Historically speaking, Australia has been held back by the tyranny of distance.
And Perth, its farthest-flung capital city and one often touted as the “world’s most isolated”, has struggled in the shadow of its Eastern States counterparts.
But that old picture is changing rapidly. Western Australia shares the waters of the Indian Ocean, a region about to find itself front and centre of a global economic shift. If we can collectively balance the traps and opportunities.
The Indian Ocean region’s potential to experience a new golden age is a serious proposition worthy of a serious answer. What will it take?
UWA Public Policy Institute’s new report Indian Ocean Futures: Prospects for shared regional success asked a team of experts and leaders from across the region to look at three areas: economic development; environmental and food security challenges; and interconnection of people, knowledge and interests.
The Indian Ocean Region comprises 23 sovereign nations, stretching across eastern and southern Africa, the southern parts of West Asia, South Asia, South-East Asia and Australasia. They have a combined population of more than 2.7 billion.
Sea-lanes link the Middle East, Europe and the Americas to the region, and its human, environmental and cultural interactions point to a growing set of shared influences and interests.
And in recent times, Australia’s own Indo-Pacific tilt has involved a fresh, emboldened approach that reaches beyond the giants of India and Indonesia.
The world’s most congested shipping lanes, air traffic corridors and cyber-age highways currently span the North Atlantic. The Indian Ocean has the potential to match that benchmark by mid-century.
Moreover, the sensitive strategic interests of global powers and emerging powers now intersect the region.
Proximity and access to important global trade routes across the region stand out, as do the geo-strategic assets and zones of influence of the world’s superpowers, the US and China.
Australia, traditionally thought of as distant from and aloof to global strategic tensions, is today experiencing—close-up—the interplay of historic and geographic factors that are influencing global trade, energy, environment, food and migration trends.
Successful engagement with these forces will shape Australia’s place in the world in the mid-21st century.
Passage to India: The region’s path to prosperity
Regional trade growth looks set to grow, and rapidly in some places. Shared success will require more than this. It will entail developing a range of complementary open economies.
This is because sustainable development must overcome countries that currently perceive limited common interests.
For instance, India’s eye-catching growth economy seeks to go beyond becoming the new workshop of the world and instead emerge as the tech-shop of global trade.
The worry is that even this good news story is focused on the big markets of Europe and North America, with little aimed at its own region.
The Australia India Chamber of Commerce (which held its annual conference in Perth for the first time on Monday and Tuesday) is sensitive to this opportunity. India’s prospects multiply significantly if it can both concentrate of buying and selling to major rising economies in its own region alongside its efforts to penetrate established markets in western Europe and the US.
The region has been characterised by trade that has moved through the Indian Ocean rather than between its constituent economies. Some of the region’s economies are struggling to move beyond middle-income economies (e.g. Malaysia, Mauritius), while many others face the task of entering that bracket.
If the region’s giants (India, Indonesia, South Africa) make progress, the economic prospects for the region start to take on a different hue.
The vision depends on adopting new science-led policy approaches to food and environmental security, underpinned by responsible and responsive governance and accountability mechanisms. Indonesia has learned much about how to do so through policy experimentation that has empowered thousands of villages to develop social welfare programs.
Embracing innovation is a widely shared goal of nations in the region. Mauritius is rapidly improving its tertiary education systems, using nimble micro-credentials, so that it is seen as upgrading its regional human capital. Australia’s Universities Accord, meanwhile, is driving a national reset its higher education economy.
Regional connectivity fundamentally will be driven by people, and the greatest manifestation of this will be through migration. Migrant populations, both old and new, fuel a re-imagining the societies they join and contribute to.
The role of diasporic populations in transnational, regional connectivity is already apparent in Australia which has been undergoing a pivot towards its Indo-Pacific neighbourhood.
There are, as-yet untapped, benefits in Australia alone from better engagement and inclusion policies for its African diaspora.
Make no mistake: half a millennia ago, the Indian Ocean was a vibrant venue for exchange, trade and connectivity that stood out by global standards. It was hallmarked by the constant movement of people, goods and ideas.
But somewhere along the way this dynamism can be easily lost. If Australia can develop a shared understanding of the issues in collaboration with its Indian Oceanic neighbours, we stand a good chance to realise our golden potential, with Perth standing tall alongside Singapore, Mumbai, Jakarta, Dubai and Nairobi as the region’s shining cities.
In other words, we require a better, shared understanding. Examination of these issues and opportunities is the bedrock that enables well-informed decisions by government, business and not-for-profits.
Indian Ocean Futures presents policymakers with timely, curated expertise to do so.