What Comes After the SDGs, and Why Pacific Island States Are Well Placed to Set the Terms of the Post-2030 Global Development Agenda

1. Introduction: The ‘Blue Pacific’

The ‘Blue Pacific’ narrative has emerged as one of the region’s most important strategic reframings in global development discourse. It positions Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs) not as small, dispersed, and vulnerable states, but as custodians of a vast and interconnected ocean continent, bound by shared identity, stewardship, and geopolitical significance [1,2]. This shift matters as it elevates the Pacific’s political currency, moving it beyond a narrative of need towards one of agency, collective strength, and strategic relevance. Anchored in regional mechanisms such as the Pacific Islands Forum and operationalised through the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent [3], it provides a coherent and unified platform for a multi-party block approach to engagement in global decision-making.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [4], adopted in 2015, have provided an important global framework around which to rally action to address poverty, inequality, environmental sustainability, and advance health, wellbeing and human development. For PICTs, they created a shared language that helped align national and regional priorities, and enabled engagement with development partners [5].

However, the SDG era has also exposed persistent structural constraints in the Pacific, including limited institutional capacity, economic fragility associated with small and dispersed populations, high exposure to natural hazards and climate change, and continued reliance on external financing and donor agendas [5,6]. These challenges are compounded by rapid environmental and demographic change, including population growth, urbanisation, increasing population mobility and migration, and escalating pollution and environmental degradation across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems. These dynamics interact with diverse social and cultural contexts that shape vulnerability, resilience, and development pathways. Taken together, these are not marginal issues; they represent systemic barriers to achieving self-determined and sustainable development.

While such constraints are not unique to developing contexts, they are more acute in small island states, where infrastructure, workforce capacity, and fiscal space are tightly constrained and the risk of failure carries extraordinarily high opportunity costs [6]. Context matters, and what eventuates beyond 2030 will depend on whose realities shape the next global development framework. For the Pacific, this moment should not be treated as a passive transition but rather as a strategic inflexion point. The question is not what replaces the SDGs, but who defines what comes next, and whose realities that framework is built to serve.

Beyond financing and infrastructure constraints, Pacific Island countries and territories must also contend with a development architecture that has historically privileged externally defined priorities, timelines, and measures of success. Development assistance has often been characterised by short funding cycles, fragmented programmes, and donor-driven agendas and reporting requirements that place substantial administrative burden on already constrained systems [7]. In practice, this can distort national priorities and incentivise implementation approaches designed to satisfy external accountability mechanisms rather than strengthen locally owned systems [8]. These dynamics are particularly problematic in small-island settings, where ministries frequently operate with limited workforce depth and where the transaction costs of managing multiple vertical initiatives can consume scarce technical and managerial capacity [9]. While development partnerships remain essential, the post-2030 agenda must move beyond models that position Pacific countries primarily as recipients of externally designed interventions. Instead, it should support longer-term, country-led approaches that strengthen institutional capability, regional collaboration, and policy autonomy. For the Pacific, self-determination in development is not simply a political aspiration; it is a practical requirement for sustainability in contexts where resilience depends on the ability of governments and communities to adapt policies and systems to rapidly changing environmental, economic, and social realities [1,3,7,8].

Closely linked to this is the question of how progress is defined and measured. The SDGs created a universal framework for monitoring development, but the associated indicators often struggled to capture the realities and priorities of small island systems [6,10,11]. Many indicators relied on data systems that are difficult to sustain in resource-constrained settings and favoured standardised global comparability over contextual relevance [11]. In the Pacific, this has contributed to situations where countries are assessed against metrics that inadequately reflect vulnerability, resilience, cultural priorities, ecological stewardship, or the disproportionate impacts of climate change and external shocks. Future development frameworks must therefore place greater emphasis on country-defined indicators and regional approaches to measurement that better reflect lived realities and local priorities. This includes recognising the importance of Indigenous knowledge systems, community resilience, environmental stewardship, and social cohesion as integral dimensions of sustainable development [7]. It also requires greater investment in Pacific-led data systems and analytical capability so that evidence generation supports national decision-making rather than primarily serving external reporting requirements. Without greater ownership over how development is measured, there is a risk that the post-2030 agenda will continue to reward visibility within global frameworks rather than meaningful progress within local contexts.

The post-2030 development agenda will be shaped by those who enter negotiations with clarity, cohesion, and conviction. The Pacific is unusually well-positioned to do so, supported by a suite of regionally endorsed frameworks. These include the Framework for Pacific Regionalism [12], which guides collective prioritisation and action among PICTs; the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent [3], which sets a shared long-term vision for regional development; and the Small Island Developing States Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway [13], which articulates global commitments to respond to the specific challenges facing Small Island Developing States. These frameworks are reinforced by established mechanisms for collective political engagement, such as the Pacific Islands Forum and other regional institutions. Few regions have articulated such a politically endorsed and internally coherent vision that integrates development, climate resilience, ocean governance, and regional solidarity.

This positioning is occurring within an increasingly contested geopolitical environment [14,15]. The Pacific has become a focal point of strategic competition among traditional partners and emerging powers, with growing attention from Australia, New Zealand, China, the United States, and other countries. While this renewed engagement creates opportunities for investment, financing, and diplomatic influence, it also carries risks. Development agendas can become shaped by external strategic interests that prioritise security, infrastructure visibility, or geopolitical alignment over locally identified development needs [14]. For Pacific Island countries and territories, there is a risk that global interest in the region may reinforce fragmented and externally driven approaches [15]. The Blue Pacific narrative is therefore important not only as a development framework, but also as a political instrument through which the region can assert collective agency amid intensifying geopolitical competition.

Importantly, Pacific countries are not passive actors within this environment. Over recent decades, the region has demonstrated increasing diplomatic cohesion and sophistication in global negotiations relating to climate change, ocean governance, and fisheries. Pacific leadership was instrumental in elevating the concept of “large ocean states” within international discourse and in sustaining global attention on the existential implications of climate change. These experiences provide important lessons for the post-2030 agenda.

2. The Risk of Repeating SDG-Era Limitations

A central risk is that the post-2030 agenda will continue to be organised around important, yet somewhat incongruent topics, such as security, environmental sustainability, welfare, health, and economic stability, without adequately reflecting the lived realities of Small Island Developing States [13,16,17,18,19]. Nowhere is this more evident than in how climate change is framed. For the Pacific, climate change is not a sector, it is a system-wide determinant that shapes fiscal space, infrastructure planning, health risks, food systems, migration, natural and anthropogenic environments, and even sovereignty [20,21,22]. Treating it as a standalone issue reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both impact and context. Any future framework that maintains this separation will reproduce the limitations of the SDG era and fail to deliver meaningful outcomes for small island systems.

Financing arrangements reflect a similar misalignment. Current global financing systems remain anchored to income-based eligibility criteria that fail to capture structural vulnerability [23,24,25]. Pacific countries face high exposure to shocks, elevated service delivery costs, and limited fiscal buffers. Their economic structure constrains market competition and limits alternatives, yet many are deemed ineligible for concessional support based on GDP classifications that obscure these realities [20,26,27]. This is not a technical flaw; it is a structural failure. Adopting the United Nations Multidimensional Vulnerability Index offers a pathway forward [28,29]. Pacific countries should lead its implementation and insist that vulnerability, not income alone, underpins access to development and climate finance in the next global settlement. A recent Lancet Countdown report on health and climate change in SIDS [25] reiterates the need for climate policy and financing decisions to be informed by robust vulnerability and risk assessments, as a foundation for building systems equipped to respond to evolving threats.

3. Addressing Fragmentation in the Next Global Development Agenda

Health systems further illustrate the consequences of fragmented global thinking. The SDG framework has reinforced disease- and programme-specific approaches to funding and delivery. Yet the Pacific faces overlapping and interacting health burdens: escalating infectious disease risk, rising non-communicable disease burden, and other environmentally mediated threats [30]. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the limitations of siloed approaches and underscored the need for integrated, system-level responses. A post-2030 agenda that continues to fragment health investments will not deliver impact. Instead, resources must be directed towards strengthening resilient, integrated public health systems capable of responding to complex and intersecting risks while making the best use of the limited human and capital resources available. In a forward-looking process, Pacific health leaders have reimagined the 30-year-old Healthy Islands Vision to align with the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent [3]. The Healthy Islands Vision 2050 provides a roadmap that reaffirms a shared journey grounded in cultural identity, equity, innovation, and collective wisdom. It envisions resilient Pacific peoples who thrive with opportunity and improved health for all [31].

From narrative to negotiation: Positioning the Pacific in the post-2030 agenda

The Blue Pacific narrative offers more than identity; it offers leverage. It provides a platform for the region to advance a focused set of conditions for its engagement with the post-2030 development agenda. These include embedding climate resilience across all sectors of development, adopting vulnerability-based financing criteria, investing in integrated and resilient public systems, and ensuring that Pacific-led frameworks guide implementation. Translating this narrative into influence will require discipline: a small number of clearly defined priorities, consistently articulated and collectively advanced.

4. Conclusions

The post-2030 framework will not emerge in a vacuum. It will be negotiated, contested, and shaped by power. The Pacific has already laid much of the groundwork, articulating a coherent vision, building regional consensus, and defining its priorities [3,12]. The task now is strategic and urgent. Leadership will be central to translating this position into influence. The Pacific Islands Forum is well placed to drive high-level political positioning and negotiation, while the Pacific Community (SPC) can anchor the evidence base, provide technical translation, and support implementation pathways. In partnership with academic and political actors, these institutions can bridge the interface among evidence, policy, and diplomacy.

Operationally, this requires clear delineation of roles and strong coordination: the Pacific Islands Forum to convene and articulate unified political positions; the Pacific Community and partner agencies to synthesise and translate evidence into policy-ready outputs; and regional platforms to sustain engagement with national governments and global actors.

Australia, New Zealand, and other development partners, including China, play a pivotal role. As the region’s largest partners, they can either enable or constrain Pacific influence. Supporting Pacific leadership requires more than rhetorical alignment; it demands a willingness to back Pacific-defined priorities and to avoid framing engagement primarily through commercial, geopolitical, or security lenses. Their credibility will increasingly depend on how effectively they amplify, rather than shape, Pacific agendas.

If these conditions are met, the Pacific will not merely participate in the post-2030 agenda but help define it. If not, the region risks once again adapting to a framework not designed for its realities. The opportunity is clear; failure to act will not be neutral but will entrench a development model misaligned with Pacific priorities for another generation.