Pacific Magazine > Magazine > February 28, 2008

High Tide

We Need To Be Bold

Innovators Reject Victim Mentality

By Samantha Magick

The exploration of how we care for and protect Pacific Island environments is one of the key editorial foundations of Pacific Magazine—a recognition that the region's people are defined by, and belong to the land and sea. So in this our annual innovators issue, we thought it time to focus on organizations, leaders and individuals who are working in impactful ways to address our environmental challenges.

They vary enormously in scale and approach, and we could have filled a few more pages with innovators. You'll find more on our website www.pacificmagazine.net, including the Moorea Biocode Project in French Polynesia, work by corporations such as Fiji Water, waste management in Koror and marine protection measures in Cook Islands.

You'll see they have a couple of unifying characteristics—such as  the fact that their success is largely due to work in coalition with communities—communities of organizations and experts, and with the custodians of land and sea.

They also all upend the victim mentality—that we are too remote, too poor and too under-resourced to help ourselves. When Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his work on raising awareness about climate change, he made reference to "low-lying Pacific Islands (where people) are planning evacuations of places they have long called home."

So often, that is where references to our region in the climate debate stop, with the role of victim. But during the last United Nations climate conference in Bali, Papua New Guinea representative Kevin Conrad aimed  "a flaming arrow at a chink in the negotiation armor" when he said to a packed room, "I would ask the United States, we ask for your leadership," he said. "But if for some reason you're not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way."

It was a bold statement that prompted rousing applause from the assembled delegates. Shortly after the U.S. dropped its opposition to the text being negotiated, giving space for the talks to move forward.

To highlight Conrad's words is not to discount the concerns about some of the other development and environmental choices being made in Papua New Guinea, or to devalue the contribution of many other Pacific Island representatives to 15 years of climate talks. But it does show that we don't always have to be a victim, that in unity comes strength, and that often, we need to be bold. And we need to get real. Surely it is time to retire the word "paradise" as a means of marketing ourselves and our environment to the world. It's still common in the steady stream of advertising copy that is emanating from many—let' s face it—increasingly desperate national tourism offices and airlines. And as a journalist, I know I have used it as a sort of lazy shorthand, but it does us no favors.

Certainly some parts of our region are unspeakably beautiful. But our world is infinitely more complex than the connotations that come with calling it "paradise." Our environmental and development challenges are many, our politics can be positively Machiavellian and our future uncertain. The environmental innovators you will meet in this issue understand that, and are doing something about it.