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Small Islands Voice Global Forum
Controlling development
The Small Islands Voice global forum has received many e-mails discussing ways to balance environment and development concerns relating to a new road being built in Palau in the Pacific. Please keep sending your responses, as ALL of them are being recorded in order to find out your opinions on issues such as this. Some of your messages are summarized below.
The new road is intended to better the lives of the people of Palau, and while it may be contributing its fair share of environmental problems, there are other more fundamental matters to consider related to people's attitudes and behaviour, writes Nicholas Pilcher from Palau. He points to the numerous beer cans littering the underwater environment, the discarded tyres and outboard engines, and suggests that people's lack of care for the environment is the root cause of most of the problems. Theo Isamu from Palau disagrees with Scott Radway's suggestion that the road construction is the cause of the death of the coral reefs. He states that the El Niņo occurrence in 1997 and 1998, as well as Typhoon Mike in 1991, caused more damage to the reefs than any human activity such as a new road. Another writer, Lillith Richards, from Nevis, recommends we exercise caution in the diagnosis of the problem in Palau. She does not believe the road is the problem, but rather the non-enforcement of laws and regulations, which would guide the construction of the road and other development. People living in small islands appear to have an aversion to laws and do not appreciate any form of restraint. A road can be a treasure or a nightmare depending on the measures a country takes. Such measures might include preventing soil from the land being washed into the sea. It is up to the people of Palau to seek the intervention of their political leaders to make sure that the necessary controlling measures are indeed implemented.
Writers from the Caribbean have described similar, but different development projects to the one in Palau. Herman Belmar from the small (7 square mile) island of Bequia in the Grenadines describes an airport construction project in 1992 where land was reclaimed from the sea and the airport was built on a former coral reef. Initially he was concerned about the loss of fishing and recreational areas. But an environmental impact study showed the coral reef was already dead, and during construction, special measures were put in place to ensure the water remained clean and clear. However, the story is not all good, for stone quarrying on the land has left a huge crater, which collects water creating a mosquito problem in the rainy season. Richard Szyjan from the same island does not have such a positive view of the airport project and mentioned that it is very little used. He also points to another problem, often experienced in small islands, that of corruption and conflict of interest.
Still in the Caribbean, James Johnson describes how a hotel in Nevis was allowed to construct an offshore stone breakwater to protect their property without the benefit of an environmental impact assessment. This structure, in his opinion, has disrupted the whole shoreline, changed fishing patterns and caused silting of the reefs. In addition, the breakwater does not work as the designers and hotel thought it would. His concern relates to large organizations coming into the island, dictating policy, disrupting lives and destroying natural beauty.
Returning now to the Pacific, a writer from Vanuatu, Rod, recommends that the school system be changed. Governments generally do not want too much development and they want to retain their local culture. However, they want modern schooling for their children. But once they leave school, these children cannot find jobs, partly because government policy on foreign ownership and staffing is causing the business sector to grow only very slowly. The problem of unemployed youth is a serious one in many small islands. So it is a choice between changing the school system so that the children are educated for integration back into village life, or changing attitudes to development and foreign investment.
Keep reading, for soon the focus of this forum will turn to another environment-development issue in a different island.
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