Eco-Villages in the Making - SAMOA 2008

NB: Samoa, thanks to GEF-PAS, is funding a major coastal re-development to help combat global climate change.


IN SAMOA, South Pacific, we are targeting 7 coastal villages and trying to turn them into a model village setting, a small step towards an eco-village.

We have 21 sustainable environmental restoration projects nationally, valued at $USD15Million, thanks to the Global Environment Facility and their Pacific Alliance of Sustainability Programme (2008-2012) valued at $USD99million, Pacific-wide.

We now want to harmonize some of these projects into these 7 villages on the shores of Vaiusu Bay, inner city Apia. We have renewable energy projects, we have micro-financing access, agro-forestry projects, climate change adaptation projects increasing ecosystem resilience, mangrove re-afforestation, biodiversity conservation, etc. Should anyone be keen to suggest some helpful hints, we'd like to hear from you.

We're even moving one village, Sogi, away from sea level and to higher ground. Other villages in Vaiusu Bay are now prone to increasing floodings and climate health risks. We're even restoring the old Vaitoloa household dumpsite which ceased operation in 1996.

Wish us luck. A monumental task, but we're trying, hopefully ending-up with a Marine Protected Area by 2010 as a tourist attraction complete with ecotourism activities and an educational Environmental Resource Centre.

This would be a landscape architect's dream project, South Seas, desperate villagers, and well financed, backed by Government and hopefully the potential of being a Pacific 'first'.
Samoa is moving towards becoming a sustainable tourism destination, a carbon-neutral holiday destination, but we are floating in the middle of the largest ocean mass in the world, subject to the full brunt of climate change.

And where's the climate justice from our main tourism markets? For example, Australians are mining and exporting more polluting coal to China than ever before, New Zealanders are opposing their own self-regulatory Carbon Trading Scheme designed to reduce their own carbon emissions, Americans still refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and whilst Australians have signed the Kyoto Protocol, they still refuse to honour the real intention of reducing climate change impacts on their neighbouring Pacific 'development partners'.

Then, where's the real partnership here? Where are the value-based societies that breed such injustices?

PLEASE HELP Pacific Islands retain their 300,000 islands and their 3000 languages and cultures as climate change continues to impact Pacific Islanders, especially as airline bunker fuels increase their global carbon pollution at an increasing alarming rate of 5% annually, and pollution from shipping fuel also increasing at 5% annually.

So, where's the social and cultural interest in the world's top tourist destinations? Or is it only short-term economic interests?

What does PATA and SPTO say about this? Nothing. Neither the Pacific Asia Travel Association nor the Secretatiat for the Pacific Travel Organization have addressed this concern for the past 20 years, despite receiving this advice repeatedly. And these are our Pacific tourism advisory boards? What do Pacific Islanders say about this? Very little. Not enough?

God help our travellers to the South Seize. God help Pacific Islanders.