CHOGM Report 2024 - a personal perspective

Samoa, 2024
Prepared by Merv Lindsay and reviewed Pratarp Singh For CEC
From the 16th October to 26th October 2024 Pratarp Singh and Merv Lindsay attended CHOGM 24 in Samoa. It’s very difficult to summarise such an expansive range of experiences, meetings and people we met into a short report. However I’ll do my best!
CHOGM has 4 main components these are:

• Forums
• Side events
• Official government to government meetings Ceremonial
• Social

 
Within each of these groups there are numerous components. For example there were four forums. These were:

• People’s forum
• Youth forum
• Women’s forum
• Business forum

Pratarp and I participated in the peoples forum and the business forum.
We also attended the side event, the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Initiative (CSCI) workshop, called ‘Strengthening Urbane Resilience for All’, which was one of a huge number of side events.
Of course we also attended some of the related social functions (including an informal dinner to meet some of the other association delegates, and we took the opportunity to sit in on the Commonwealth foreign ministers meeting, just  to see how it worked (or didn’t work). On the last day at lunchtime there was also a reception for association representatives, hosted by the Commonwealth secretary general, that was a great opportunity to meet representatives I hadn’t met and debriefed with others I had met. We were working out what was what on the run and it definitely would have helped to have attended Arif Zaman’s ‘Arif’s session for CHOGM first timers’.
 
It’s worth commenting here that despite the name, some very important heads of government did not attend. Trudeau (Canada) snd Modi (India) weren’t there and one would need to wonder why it clashed with BRIC? I was told Uganda’s leader also chose BRIC over CHOGM so there may have befn others.
 
Outside CHOGM we took the opportunity to meet 3 members of the Samoa Engineers Association (I don’t know the correct name). This included Sebastian Mariner who is current chair of the South Pacific Engineers Association (SPEA). The other 2 Samoa engineers were Perelini Perelini (a bit of an elder statesman of the Samoan engineering community and still quite influential) and Tom Tinai. I’ll report separately about that meeting.
 
Also outside CHOGM, on the Sunday before, Pratarp arranged for us to visit a NGO aid project and we had dinner with some of the people running it. It was a project to turn baby nappies into soil. It’s a tiny project but fascinating not just for what this project is achieving, but to understanding the funding model and implementation structure sitting behind it and these type of projects generally.
 
So those were the official meetings inside and outside CHOGM. However without a doubt the greater benefit was the numerous one on one discussions we had with various other participants from an incredibly diverse range of backgrounds. So many of these discussions challenged our thinking on a wide range of issues. In particular we met many of the representatives of commonwealth associations and most if not all those representing associations connected to the CSCI.
 
Specifics
Within the people forum (which ran for 2 days) there was a wide range of topics discussed. These included:

• Climate change
• Censorship and freedom of expression
• Equality of access to health and quality of life
• Corruption
• Equality for diversity

 
It’s worth adding a shift in wording. The word ‘justice’ was almost the word of the week. So it was ‘climate justice’, ‘health justice’ ‘freedom of expression justice’ etc. not sure the full implications of this shift in language.
 
The business forum was obviously business focused but in many ways was even more diverse than the people’s forum with numerous parallel streams. Some of the best discussions that I attended were about financing emerging businesses in emerging economies, supporting women in business and the opportunities and impediments to accessing finance in emerging economies. It was difficult choosing the best stream to sit in on.
 
The Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Initiative (CSCI)
This was a side event on Wednesday. It was an excellent insight into this initiative but there is no doubt that it was not allocated anywhere near enough time. It could have had a full day! Many people including us didn’t get the chance to contribute or challenge the initiative. For example right at the end a speaker raised the impact of changing communications infrastructure and the opportunities this presents and how this will impact the objectives.  This for me was a light bulb moment. He was from a company that delivers satellite communications (not spaceX but a competitor)  I was left wondering what more could have been teased out with more time. And I was left wondering where to from now. What is the next steps to achieving outcomes?
We need to stay on top of this project and become more engaged.
One of the benefits was now knowing many of the players who also need to be followed up. Some of the key people include:
Jeremy Cross - Kings Foundation
Lucy Slack Commonwealth local government forum Kelley Moore Commonwealth Association of Planners
 
People
I couldn’t begin to list the people we met but every conversation and every meeting  was insightful. The challenges and different perspectives from a very local level to the differences from country to country.
I’ll give a few examples:
1. Renewables in smaller countries:
We were given great insights into the economic and engineering challenges in Samoa with their transition to renewables. Their challenges are typical though every country will have its differences. Some of Samoa’s challenges included being sold inferior solar products that needed to be renewed far sooner than expected (impacting power costs), cyclone damage to both solar and wind, maintaining stable voltages and frequency which has forced the indefinite need to maintain a large diesel generation component, and keeping power affordable with the level of redundancy needed for renewables.
2. Chinese influence - it’s seen as both a positive and a negative and definitely a complex issue. If nothing else the Chinese have generated competition for influence.
3. Unintended consequences was an often used expression. As things change in countries for whatever reason, the social status quo is challenged sometimes with unfortunate consequences. I could write a lot more about this but I’m sure others would understand this topic far better than I. It’s all too often too easy to impose simplistic solutions onto a country or region without insight into the cultural and economic nuances that can lead you to these sometimes very serious and sometimes even irreversible unintended consequences.
 
There were many other issues discussed and people we met. All interesting and all challenging our thinking. However I think we both came away with a sense that will changes result? and how can change for the better become an outcome? My sense is that it needs to be generated by one step at a time from each and every participant taking the awareness of the challenges and turning them into actions that are within our individual range of influences. No doubt at government levels many will have their aims and objectives but CHOGM is far more than the Heads of Governments. The thousands of other people have a role. Thats us.