State and Heads of Government,
Traditional leaders of Palau – Rubekul me a Mechesil Belau
Members of the Olbiil Era Kelulau and Honorable Ministers
Secretary General Baron Waqa, Heads of Delegation and representatives of our Associate Members,
Heads of CROP agencies, representatives of the private sector, civil society, faith communities, and our Pacific youth,
Members of the media, our people of Palau, and our Pacific family, Alii!
On behalf of the people and Government of the Republic of Palau, it is my profound honor to welcome you to the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting.
We thank Prime Minister Wale and the Government and people of Solomon Islands for their stewardship of our Forum this past year. We’re grateful that Prime Minister was able to come to Palau — although it was brief.
Palau receives the Chair with gratitude and humility, understanding it is held for a season, in service to the whole Forum family. And to the many Palauans who prepared for this meeting: this gathering belongs to you as much as it belongs to any government.
This 55th Pacific Islands Forum is an invitation to honor what has endured and ask what must now change. Palau last hosted our Leaders in 2014 under the theme, “The Ocean: Life and Future.” Twelve years later, life returns to the centre of our theme. That is no coincidence: the ocean remains our life, and the decisions we take now will shape our future.
In the days leading up to this meeting, my conversations with fellow Leaders and partners have been encouraging — a Forum family ready to listen, engage, and begin the work together.
B.E.L.A.U.: Life, Action, Unity
Our theme is B.E.L.A.U.: Building Economies: Life. Action. Unity. It draws its name from our traditional name, Belau, and from the values that continue to hold our communities together.
When we speak of building economies, we are speaking about the daily lives of our people: whether food is affordable, whether a young person can find meaningful work at home, whether a clinic has medicine and reliable electricity, and whether a family can face the next storm without falling into debt.
Here in Palau, we are working through these same questions: restoring a resilient tourism economy, strengthening fisheries and agriculture, and keeping public finances sustainable. These are national priorities, but they echo across our Forum family.
Life places people at the center. It includes health and education, housing and food security, culture and language, land and ocean.
It asks us to judge our decisions by what they leave to the child who is not yet in this room.
Action is the test. The Pacific has never suffered from a shortage of vision — we have declarations, strategies, and carefully negotiated commitments. Their value is realised when a community gains safe water, a school can teach, and help arrives before a crisis becomes a disaster. Our people expect — and deserve — results.
And unity does not require us to pretend that every national interest is identical. It requires us to listen honestly, protect the dignity of every Member, and keep searching for the ground on which we can stand together. Consensus should never become an excuse for silenceis built on the mutual trust and our understanding of each others unique circumstances. Disagreement should never become a reason for division, but the basis for the constructive dialogue that brings us towards convergence and a common ground.
On every Palauan bai, we paint the mesekuuk, the surgeonfish. Alone, they forage quietly across the reef. But when danger comes, they do not scatter. They come together. And in that unity, they are strongest.
That is the image I hope we carry with us this week: not separate delegations working in parallel, but one Pacific family moving together.
One Pacific Agenda
This is the Pacific Islands Forum. This week must be about prioritising the work the Pacific needs: work that secures the future of our people, our islands, and our ocean. The achievement of our collective aspirations and our Leaders Vision for 2050 rests on our unity and solidarity as a Forum Family – I cannot underscore enough.
The world increasingly recognizes the strategic importance of our region. We welcome friends and genuine partnerships. Yet attention is not the same as respect. Our partners are welcome to sail with us, but they do not choose our destination. The Pacific agenda must be driven by us and for us, and the Forum must remain the political home in which that agenda is shaped.
Our ocean has always made small islands into a large community. It does not recognise our borders, and neither should our stewardship of it. Long before ocean stewardship became a global cause, it was simply who we were — in the way our grandparents fished only what was needed, in the passage of knowledge from navigator to child, reef to reef, generation to generation. This is our shared Blue Pacific identity, and how we protect it will shape the future of generations around the world.
That is why Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity matters so deeply to this gathering — sustainable ocean management, resilient food systems, and financing fit for the scale of what we are protecting. When the Pacific leads with one voice on the ocean that defines us, the world listens and the world invests. Let this week be where we turn that leadership into results.
In Palau, we have a proverb: “Tekoi a ua edesaoch.” Like the waves of the ocean, knowledge comes in many forms and sizes, yet all move toward the same destination. Protecting our ocean requires every source of knowledge and leadership — traditional knowledge, community experience, science, and innovation working together. None should overcome the other; each should strengthen the whole.
That same principle should guide our work as Leaders. Our countries differ in geography, population, and circumstance, and we may approach our challenges from different directions. But, like the waves of the ocean, we can move toward the same destination: a peaceful, resilient, prosperous, and united Blue Pacific.
From Commitment to Delivery
Climate change remains the single greatest threat to the security and wellbeing of Pacific peoples. We say this because it is true, not because it is familiar. A tenth of a degree is not a decimal point to us. It is a shoreline, a freshwater lens, a coral reef, a crop, and a home.
The Pacific must continue to carry one clear message to the world: keep 1.5 degrees within reach; make climate finance easier to reach than the disaster it is meant to prevent; recognise the ocean as part of the climate solution; and fund resilience in ways that do not deepen the debt of vulnerable states. A country facing rising seas should not be handed a loan to buy a life jacket.
Our people do not need more recognition that we are vulnerable — we have known that longer than anyone. What we need is access: to finance, to adaptation funding, and to mechanisms built at a scale that matches the urgency. The Pacific Resilience Facility represents the kind of Pacific-owned, Pacific-led instrument our region has long called for. We must advance it with seriousness, so the smallest and most exposed among us are never left behind.
Climate and economic security are connected. The high cost of fuel, freight, and food shows how quickly events far from our shores reach every Pacific household, and our dependence on imported fossil fuels is an economic risk as well as a climate one. The transition to renewable energy is therefore part of our sovereignty: it lowers our exposure and keeps more of our scarce resources working in our own economies.
The same practical test should guide our institutions and partnerships. Architecture is not judged by the elegance of its blueprint — it is judged by whether it shelters people in a storm. Our regional organisations must work as one system and place scarce technical capacity where Members need it most. And the measure of a partnership is not the size of the announcement, but the lasting value it creates for Pacific people.
Closing: The Lesson of Bul
Fellow Leaders, in Palau, a bul is declared when leaders recognise that a resource is under pressure. They do not wait for the last fish to disappear — they act early. The community accepts restraint, shares responsibility, and gives it time to renew. A bul is not a rejection of prosperity. It is the wisdom that makes prosperity last.
That old practice contains a lesson for this modern Forum. Leadership must see beyond the appetite of the present. Action must come before damage becomes irreversible. Unity becomes real when each of us accepts responsibility for the future we share.
Let Palau be remembered as the place where our 55th Meeting renewed its purpose: where we put Pacific priorities first; where we made the connection between ocean stewardship and economic prosperity clear; where we turned regional commitments into better service and greater security for our people; and where our partnerships followed a course set by the Pacific.
Fifty-five years from now, another generation may gather for the 110th Forum. They will inherit the ocean we protect or the ocean we neglect, the institutions we strengthen or the divisions we permit. May they look back on this meeting in Belau and say that, when the currents were difficult, the Leaders of the Blue Pacific chose courage, chose one another, and chose the future — work we do not only for ourselves, but for all the world’s children.
To every Leader, delegation, partner, and guest gathered here in Palau: thank you for making this journey to our shores. Let this Forum be remembered not only for what was said, but for what was delivered.
May God bless the people of Palau, our Forum family, and our Blue Pacific Continent.
Mesulang, and welcome to Palau.
[ENDS]
