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.

HOW CAN WE PIs HELP? With or without GEF-PAS.

Well, we can see from the Contents Page that there are numerous ways we can help make our Pacific villages the most sustainable villages in the world, but we may need to think laterally and think fast.

First, we may need to seek some cooperation (help) from our neighbouring villagers who may be polluting our river as it flows down from their deforested mountain tops above us. This means less water to drink.

We may also like to seek some more cooperation (help) from our global neighbours who are changing our global climate, altering our climate health and possibly leading to more coral bleaching in our lagoons and less fish to eat.

Therefore, this effort, to attain a really sustainable village, will require local, national, regional and global cooperation (help). We need a global effort (help), hence the role of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) (see http://www.thegef.org/).

We need a dedicated sustainable environmental management effort (help) right here in Samoa and in the Pacific, hence the GEF is offering to assist us PIs (see http://gef-passamoa.blogspot.com/).

We need an investment facility with over $USD100 million to help solve just the Pacific Island issues, some of them raised in the Contents Page, hence the GEF's funding plans for 2008-2010.

We, therefore, need cooperation (help) from within the whole South Pacific, hence the GEF Pacific Alliance of Sustainability (PAS).

We need some joint cooperation (help), an alliance of partners in Pacific development, hence the PAS is seeking all 15 PICs to harmonize their efforts.

Our Pacific Island (PI) focus is on our sustainability, hence the GEF-PAS.

So, money is the GEF-PAS answer, enough money to help solve all our Pacific ills: environmental, social, cultural, political and economic. IWe all, however, doubt that money alone will help us.

So, how canwe help, even if we have no money, to build the Pacific's most sustainable villages?

We PIs need to look after (help) ourselves first. Don't wait for the global conventions on biodiversity to help save our whales and other wildlife. Don't wait on the Kyoto Protocol to help reduce the impacts of global climate change. Those foreign palagi/kaivalagi/pakea all see the world differently from the way our PI ancestors saw it and still see it. We PIS want to remain in harmony with Nature.

OK, we modern-day Pacific Islanders (PIs) will then have to help ourselves by writing our own 'Kyoto Protocol', a climate change impact reduction just for the Pacific Region. We PIs will also have to write a 'save the Pacific wildlife' convention, 'save the Pacific cultures' convention, etc. to help address all these Pacific issues raised in the Contents Page. Therefore, written by PIs for PIs with future PIs in mind, our new approach relies on we chiefs tautua-ing or serving our childrens' interests, not just our own. This will require a major shift in thinking, unfortunately. Our Pacific chiefs, to date, have let us down.

On this blog, you will then see these 'Pacific environmental conventions' drafted, albeit brief, to help you think about the few options we PIs have got left.

Time is running out as our Pacific birds become extinct, as our Pacific cultures/languages become extinct, as our traditional medicinal plants become extinct and/or exploited by foreign interests, etc. We PIS can only blame ourselves. Mind you, we can't just sit back and blame the foreigners only.

We can all help by applying these drafted pieces of 'legislation', preferably with approval (help) from all our chiefs, womens committees, church groups, politicians, etc. And don't forget the Kids (you Kids will probably be insisting on helping more so than your parents, and we adults are certainly not looking after your interests - see http://nuanuasooaemalelagi.blogspot.com/) .

To illustrate these points raised above, we PIs can either learn from the horrible experiences from overseas or we can learn from our own horrible experiences right here in the Pacific. Sadly, most of us PIs are totally unaware of this destruction of our islands, our societies and our cultures, and we are possibly less prepared to admit that this destruction is being caused mostly by we fellow PIs.

So, how can we PIs help ourselves? We could start by applying, formally and informally, some Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). All Pacific Ministers of Education signed an ESD Framework in September, 2006, noe they have all signed an ESD Action Plan in December, 2007. Both documents will be posted on this blog because this is our 'operations manual' for sustainability. All we need to do is apply it to making our villages sustainable.

Once we PIs know the level of destruction elsewhere in the world, say deforestation in Indonesia and PNG and Solomon Islands (and Samoa, for that matter, as we have already felled 50% of our Samoan rainforests, and it's continuing in 2008 in the name of cattle ranching), then we may be forced to take action (help) personally (see next posting re the impacts of deforestation within the Asia/Pacific region on our global climate change impacts here in the Pacific.) We are losing our air, our water, our soils, our wildlife and our water through this madness: how can we develop sustainably alongside this level of deforestation?

In 2008, non-sustainable deforestation continues in Samoa, the Pacific, Asia and even globally. GEF needs to stop this madness by making the GEF funding conditional nationally and regionally (if PNG doesn't stop deforestation, then the whole Pacific suffers as other PICs become ineligible for funding assistance.

Is this too much to ask? Doesn't it represent our true 'absorptive capacity', our capacity as PICs to absorb this much reasoning and financial assistance?

Is our PI ability to think sustainably being questioned? The answer is "Yes".

And can we PIs think sustainably? The answer is "No". Well, we can, but we choose not to.

So, before GEF-PAS kicks-in with its $USD100 million in 2008 for assisting with attaining Pacific Sustainable Development, let's see if all Pacific Island Countries (PICs) can agree on one thing: namely, if we PIs are concerned about global climate change impacts on our villages, and we are ALL signatores to the Kyoto Protocol on Greenhouse Gas Reduction, then we need to put a stop to our legal and illegal, sustainable and non-sustainable, intra-Pacific and extra-Pacific logging trade. All Kyoto Protocol signatores, Pacific and non-Pacific need to stop buying rainforest timbers, and this Rule has to be written into the old and the new Kyoto Protocol.

What this means is, we PIs need to force our trading partners, our aid partners, our so-called sustainable development partners, our so-called 'signatores to the Kyoto Protocol' partners not to export, or even import, any rainforest logs, legally or illegally sourced, sustainably or non-sustainably logged, until two things happen:

Firstly, the impacts of global climate change have been reduced to NIL, and, secondly, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been completed and approved for all so-called sustainable logging practices here in the Pacific (and elsewhere), for both legal and illegal logging practices.

Once we know that this global level of deforestation is not affecting our wildlife, our air quality, our potable water supplies, our cultures, our spirituality, our soils, our reefs (through siltation and climate change impacts) and our food security and our health, then we can commence EIA-approved legal and sustainable logging here in the Pacific once again, but monitored by independent objective bodies/studies funded possibly by the GEF-PAS.

For example, just take a look at what commercial palm oil production is doing to the Asian environment, and now the delicate and vulnerable environments of the Pacific Islands. Why do we allow this level of non-sustainability to occur here in the PICs, and yet we still apply simultaneously for GEF-PAS funding support.

Where's our commitment to sustainability?

How can we PIs avaoi such audacious and ludicrous steps?

And where's our absorptive capacity, our capacity and sustainability skills to absorb this high level of funding?

And where's GEF-PAS's capacity to absorb such anomalies?

GEF asks for our 'absorptive capacity' to assist, but we PIs need to ask GEF what is its absorptive capacity? How much lack of capacity to do PICs need to have before it jeopardizes our ability to raise funding to repair our on-going and non-sustainable environmental damages, the very things we are being funded to repair?

To conclude, we can all help by applying a little reasoning, developing a little commitment and, most importantly, holding all other PICs to ransom by acting collectively, holistically andharmoniously. Reciprocally, GEF-PAS should hold all us PIs to ransom as well: no evidence of commitment, no funding.

Think about it.

Nothing else has worked in the past in the Pacific to raise our levels of sustainability: we need to think differently then, take another approach, do it internally before someone decides outside for us.

Let's act now PIs and help ourselves.