Environment: Takesy Full of Optimism for the Future

[Stacey King]

Islands Business
Asterio Takesy 10 Feb 2009

As many of you know, this will be my final director’s column. Please allow me a few last observations as director on the state of the Pacific’s environment.

During the six years of the column, I have addressed both challenges to and successes of the environment of the Pacific islands region. Unfortunately, there always are more of the former than the latter—something that is unlikely to change in the years to come. Still, I leave SPREP with a great deal of optimism for the future of the region’s environment.

In the Pacific, we are home to some of the most vulnerable areas in the world. Yet we also have one of the richest traditions of sound environmental stewardship to draw upon.

The challenges we face are enormous: marine pollution, solid waste disposal, loss of biodiversity, to name but a few. These are daunting, but our ancestors have overcome similar threats countless times in the past.

Of course, one issue is different: climate change. Never before has the continued survival of our nations and peoples been threatened so dramatically by an environmental threat that we are powerless as a region to combat alone.

The sad reality is that, as the President of Kiribati has repeatedly stated in recent months, the levels of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere may mean it is already too late to act to preserve extremely vulnerable nations such as Kiribati.

For this reason, Kiribati has begun planning for relocation of its population. This dramatic step has been widely covered in the international media and has also been the subject of some controversy, both without and within the region.

Some feel it is tantamount to the country “giving up” on climate. However, Kiribati argues that relocation is only one element of its overall climate strategy and that it is only prudent that the country begin looking at all options to respond to the rising seas.

They argue, and I agree, that this is nothing more than an application of the “precautionary principle,” which serves as the bedrock for the work of SPREP and all other environmental organisations worldwide.
Given the glacial pace of international climate talks and what can only generously be called modest emission reductions proposals by the world’s largest emitters, it is difficult to find fault with this approach.

For nearly 20 years our islands have been calling attention to the problem and appealing for prompt action. Yet today, most of the debates raging in the halls of international negotiations are substantively little different than those of twenty years earlier, except that the dates of the targets and timetables have been pushed back further. Alarmingly, during this same period, the science has become clear and convincing that the problem is real, is here now, and the cost of further delays to combat will be extreme.

Most of our people had heard about the negotiations and knew they were important. However, few are directly related to the situation in their home countries and the extent to which the rest of the world is closely watching us in the islands as the “canaries of the global climate coal mine”.

A recent SPREP initiative, funded by Canada, sought to change this. Under this programme, some of the most distinguished journalists from the Pacific teamed with SPREP editorial staff to provide on-the-spot updates from the international climate negotiations in Poznan, Poland, to all corners of the islands.
While you would be right in saying that this is a small initiative, it is also one of which I am very proud. It demonstrates the willingness of the peoples of the Pacific to take ownership of environmental issues and respond accordingly, and also that even modest initiatives can yield considerable results.

In many respects, these same lessons can be applied to SPREP as an organisation.

I won’t mince words: it is a very difficult time for SPREP as an organisation. A “perfect storm” of external events and internal difficulties is brewing, resulting in an atmosphere that threatens the work of our organisation and perhaps the very institution itself.

As I have said so often in the past, a Pacific without SPREP or its equivalent is unthinkable for me, as it is for most in the region. The global financial crisis is beginning to be felt in earnest in many of our member countries and territories.

Understandably, increasingly scarce resources that were once made available by governments to longer-term issues such as the environment are being redirected to more immediate needs. Under the best of circumstances, many of our members teeter on an economic knife’s edge. It is deeply troubling to think how they will fare in the global crisis, and what this will mean for environments that are already stressed to the limits. As an organisation funded entirely by contributions by member states and donors, SPREP is immediately and profoundly affected by such shifts in priorities.

At the same time, the SPREP secretariat and especially myself as director, must shoulder some of the blame for not responding as quickly or vigorously as we should have to the rapidly evolving slate of challenges facing the region.

We have some of the most dedicated and capable staff in the world, more often than not working under difficult circumstances. Yet we know that we need somehow to do more and do it more efficiently. I am proud of the efficiencies made by SPREP in this regard on my watch and am confident that my successor will continue these whenever and wherever possible.

SPREP also needs the support of, and better communications with, our members. Ultimately, it is they who will be asked to make the most difficult decisions regarding the priority they assign to sustainable development and to SPREP’s role towards that end.

This is a difficult time for us all in the Pacific, and unfortunately it is likely to get worse before it gets better. But I appeal to you, the leaders of the Pacific, to hold steadfast to the proposition that the environment is not a luxury we can ignore when things get tough. We all know the costs of postponing action on difficult environmental challenges, and we sincerely hope the international community will reach this same conclusion on issues such as climate before it is too late.

Yet, the biggest change I have seen in my six years at SPREP is the increased awareness of environmental issues among our peoples and a greater willingness to eschew short-term gains for the sake of long-term sustainability.

These are critical elements to the success of any future environmental undertaking, and the environmental ethos grows daily in the Pacific among all segments of society. This can only bode well for our region to overcome the difficulties resulting from the present economic crisis and act to ensure a sustainable future for our peoples.

In closing, please allow me to express my sincere appreciation to the readers of this column and to the publishers and staff at Islands Business for providing this valuable platform to help raise awareness of environmental issues.

Most of all, I wish to thank you the readers, and the people of the Pacific, for your extraordinary cooperation and assistance during my tenure. I trust you will extend the same to my successor as he or she carries our important work forward.

I wish each of you all the best in your professional and personal endeavours. God bless.