ABSTRACT
The burgeoning 'new regionalism/s' literature has been innovative in its contributions to the understanding of how less familiar, more informal forms of regionalisms impact more familiar, formal institutions, but it has yet to take on board interrelated analyses of island and ocean governance. This chapter seeks to juxtapose several trends and literatures relevant to contemporary discourses and around these two interrelated forms of governance. That is island and oceans with reference to the Pacific, although its purpose is primarily conceptual rather than empirical; from globalizations to anti-globalizations and from international relations to development studies, respectively. The imperative of a Pacific Islands Forum with its Pacific Plan, supported inter alia by New Zealand's Pacific Cooperation Foundation, is undeniable in response to the contrary pressures of globalization on the one hand and regional disintegration on the other. Such contrary global versus local factors are reinforced by climate change and natural disasters such as the December 2004 tsunami in the neighbouring Indian Ocean.
