Pacific Magazine > Magazine > March 1, 2007

Environment

A False Start

Critical Conservation Initiative Runs Out Of Money One Year Early

By Alex Rheeney, PORT MORESBY

Rachel Groom from the PNG Department of Environment and Conservation conducting a point sampling dugong transect as part of a survey by the Milne Bay Community-based Coastal and Marine Conservation Project. PHOTO: Robert Yen

Local fishermen living near Samarai Island in Papua New Guinea’s Milne Bay Province are one step ahead of their countrymen when it comes to hunting dugongs.

They know the time has come for them to put down their spears and ponder how they could save the graceful marine mammal, following revelations by a research group that the local dugong population has dwindled and could number less than 100.

Phase 1 of the Milne Bay Community-Based Coastal and Marine Conservation Project involved a survey that concluded that the small size of the dugong population was an indication of their vulnerability.

But the project’s campaign to save the rich marine biodiversity in Milne Bay Province through research and public campaigns—and establish conservation models for other communities—was dealt a huge blow when $US7,127,000 in funding for Phase 1 ran out.

All field activities were abruptly brought to a standstill and workers at the Conservation International office in Alotau, the provincial capital of Milne Bay, were laid off.

A total budget of US$7.127 million was earmarked for Phase 1 with funding coming from the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Environment Facility, the Japanese Human Development Trust Fund, the Australian National University, Conservation International (CI), the Milne Bay provincial government and the PNG national government.

Alarmed that funding had dried up 12 months before the completion of Phase 1, the UNDP commissioned an independent evaluation of the project in July last year.

The evaluation concluded that the abrupt end to project field activities in October 2005 had been damaging. “The sudden cessation of project field activities…has left many individuals and communities frustrated, some, as the evaluators learned, angry. A church development fund association, funded on the basis of a project commitment almost collapsed, (and) fish aggregation devices have sunk because project-staff lack funds to travel to repair them,” the report stated. It added that money earmarked for the project was also spent on non-project related expenditure.

In September last year CI executives met in New Zealand and agreed to pull the plug on the project.

“CI has been forced into this untenable situation by insurmountable political and institutional issues – that despite our best efforts – we were unable to resolve,” Washington DC-based CI Chairman and CEO Peter Seligmann said in a statement.

Despite its problems, the UNDP is adamant the conservation project could go a long way in helping to maintain Milne Bay’s rich marine biodiversity.

Port Moresby-based UNDP acting resident representative Jan-Jilles van der Hoeven says Phase 1 could still be rescued, revealing that US$250,00 was left from the US$7.127 million allocation.

“Should this project just exist by itself and should additional funds not be mobilized, that money will be put to use to do a series of issues 100 per cent with the Milne Bay province people… If there is not a second phase, (then) we need to invest and let everybody know who has been involved in this project what has been going on,” said Jan-Jilles van der Hoeven.

That speaks to perhaps the biggest challenge of all: how to regain the trust and support of those community members who have invested their time, energy and convictions in the conservation project.