Dr Pretes' presentation explores how small, isolated island states have made use of “sovereignty resources” such as postage stamps, passport sales, fisheries rights, satellite slots, offshore banks, tax haven status, and internet top-level domains to achieve relatively high levels of economic development. The presentation identifies various kinds of sovereignty resources and examines how the revenues derived from them have been invested in global financial markets using sovereign wealth funds, thereby enlarging the “economic space” of these small states. Case studies from the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans illustrate both how marginal island states can engage with globalization to their own advantage and how sovereignty itself can create new resources.
Michael Pretes, PhD, a native of San Francisco, California, is Professor of Geography at the University of North Alabama in the United States, and Research Fellow in Geography and Environmental Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He holds degrees from the University of California-Berkeley, Northwestern University, and the Australian National University. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Geographers and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. His research interests include economic development in islands and remote regions, tourism, national parks, the history of geography, and geopolitics, with a regional focus on North America, Polar Regions, southern Africa, and Australia and Pacific Islands.
The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly lecture given by academic scholars, field-based geography practitioners, members of the local community, and spatial justice advocates to share their knowledge- and practice-based research undertakings. Jointly presented by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS), the Heo/Geo Lecture Series which previously underwent several iterative rebranding positions geography as a discipline that not only straddles the realms of natural/physical and social sciences, humanities, political ecologies, regional and area studies, GI technologies and geospatial storytelling, it is also a vibrant and convivial space that welcomes multiplicities and plural voices. The name Heo/Geo is itself an accommodation to the various understandings, meanings and pronunciations of geography in its indigenous and vernacular forms and the Anglicized name that has since been adapted in the local lexicon.
This Heo/Geo Lecture is presented by the Human Geography (HUG) and the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research groups of the UP Department of Geography and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations.
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