Pacific Magazine > Magazine > February 28, 2008

Innovators

Going Green

Pacific Environmental Innovators Leading The Way

Our annual “Innovators” feature this year highlights individuals, community groups and businesses that are leading the way in dealing with the region’s environmental challenges.

Their work ranges from the small and local scale, to broader regional initiatives, and includes waste management, research, conservation areas and innovative technologies.

We could have given you double the number of examples we settled on in these pages and you can find more at www.pacificmagazine.net. It’s cause for some optimism. In the words of one of our innovators, “don’t listen to the people that tell you it can’t be done, because it can be done.”

The Micronesian Challenge is Palau President Tommy Remengesau Jr.’s “baby and legacy.”

Micronesia
President Remengesau Rises To The Challenge


The Micronesian Challenge is “cutting edge conservation and the whole world is watching,” says director of The Nature Conservancy’s Micronesian program, Bill Raynor. And he attributes much of the profile of the Challenge to date to Palau’s President Tommy Remengesau Jr.

“It’s his baby, it’s his legacy and he really want to achieve it in Palau (before he leaves office next year),” says Raynor.

It was President Remengesau who first issued the challenge in 2005 to Palau’s Micronesia neighbors to conserve 30 percent of near-shore marine resources and 20 percent of forest resources by 2020. In fact, Fiji has already made a similar undertaking and earlier, but it was President Remengesau’s call that resonated. The Challenge jurisdictions – Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Guam and Northern Mariana Islands – represent nearly 5 percent of the marine area of the Pacific Ocean and 7 percent of its coastlines.

“I realized you couldn’t have development on one side and conservation on the other, and see which would outwit the other,” President Remengesau says.

Given President Remengesau’s role front and center of the Micronesian Challenge, Raynor says “It’s a little scary what will happen when he goes,” as he will after Palau’s next election. Raynor says they will want to try and keep him involved somehow, but there is still a lot of underlying friction in Palau about protected areas, financing the Challenge, and the use of the Micronesian Conservation Trust as the financial administrative body.

Guam Governor Felix Camacho says of President Remengesau’s contribution, “he’s going to be sorely missed. I think his passion and commitment and drive is recognized in this region and internationally but I am hoping it will be not only for the republic of Palau but for successive leaders in Micronesia that this is a sustained policy that we can adhere to.”

Governor Camacho says the Guam military buildup will pose a challenge to Guam in meeting the Micronesian Challenge goals.

“They (the army) has stated that the buildup and facilities needed would be all within their current footprint, but again as information is slowly let out we’re coming to realize there may be requirements for them to seek additional land outside of their footprint by leasing either from the government of Guam or by private land owners for additional housing estates and for additional training grounds. So that has an impact on at least the amount of land that needs to be set aside.”

The Micronesia Challenge has resonated beyond the region. Indonesia’s President Susilo Bangbang Yudhoyono has pledged to increase marine protected areas to 24.7 million acres from 18 million acres by 2010. A number of Caribbean states led by Grenada, the Bahamas, Belize and the Grenadines have committed themselves to a Caribbean Challenge, which will be formally launched this year.

“There are lots of little tentacles here,” says Raynor. “We hope at some point the entire Pacific will say this is something we want to do and challenge each other.”

Garbage is separated and recycled in Tarawa, Kiribati.

Kiribati
Waste As A Resource, Not Just A Problem

There is a quiet revolution in “garbage” going on in some parts of the Pacific.

Regional organizations like the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme play a role. SPREP Solid Waste Officer Mark Ricketts says the organization provides technical back-stopping and regional coordination. But he says the real credit is with activist and educator Alice Leney and Kiribati community and government leaders.

In 2003, a number of local Kiribati organizations that had been running waste management programs joined forces to develop a joint slogan, “Kiribati Te Boboto” (loosely: “Make Kiribati Beautiful’)

In a bid to coordinate efforts, they developed a three-point strategy. Step one was to legislate and set up a Container Deposit system – the Kaoki Mange - to maximize recovery of drink cans and bottles for recycling, and so push them out of the waste stream. An analysis of the material flows through the Kaoki Mange system during 2005 found aluminum can recycling had gone from around 25 percent in 2003 to 90 percent in 2005.  PET recycling had gone from 0 percent in 2003 to 90 percent in 2006. And lead-acid batteries recovered during 2005 represented about three year’s total imports into Kiribati.

Step two was to promote the use of printed biodegradable and user-pays garbage bags – the Greenbag – to control what was being sent to landfill. Step three was promotion of simple composting methods, also known as the Banana Circle concept. An evaluation of the program says Banana Circles have now become ubiquitous in Tarawa, and are widely reported in the outer islands too, where they have become very popular as a means to encourage fruit trees.

-Samantha Magick

Wenceslaus Magun, a Port Moresby-based conservationist heads efforts to protect sea turtles in Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea
The Race To Save The Leatherback Turtle

Along the north coast of Papua New Guinea’s Madang province, an organization is in a race against time to save the planet’s  largest living turtle, the leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea).

Over the years the reptile’s numbers have declined in tropical and subtropical oceans, mainly due to the poaching of their eggs and the deadly clutches of the grill net and long-line fisheries. The threat of extinction is so serious the species is enlisted as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Conservationist say New Guinea, the world’s second largest island, could be the last stronghold for the leatherback in the western Pacific. In fact, Jamursba Medi, in West Papua on the Indonesian side of the island, hosts the largest leatherback nesting site in the Pacific and similar sites can be found in Labubutu, Busama, Laukamu and Kamiali in the Huon Gulf of PNG’s Morobe province.

The strategic location of the island compelled U.S.-based Sea Turtle Restoration Project (STRP) to extend its activities from Costa Rica, California and Texas to PNG in October 2006.

Wenceslaus Magun, a Port Moresby-based conservationist with a strong NGO background, is the public face of the STRP in the western Pacific region. In partnership with the Mas Kagin Tapani Association (MKTA), STRP has begun to coordinate efforts to help save, protect and restore the leatherback turtle in Madang with the help of partner organizations and villagers.

While STRP has begun to see the fruits of its labor, Magun says they face more challenges ahead as some communities have yet to understand conservation issues.

Villagers that are far ahead in their conservation efforts include the Sabente community after three clans within that area – Matep, Kimbu and Dibarem – drafted their own conservation laws and penalties.

For example, the killing of a small or large leatherback  attracted a fine of either K200 (US$66.80) or K500 (US$167) while the use of a fishing net or line within a conservation area attracted a K50 (US$16.7) fine.

-Alexander Rheeney    

Pacific
An Environmental Message You Can Dance To

Te Vaka singer and lyricist Opetaia Foa’i delivers environmental messages in song.

Spend time listening to any radio  station that plays Pacific Island music and you generally don’t have to wait too long to hear a track by Te Vaka. Their songs fill dance floors from Suva to Rarotonga and music festival stages the world over, and it’s a sound layered not only with multiple languages, harmonies and instrumentation, but also heavy with meaning.

Te Vaka—which means “the canoe” in Tokelauan— includes musicians and dancers from Tokelau, Tuvalu, Samoa, Cook Islands, and New Zealand. The group’s leader, Samoan-born singer and lyricist Opetaia Foa’i, is Te Vaka’s soul and center.

“I just don’t see any sense in just writing a song that does not say anything. I am very concerned about what has happened in the Pacific mainly  environmentally. Most of the people cannot say anything, but I can say something, in the language of the South Pacific,’’ Foa’i says.

Last year, Te Vaka moved its base from New Zealand to Sydney, Australia—motivated by what Foa’i calls the need for a change. The group played in France during the Rugby World Cup, and plan to tour Australia this year.

Earlier Te Vaka albums are dedicated to the Polynesian fleet “Kau tufuga fai vaka,” forbearers and ancestors to all Polynesian cultures in the Pacific. Its third release, “Nukukehe” is dedicated to Greenpeace and “all the other environmental groups around the world caring enough to do something about it (the environment).”

Last year Greenpeace launched a remix of Te Vaka’s song “Our Ocean, Our Future, Our Choice,” what it called a passionate call as Pacific Islanders to regional leaders, and to the world’s fishing industry, to ensure the Pacific tuna fishery survives large scale  commercial fishing.

Yap
Counting Assets Of An Atoll State

In the far southern reaches of Yap state’s Ngulu Atoll, land comes in tiny coconut-covered spits and coral reefs abound. Sharks vastly outnumber the 11 people who call Ngulu home.

The Yapese know they are blessed with great undersea resources. But knowing just what you’ve got when your country is 99 percent water is a tough ask. So Yap’s  Community Action Program (CAP) decided to do  something about it using creative funding and regional and international expertise. Those allies included the  Nature Conservancy, NOAA, the Packard Foundation, Yap EPA, and the Council of Chiefs. Micro Spirit, a ship that has serviced these islands since the 1970s, became the floating home base.

No previous comprehensive ichthyological or coral reef survey had been conducted for Yap, part of the Federated States of Micronesia. Dr. Gerry Allen took charge of the fish aspect. He is one of the world’s experts and had just discovered some rare new species, like walking sharks in Indonesia’s Triton Bay. Dr. Emre Turak came from France to lend his expertise in the coral realm. Scientists from Guam, Pohnpei and Saipan all flew in, as did Brian Greene, a deep diving scientist currently living in Yap.

The primary goal of the overall survey was to provide a comprehensive inventory of reef fishes, corals and marine invertebrates found in Yap, Ngulu Atoll, and Ulithi Atoll. The survey involved approximately 60 or more hours of scuba diving for each of the scientists and assistants over a month and back-to-back field trips to Ngulu atoll, which is located far south on the way to Palau, and then northeast of Yap proper to Ulithi Atoll.

Yap CAP folks believe this work is just the beginning of a foundation of effective marine management in Yap. Future management includes local community consultation and  involvement, awareness raising and surveillance and  enforcement of MPA regulations. With this, education and a pro-conservation attitude, Yap’s ocean resources should be parts of its rich tradition for many years to come.