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Communities Helping Themselves

Positive Impact By The International Waters Project

By Asterio Takesy

In the Pacific we have long recognized that community participation is essential if we truly want to achieve the sustainable management of our environment and natural resources.

Too often in the past we have also focused our attention and energy on addressing the symptoms of environmental degradation rather than the "root causes." How many of us have participated in beach or village clean ups only to return the following week to find that all the rubbish has returned to our public spaces?

If we continue to ignore the root causes of our environmental problems then our environment, natural resources, public health, tourism and economic well-being will continue to be put at risk.

The International Waters Project (IWP), SPREP's largest single project, is due for completion at the end of 2006. After seven years, and an investment $US8.5 million, it is now an opportune time to begin the process of trying to understand how this Global Environment Fund-supported project has helped to strengthen environmental management throughout the region.

The IWP is working with pilot communities in 14 Pacific Island countries to find practical ways to strengthen environmental management in the areas of coastal fisheries, waste reduction, and freshwater protection.

The IWP is executed by the UNDP and administered by SPREP from its headquarters in Apia, Samoa. In each country a national coordinator has been appointed within a lead government agency to manage the project. A National Task Force consisting of key stakeholders from government, non-government agencies, and the local community, has been appointed to support the national coordinator.

In effect, thousands of people around the region are now participating in the International Waters Project in an effort to model new ways of managing our waste, our water, and our coastal fisheries.

The project is working with pilot communities to identify possible low-cost solutions that can help countries improve resource management at the national level. The IWP is not about funding infrastructure, such as water treatment plants or landfills. It is about helping communities to understand the root causes so they can develop low-cost solutions that they can apply themselves. In turn, these community-based solutions and management plans can then be used to help strengthen the effectiveness of our environmental management at the national and regional levels.

Given the growing urgency of the waste problem, it is hardly surprising that eight of the participating countries (Kiribati, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Tonga, Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu) have chosen to focus on finding ways to strengthen the management of solid and liquid waste.

In this, SPREP's "Year of Action Against Waste," these community pilots have already provided invaluable lessons that have contributed towards the development of our regional solid waste strategy.

Samoa and the Cook Islands have chosen to focus their energies on improving the management of their catchment and watershed areas. Niue, Vanuatu, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Solomon Islands have chosen to focus on strengthening the management of coastal fisheries.

In Vanuatu's Crab Bay community on Malekula Island, the IWP has worked to train community facilitators in collecting information about their vital fisheries resources such as the land crab. They are now using this information to develop their own management plan and rules to complement existing traditional management practices.

In the middle of last year it came as a wake-up call to many people working in the region when the IWP published a socioeconomic baseline survey of Jenrok, its pilot community on Majuro Atoll. While the project's intention was to help improve the management of waste, this report made it clear that many of the 2,000 people in this congested urban community were struggling to cope with a lack of even the most basic services, such as access to fresh water and housing.

Together with the analysis of the community's waste stream, the project now has a clear baseline from which to measure future successes in promoting composting, recycling and the diversion of hazardous materials from its sensitive coastal areas.

In June this year the economic valuation of water pollution carried out by the Cook Islands IWP revealed the danger of doing nothing to address the growing impacts of land-based pollution on our fragile islands. The report estimates that water pollution could now be costing Rarotonga NZ$7.6 million (US$5.4 million) every year.

The IWP is just one example of how SPREP is trying to generate maximum value from limited resources. Increased regional collaboration and the pooling of these limited resources will continue to be required if we really want to help to address urgent environmental issues such as waste management that are common among all Pacific Island countries.

The writer is the director of the Secretariat for the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme, which is based in Apia, Samoa. See www.sprep.org.ws .