Home > Programmes > International Waters Project

Praise for Pacific International Waters Project

Radio Australia: The Pacific has won praise from the New York-based Global Environment Facility for its handling of marine and coastal management and its fresh water supplies and waste. The Principal Technical Advisor with the GEF's International Waters Project, says the Pacific region is the most advanced of all small island developing regions and will be the model for new projects in the Caribbean. The GEF funded a seven-year, US$8.6 million International Waters Project operates in 14 Pacific Island nations and is supervised by the secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program.

Presenter/Interviewer: Jemima Garrett
Speakers: Andrew Hudson, Principal Technical Advisor, Global Environment Facility's International Waters Project; Asterio Takesy, Director, Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program

TAKESY: People are realising that the watershed area is connected to the community life and then the effect of waste. So, there is a connection in addressing the root cause of problems in waste management and coastal waste and coastal resource management area, that it isn't that simple and the biggest success story is that we are taking it from rather than the national focus to down to the community level where the national government actually chooses the specific site or sites in some instances.

And so, involving the community and a cross-section of the population it has made a difference in terms of ownership, in terms of support, in terms of buy-in and seeing the practical affect that is coming out.

GARRETT: Andrew Hudson, how does what has been done in the Pacific compare with what was eventually done elsewhere in the world?

HUDSON: Within the GS perspective, the Pacific is clearly the most advanced both in these areas of marine and coastal freshwater supplies, waste management, and some of the issues that you've discussed so far and also, of course, they've also advanced quite substantially in the joint management of the shared fish stocks of the Pacific, which is a whole separate component of the International Waters Project.

The main other area we are really just starting up a program now after a several year preparatory period is the Caribbean and of course many of the issues there are shared: the freshwater supplies, the vulnerability to climate change, the waste management, the fresh liquid and solid waste management issues.

So, we are actually replicating in many ways or hoping to replicate many of the same strategies and approaches that were used in the Pacific with a series of pilot, demonstration-level projects in most of the islands of the Caribbean, just as we did in most of the islands of the Pacific and focussing on a lot of the same issues and looking at integrated approaches to watershed management, protection of coral reefs and other issues.

And as Asterio noted, the key strategy in really all of these projects is trying to identify and hopefully address some of these problems at their so-called 'root cause' level, where the sectoral and societal and other governance failures or weaknesses that need to be strengthened and approved to get at the heart of these issues...

GARRETT: So, you're talking there very much about stopping waste in the first place, rather than just building a bigger better dump?

HUDSON: Well exactly, avoiding the 'end of pipe' solutions, as Asterio said, and focusing on reduction, reuse, recycling and getting communities involved in the whole life cycle of whether it's waste management, whether its the management of a shared river basin in one of these island-states.

GARRETT: Why do you think the Pacific has come out ahead of other regions of the world on this International Waters Project?

HUDSON: I think, not speaking so much from experience, but sort of a guess, but I think the Pacific I think has a long history of cooperation. There are quite a number of inter-governmental bodies shaped around different issues and political, technical and others, such as SPREP but there are several others.

There seems to be in general good cohesion among the islands, despite their vast geographic separation and of course the difficulties of just any kind of cooperation, because of those distances and those costs.

Yeah, I just think a general strong sense of cooperation, which may not be as present in some of the other groups of small island states you have in the world.