Opinion – With the Rise of the ‘Indo-Pacific’, Has the ‘Asia-Pacific’ Faded Away?
Geopolitical imaginations are mental maps in which there is no one way of framing the world. Mental geographies keep on changing, often directed by power contestations. The ‘Asia-Pacific’ and the ‘Indo-Pacific’ are two such constructs that define the geopolitics of the 21st century. While the ‘Asia-Pacific’ and the ‘Indo-Pacific’ have some overlap in their geographical coverage, both have emerged under different circumstances. Asia-Pacific emerged as the dominant conception of Asia’s role in the Pacific Ocean in the 1960s and was later institutionalised through the formation of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in the 1980s. However, this term was not inclusive of other important countries in the region like India and neither did it take into account the growing importance of the Indian Ocean for the world’s maritime trade. It was Japan which surmised the need to accommodate both these shortcomings. This move, with support from Australia and the USA, coalesced into the formation of the concept of the Indo-Pacific.
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A crucial U.N. conference heard calls on its first day for the world's major economies to keep their promises of financial help to address the climate crisis, while big polluters India and Brazil made new commitments to cut emissions. World leaders, environmental experts and activists all pleaded for decisive action to halt the global warming which threatens the future of the planet at the start of the two-week COP26 summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Monday. The task facing negotiators was made even more daunting by the failure of the Group of 20 major industrial nations to agree ambitious new commitments at the weekend.