Tourism
SPTO New Chairperson Says It's Time To Get Serious
‘We must focus on protection of the environment’
For years, Cook Islanders have muttered under their breaths about not wanting to become “another Hawaii”—sometimes seen as over-developed and swamped with tourists.
That was before this small South Pacific nation started enjoying explosive growth rates in tourism and the millions of dollars that flow from it.
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Visitor numbers climbed steadily from just under 50,000 in 1998 to more than 74,000 last year.
Now almost everyone is pro-tourism and welcoming the news that an extra carrier is to begin this month, boosting visitor arrivals even higher.
Ironically, the new carrier is Aloha, an airline based in none other than Hawaii.
Among all the enthusiasm for tourism dollars—only islands with solid tourism activities have been able to minimise the crippling flow of migration—there are growing concerns about environmental impacts of the industry.
Now the new chairperson of the South Pacific Tourism Organisation, Robert Skews, is calling for fresh attention to be paid to the protection of the environment in his own country.
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An enthusiastic marketer of the region, Skews acknowledges that something needs to be done before the Cook Islands risks becoming a tourism loser instead of tourism leader.
“A lot of people pay lipservice to the environment and a lot of people do nothing about it,” says Skews about his own country.
French Polynesia and its luxury over-lagoon bungalows come to mind as one regional example of how to do things right, he says.
“There’s very tight controls over how they do it. I mean you look down from these bungalows and there is living colourful coral growing right underneath and all sorts of little fish swimming around. That wouldn’t happen if there was the slightest amount of pollution.”
Skews says he would like to say that this is what happens in the Cooks. “But I’m not convinced.”
Neither are some visitors. One experienced diver, one with an instructor’s ticket and 100 dives under her belt all over the world, bluntly described her one Rarotonga dive as “crap.”
She had planned for four or five dives while visiting but decided to save her money for Aitutaki and French Polynesia.
“The coral was all dead as far as I could see,” said Stephany Seddon-Brown, a British woman. “There was fish but I was amazed there was any there at all. What do they live on?”
One answer to that question might be the smaller fish that live off the ever-increasing amounts of algae that are appearing in the lagoons and on the reefs of Rarotonga. Some claim that the algae have always been there, especially in the hot seasons. Environmentalists claim rich nutrients from erosion from Rarotonga’s many construction sites and sewage leakages from existing tourism properties are overloading Rarotonga’s waters.
Despite the concerns, construction is speeding up. Figures released just before Islands Business went to press, by the Statistics division revealed the country’s biggest ever quarter, to September this year. Statistics recorded building permits of US$2.8 million, up from US$1.8million for the same time the year before. About half the permits were for commercial projects, the other half being residential— although many “private” homes end up being rented out permanently to tourists.
Most rooms, restaurants and bars are registered under the Cook Islands Tourist Corporation’s Accreditation Scheme, whose logo is a circle of the 15 stars, like the Cook Islands flag, and a tick.
“It was hoped that with the accreditation scheme they would help with environmental issues and I still believe that can happen,” says Skews.
Still, the scheme has been going on for over a decade and there are few signs that members take it seriously, at least when it comes to making sure their operations are eco-friendly.
“The latest Cook Islands brochures only has accredited properties and we need to set some minimum environmental standards for any new properties.
“If we do that, then we need also to say to existing properties that to maintain your accreditation you also need to bring yourselves up to standard. That means that within five years, you have to comply with the minimum standards of waste disposal and septic treatment, for example.”
Skews comments mark the first time that a private sector leader has proposed any even slightly firm timeframes for enforcing stricter standards on the tourism industry.
Still, it’s a timeframe that will seem awfully long to some, with concerns over lagoon degradation dating as far back as 1974.
The biggest irony in the arrival of Aloha Airlines is that date was when Hawaii began to put the breaks on the tourism madhouse it had become.
As well as high-rise hotels, downtown Waikiki is also spotted with empty lots, untouched by developers since a moratorium on development was clamped down without mercy more than two decades ago.
On Rarotonga, environmentalists, including the Chamber of Commerce’s Environment Council, have been calling for a similar moratorium for more than two years.
They are being steadily ignored as authorities continue to approve record millions each year in new developments. Instead of getting strict controls, the island is fast becoming a clutter of luridly tacky ‘island fun’ style signs.
Landowners have fought government over the placement of a rubbish tip, as solid waste from tourism swamps existing landfills in a few short years. Many properties have badly functioning sewage tanks or even old soak pits that leak into underground water and seep through sand into the lagoon. Lagoon water tests have been kept a secret by the ministry of health, along with almost any other statistics including fish poisoning and cancer.
In Hawaii, by contrast, controls are so strict that even a huge multi-national like Coca Cola has to be content to write its logo in very small letters on the side of its delivery vans—painted soothing white, not bright lurid red.
It could well be that, rather than being an example to be feared, Hawaii has lessons that a tourism leader like the Cooks—and the rest of the South Pacific region—can learn from.
“We’ve got to upgrade the industry to a certain level and that is achievable. But, of course, that’s only possible if we have a government that wants to focus on these things rather than other things,” says Skews, in a week that saw street protests against corruption and party swapping.
“That’s our country and that’s our future and if we don’t do anything, no one else will.”
