Oceania

From New World Encyclopedia
Revision as of 02:47, 7 December 2006 by Mike Butler (talk | contribs)
Previous (Ocean)
Next (Ocelot)


World map showing Oceania (geographically)

Oceania is a geographical (often geopolitical) region consisting of numerous countries and territories – mostly islands – in the Pacific Ocean. The exact scope of Oceania varies — with some versions including East Timor, Australia, and New Zealand, and other versions excluding these. The primary use of the term "Oceania" is to describe a continental region (like Europe or Africa) that lies between Asia and the Americas, with Australia as the major land mass. The name "Oceania" is used, rather than "Australia," because unlike the other continental groupings, it is the ocean rather than the continent that links the nations together. Oceania is the smallest continental grouping in land area and the second smallest, after Antarctica, in population.

Countries and territories

Geopolitical map of Oceania

Oceania was divided into Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia by the French explorer Dumont d'Urville in 1831. This subdivision is no longer recognised as correct by most geographers and scientists — who prefer to divide Oceania into Near Oceania and Remote Oceania — although it is still the most popular one.

Most of Oceania consists of small island nations. Australia is the only continental country, and Papua New Guinea and East Timor are the only countries with land borders, both with Indonesia.

The nations of Oceania have varying degrees of independence from their colonial powers and have negotiated a wide range of constitutional arrangements to suit their circumstances. The following list contains the countries and territories that are classified as part of Oceania by UNESCO; other countries are sometimes considered part of Oceania (see Other Interpretations below).

Australia

Melanesia

Micronesia

Polynesia


Australia is sometimes not included in Oceania, although a term like the "Pacific islands" would normally be used to describe Oceania without Australia.Hawaii and the United States territories with no indigenous population in the North Pacific are sometimes included, but are normally grouped with the United States in North America. Hawaiians are a Polynesian race. Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the eastern Pacific Ocean, part of the territory of Chile, and is sometimes included in Oceania.On rare occasions the term may be stretched even further to include other Pacific island groups such as the Aleutian Islands.

Oceania ecozone

Oceania is one of eight terrestrial ecozones, which constitute the major ecological regions of the planet. The Oceania ecozone includes all of Micronesia, Fiji, and all of Polynesia except New Zealand. New Zealand, along with New Guinea and nearby islands, Australia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia, constitute the separate Australasia ecozone.

Oceania is the smallest in area of any of the ecozones, and also the youngest geologically. Other ecozones include old continental land masses or fragments of continents, but Oceania is composed mostly of island groups that arose from the sea, as a result of hotspot volcanism, or as island arcs pushed upward by the collision and subduction of tectonic plates. The islands range from tiny coral atolls to large mountainous islands, like Hawaii and Fiji.

The climate of Oceania's islands is tropical or subtropical, and range from humid to seasonally dry. Wetter parts of the islands are covered by tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, while the drier parts of the islands, including the leeward sides of the islands and many of the low coral islands, are covered by tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests and tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. Hawaii's high volcanoes, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, are home to some rare tropical Montane grasslands and shrublands.

Since the islands of Oceania were never connected by land to a continent, the flora and fauna of the islands originally reached them from across the ocean. Once they reached the islands, the ancestors of Oceania's present flora and fauna adapted to life on the islands. Larger islands with diverse ecological niches encouraged floral and faunal adaptive radiation, whereby multiple species evolved from a common ancestor, each species adapted to a different ecological niche; the various species of Hawaiian honeycreepers (Family Drepanididae) are a classic example. Other adaptations to island ecologies include giantism, dwarfism, and, among birds, loss of flight. Oceania has a number of endemic species; Hawaii in particular is considered a global “center of endemism,” with its forest ecoregions having one of the highest percentages of endemic plants in the world.

Land plants dispersed by several different means. Many plants, mostly ferns and mosses but also some flowering plants, disperse on the wind, relying on tiny spores or feathery seeds that can remain airborne over long distances. Other plants, notably coconut palms and mangroves, produce seeds that can float in salt water over long distances, eventually washing up on distant beaches. Birds are also an important means of dispersal; some plants produce sticky seeds that are carried on the feet or feathers of birds, and many plants produce fruits filled with seeds that can pass through the digestive tracts of birds. Botanists generally agree that much of the flora of Oceania is derived from the Malesian Flora of the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Guinea, with some plants from Australasia and a few from the Americas, particularly in Hawaii. Metrosideros, Pandanus]' and Coco are tree genera with a fairly ubiquitous distribution across Oceania.

Dispersal across the ocean is difficult for most land animals, and Oceania has relatively few indigenous land animals compared to other ecozones. Certain types of animals that are ecologically important on the continental ecozones, like large land predators and grazing mammals, were entirely absent from the islands of Oceania until humans brought them. Birds are relatively common, including many sea birds and some species of land birds whose ancestors may have been blown out to sea by storms. Some birds evolved into flightless species after their ancestors arrived, including several species of rails. A number of islands have indigenous lizards, including geckoes and skinks, whose ancestors probably arrived on floating rafts of vegetation washed out to sea by storms. With the exception of bats, which live on most of the island groups, there are few if any indigenous mammal species in Oceania, although several species have been introduced by humans: the first Malayo-Polynesian settlers brought pigs, dogs, and, inadvertently, rats to the islands; European settlers brought other animals, including cats, mongoose, sheep, goats, and the Norway rat.

These and other introduced species, in addition to overhunting and deforestation, have dramatically altered the ecology of many of Oceania's islands, pushing many species to extinction or near-extinction. The absence of predator species caused many bird species to become “naïve,” losing the instinct to flee from predators, and to lay their eggs on the ground, which makes them vulnerable to introduced predators like cats, dogs, mongooses, and rats. The arrival of humans on these island groups often resulted in disruption of the indigenous ecosystems and waves of species extinctions. Easter Island, the easternmost island in Polynesia, shows evidence of a human-caused ecosystem collapse several hundred years ago, which also caused the human population to implode. The island, once lushly forested, is now mostly windswept grasslands. More recently, Guam's native bird and lizard species were decimated by the introduction of a snake, Boiga irregularis, in the 1940s.

Economy

The economy of Oceania is comprised of more than 14 separate countries and their associated economies. On a total scale the region has approximately 35,834,670 inhabitants who are spread among 30,000 islands in the South Pacific bordered between Asia and the Americas. This region has a diverse mix of economies from the highly developed and globally competitive financial markets of Australia (1st) and New Zealand (2nd) boasting parity with much of Western Europe, to the much less developed economies that belong to many of their island neighbours.

A panorama of Sydney, Australia's most populous city and Oceania's only World City.
Honiara is the capital of the Soloman Islands.

Many of the smaller Pacific nations rely on trade with Australia, New Zealand and the United States for exporting goods and for accessing other products.

Australia and New Zealand's trading arrangements are known as Closer Economic Relations. Australia and New Zealand, along with other countries, are members of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the East Asia Summit (EAS), which may become trade blocs in the future particularly EAS.

The overwhelming majority of people in the Pacific (not including Australia and New Zealand) work in the primary sector. Many nations are still quintessentially agricultural; for example, 80 percent of the population of Vanuatu and 70 percent of the population of Fiji works in agriculture. The main produce from the pacific is copra or coconut, but timber, beef, palm oil, cocoa, sugar and ginger are also commonly grown across the tropics of the Pacific. Old growth logging is exploited on larger islands, including the Solomons and Papua New Guinea.

Fishing provides a major industry for many of the smaller nations in the Pacific, although many fishing areas are exploited by other larger countries, namely Japan.

Natural resources, such as lead, zinc, nickel and gold, are mined across the west of the region, in the Solomon Islands and Australia. The manufacturing of clothing is a major industry in some parts of the Pacific, escpecially Fiji, although this is decreasing. Very little of the economy is in thearea of investing and banking, save in the larger countries; Australia and New Zealand.

Recently tourism has become a large source of income for many in the Pacific; tourists come from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA. Fiji currently draws almost half a million tourists each year; more than a quarter from Australia. This contributes $300-million to Fiji's economy.

As well as this, many places in the Pacific still rely on foreign aid for development. In the Solomon Islands 50 percent of Government spending is paid for by international donors; namely Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, Japan and the Republic of China (Taiwan).

As the worlds regions become increasingly interlinked to form trade blocs the future which entails Oceania could lead to either increased unity or separatism. Future issues such as global warming, the Kyoto Agreement, and the subsequent possibility of the carbon trade could increase the regions viability to become a more centralised region. Greater unity and therefore sustained prosperity among Oceanian countries could be achieved through increased co-operation between nation states economically, politically and socially. The implementation of these factors could perhaps provide the region with a similar framework to the European Union in its most fundamental form. Perhaps the formation of a common currency in the South Pacific, similar to that in Europe may be the first step in the right direction.

Demographics

This is a list of countries/dependencies by population density in inhabitants/km².

Unlike the figures in the country articles, the figures in this table are based on areas including inland water bodies (lakes, reservoirs, rivers) and may therefore be lower here.

country pop. dens. area population
  (/km²) (km²) (2002 est.)
Nauru 587 21 12,329
Tuvalu 429 26 11,146
Marshall Islands 407 181 73,630
American Samoa (US) 345 199 68,688
Guam (US) 293 549 160,796
Federated States of Micronesia 194 702 135,869
Northern Mariana Islands (US) 162 477 77,311
Tokelau (N.Z.) 143 10 1,431
Tonga 142 748 106,137
Kiribati 119 811 96,335
Cook Islands (N.Z.) 87 240 20,811
East Timor 68 15,007 1,019,252
French Polynesia (Fr.) 62 4,167 257,847
Samoa 61 2,944 178,631
Wallis and Futuna (Fr.) 57 274 15,585
Norfolk Island (Aus) 53 35 1,866
Fiji 47 18,270 856,346
Cocos Islands (Aus) 1 45 14 632
Palau 42 458 19,409
Solomon Islands 17 28,450 494,786
Vanuatu 16 12,200 196,178
New Zealand 15 268,680 3,908,037
Papua New Guinea 11 462,840 5,172,033
New Caledonia (Fr.) 11 19,060 207,858
Niue (N.Z.) 8.2 260 2,134
Christmas Island (Aus) 2 3.5 135 474
Australia 2.5 7,686,850 19,546,792
Pitcairn Islands (UK) 1.0 47 47
Total 3.7 8,523,655 32,642,390

1 Located in the Indian Ocean, not in Oceania.
2 This Christmas Island is in the Indian Ocean—not the one part of the Line Islands;
a territory of Kiribati

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Lin Poyer, Laurence Marshall Carucci, Suzanne Falgout, “The Typhoon of War,” University of Hawaii Press, 2001. ISBN 0824821688

Hezel, Francis X., “The New Shape of Old Island Cultures: A Half Century of Social Change in Micronesia,” University of Hawaii Press, 2001. ISBN 0824823931

Leibowitz, Arnold H., “Embattled Island: Palau’s Struggle for Independence,” Praeger/Greenwood, 1996. ISBN 0275953904

Thomas, James O., “Trapped With The Enemy: Four years as a civilian POW in Japan,” ISBN: 1401044131

Rogers, Robert F., “Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam,” University of Hawaii Press, 1995. ISBN 0824816781

Denfeld, D. Colt, “Hold the Marianas: The Japanese Defense of the Mariana Islands,” White Mane Publications, 1997. ISBN 1572490144

Cunningham, Lawrence J. “Ancient Chamorro Society,” 1992.

Farrell, Don A., “History of the Northern Mariana Islands,” (Unknown Binding), 1991

Carucci, Laurence M. "The Source of the Force in Marshallese Cosmology," in L. Lindstrom and G. White, eds., The Pacific Theatre: Island Representations of World War II, 1989.

Tobin, Jack A. "Land Tenure in the Marshall Islands," in Land Tenure Patterns: Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, 1958.

Munro, Doug. "Migration and the Shift to Dependence in Tuvalu: A Historical Perspective." In John Connell, ed., Migration and Development in the South Pacific, 1990.

Smith, L. (1980), The Aboriginal Population of Australia, Australian National University Press, Canberra

King, Michael "The Penguin History of New Zealand," Penguin Books, 2003. ISBN 0143018671

External links

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.

Retrieved from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Oceania&oldid=153495

Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.
Copyright Logo
Powered by MediaWiki