Forecasts suggest that solid growth in Asia is likely to continue. By 2030, Asian economies are expected to be roughly four times larger than they are today, and Asia’s share of global output is expected to rise to 40% of the global total. In contrast, most countries in the Pacific have experienced extended periods of relatively low growth, and many have suffered significant setbacks from disasters. This book analyzes and discerns some of the main trends driving economic relations between Asia and the Pacific. It aims to assess how the 14 Pacific developing member countries of the Asian Development Bank can better tap into opportunities arising from Asian growth, and explores how the economic and financial integration between Asia and the Pacific can be expanded to benefit both regions. Pacific Opportunities identifies critical constraints on integration and sets out policy reforms to address these constraints to mutually beneficial economic ties between the two regions. These two very different regions have drawn closer economically over the past two decades as improvements in transport infrastructure and advances in information and communications technology have helped to bridge geographic distance.

This interdisciplinary book explores the science and spirituality nexus in the Pacific Islands Region and as such makes a critical contribution to sustainable climate change adaptation in Oceania. In addition to presenting case studies, literary analyses, field projects, and empirical research, the book describes faith-engaged approaches through the prism of: • Context: past, present, and future prospects• Theory: concepts, narratives, and theoretical frameworks• Practice: empirical research and praxis-informed case examples• Doctrine: scriptural contributions and perspectives• Engagement: enlisting religious stakeholders and constituencies Comprising peer-reviewed works by scholars, professionals, and practitioners from across Oceania, the book closes a critical gap in the literature and represents a groundbreaking contribution to holistic climate change adaptation in the Pacific Islands Region that is scientifically sound, spiritually attuned, locally meaningful, and contextually compelling.

This book studies the internal framework of the Indo-Pacific region and examines the strategic issues faced by the countries that belong to it. Over the years, the Indo-Pacific region has become a prime driver of global economic growth and has generated considerable interest from countries both within and without. The region is now witnessing an intensified great power competition for greater geostrategic space, thus shaping the 21st-century world order. The volume focuses on the emerging strategies of the main actors involved in this competition. It discusses various key issues such as the purpose of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and its post-pandemic agenda, the conceptualisation of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) amid an intensifying Sino-US great power competition, the strategies of ASEAN and South Korea, China’s activities in the Indo-Pacific, economic architecture and supply chain disruption in the region, as well as the geopolitical strategy of the European Union for the Indo-Pacific. A crucial study of the Indo-Pacific region in the post-COVID-19 world, the book gives fresh insights into the areas of convergence and divergence in the strategic visions of the many regional actors. It will be of great interest to policymakers as well as students and academics in the fields of political science, international relations, foreign policy, geopolitics, security studies, strategic studies, as well as area studies, namely East and Southeast Asian studies, European Union studies, American studies and Australian studies.

Middle-Power Responses to China’s BRI and America’s Indo-Pacific Strategy brings together an international, multidisciplinary group of leading experts to contribute a well-rounded, multifaceted view of the transformation that is currently taking place in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific.

This volume lays the physical and conceptual groundwork for the Pacific World series, exploring both the constraints imposed and the opportunities offered to humanity by the physical environment of the Pacific region. Organized from the perspectives of "Big History" and macro-geography, the volume presents a series of major studies and surveys by authors from a range of disciplines. It opens with perspectives on the ocean, and closes with questions of human settlement, diffusion, and trans-Pacific contacts. Geologists write of the origins of the Pacific, its geological structure, and the problem of tsunamis; climatologists and oceanographers discuss the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the ocean waters; biologists and biogeographers find patterns in the life of the Basin - as is shown, all these have their impact on the potential of the region for human use and settlement. Finally, geographers, anthropologists, and archaeologists deal with the peopling of the Pacific islands, the settlement of the Americas, and the incidence and importance of pre-modern links across the Pacific.

This volume seeks to capture the rich array of images that define Japan's encounters with the Pacific Ocean. Contemporary Japanese most readily associate 'Pacific' with the devastating war that their country fought over a half century ago. The ensuing occupation realized a situation that this people had striven to avoid ever since the Portuguese first arrived in 1543 - their subjugation by a foreign power. But the Pacific Ocean also extended Japan's overseas contacts. From antiquity Japanese and their neighbours crossed it to trade ideas and products. From the mid-16th century it carried people from more distant lands, Europe and America, and thus expanded and diversified Japan's cultural and economic exchange networks. From the late 19th century it provided the highway to transport Japanese imperial expansion in Northeast Asia and later to encourage overseas migration into the Pacific and the Americas. The studies selected for inclusion in this volume, along with the introduction, explain how the Pacific Ocean thus nurtured images of both threat and opportunity to the island nation that it surrounds.