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Pacific islands under threat from mountains
of waste
By David Fickling
Sydney, Australia, Nov. 15 — Once famed for their white-sand
beaches, the islands of the Pacific are threatened by a waste mountain.
Rubbish now clogs streams flowing into the harbor in Samoa’s capital
Apia, and floats through the mangrove forests of Fiji.
Every part of the region is affected. And one of the biggest battles
in many island societies, say experts, is raising awareness of the problem.
Traditional waste disposal in the Pacific consisted of throwing food
scraps to your pigs, but swelling populations and the import of foreign
goods have changed the makeup of domestic rubbish.
“The waste of yesterday was mostly natural,” says Asterio
Takesey, director of the South Pacific Regional Environment Program.
“Now that many islands have entered the modern economy their consumption
pattern has changed.” The problems are worst in the low-lying atoll
countries of Micronesia.
“Rubbish is piling up,” says Ritia Bakineti, who works in
waste management for Kiribati’s branch of the program.
Kiribati’s capital South Tarawa is the most crowded corner of the
Pacific, with nearly 40,000 people on a string of coral islets stretching
for nearly 20 miles along the southern fringe of the atoll.
The most crowded islet, Betio, is more densely populated than Tokyo.
South Tarawa’s households generate up to 6,500 tons of solid waste
every year and its three landfill sites are ill equipped to cope.
A report in 2000 found that only one of the dump sites was protected
by a sea wall, meaning that rubbish from the others gets swept out to
sea and along Tarawa’s beaches when high tides inundate the land.
Ritia Bakineti says that it does not need the tide to dump rubbish into
the water.
“For households it’s quite normal to push the rubbish out
into the ocean or the lagoon,” she says.
The effects are already tangible. Testing in the mid-1990s showed such
high levels of pollution in Tarawa’s lagoon that locals are now
told not to eat raw shellfish from it.
There are also worries about contaminants from landfill sites leaching
into Tarawa’s fragile groundwater supplies.
Fresh water on atolls is pumped from the water lens, a narrow layer
of rainwater floating on top of seawater seeping into the porous coral
rock of the island.
This resource is easily exhausted or tainted, and in recent years Kiribati’s
health department has declared several wells unfit for use.
But Kiribati’s problems are insignificant compared with those of
neighboring Tuvalu, a country whose total land area is less than a third
of that of Tarawa.
One recent report estimated that the 4,000 people living on the 1.5
square mile capital islet of Fongafale generate around 20,000 cubic
yards of waste per year.
The island’s only licensed landfill has a capacity of 3,200 cubic
yards, so large pits left over from the construction of its WWII airfield
are increasingly used as unofficial dumping grounds.
When “king tides” inundate the entire island, as they did
in February this year, the retreating waters leave behind a detritus
of washed-up debris.
Landfill manager Vavao Saumanaia says that waste is on a par with global
warming, which many expect to sink the islands within 50 years.
Even traditional methods of rubbish disposal are getting out of hand
-- the 4,000-strong herd of pigs are creating their own waste problem.
For many of these islands recycling is an absolute must.
But the financial incentive is diminished by the relatively small amounts
of material and by the cost of transport to far away compounders.
Where money and outside help is available, waste can be brought under
control. Rarotonga is turning round its refuse problem, thanks to a
$2.2 million (£1.2m) landfill due to open next month. In Samoa
there has been a Japanese-sponsored clean-up of the Tafaigata rubbish
dump.
But Asterio Takesey says that the waste mountain is going to grow. “The
Pacific needs to develop, and this waste is generated by growth.”
Source: Guardian (UK)
World on alert as over 15,000 species
face extinction
By Sonny Inbaraj
Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 17 (IPS) — Global biodiversity
is shrinking at an unprecedented rate and the prognosis given by one
of the world’s leading conservation bodies, at the opening of a
major environmental conference here, is alarming.
Over 15,000 animal and plant species face extinction, reveals the World
Conservation Union (IUCN) in its “2004 Red List of Threatened Species.”
One in three amphibians and almost half of all freshwater turtles are
threatened, on top of the one in eight birds and one in four mammals
known to be jeopardy, said the IUCN at its 3rd World Conservation Congress
being held in the Thai capital from Nov. 17-25.
The global conference brings together 81 states, 114 government agencies,
800 plus non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and some 10,000 scientists
and experts from 181 countries and has been billed as one of the biggest
environmental meetings in history.
“This sends a very powerful message that conservation is not a
marginal issue in the year 2004,” said Achim Steiner, director-general
of the Geneva-based IUCN. “There has been a record level of interest.”
IUCN’s Red List is the most comprehensive scientific assessment
of species at risk of dying out, and includes concrete measures to slow
or reverse their extinction.
The 15,589 species threatened with extinction, although covering just
over one percent of the world’s described species, includes 12
percent of all bird species, 23 percent of all mammal species, 32 percent
of all amphibian species and 34 percent of all gymnosperms (mainly conifers
and cycads).
“This is a wake up call for the world,” said Steiner.
“Environmentalists have a reputation for presenting doom and gloom
scenarios but it is pointless to try and deny what you will find in
this Red List,” he added. “The evidence presented should make
people worry about the future viability of the various ecosystems that
we depend on.”
There are nine categories in the Red List system: extinct, extinct in
the wild, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, near threatened,
least concern, data deficient, and not evaluated. In addition to the
Red List, the IUCN has also published its Global Species Assessment,
which it does every four years.
According to the 2004 assessment, countries with the most threatened
and threatened endemic species lie mainly in the continental tropics,
while those with the highest proportion of threatened endemics are mainly
tropical island nations.
“Australia, Brazil, China, Indonesia, and Mexico have particularly
large numbers of threatened species,” the report pointed out.
It also revealed that Colombia, India, Malaysia, Burma, New Caledonia,
Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Africa, and the US have high
numbers of threatened endemics for at least one taxonomic group.
People, either directly or indirectly, are the main reason for most
species’ declines. Habitat destruction and degradation are the
leading threats but other significant pressures include over-exploitation
for food, pets, and medicine, introduced species, pollution, and disease.
Climate change, also, is increasingly recognized as a serious threat.
Among the key findings of the 2004 Global Species Assessment is that
future conflicts between the needs of threatened species and rapidly
increasing human populations are predicted to occur in Cameroon, Colombia,
Ecuador, India, Madagascar, Malaysia, Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania,
and Peru.
The report also named Brazil, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Ecuador, India,
Indonesia, Madagascar, Peru, and the Philippines as countries with a
large number of threatened species and unable to financially invest
in conservation.
“The world’s conservation community has been ignored for far
too long by those who are making fundamental economic and political
decisions,” said IUCN’s Steiner. “We are reaching the
limits of exploitation and we need to reverse that.”
But while most threats to biodiversity are human-driven, human actions
alone can prevent many species from becoming extinct, said David Brackett,
chair of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.
“There are many examples of species being brought back from the
brink, including the southern white rhinoceros,” Brackett pointed
out.
The southern white rhinoceros that had been fairly widespread throughout
Namibia, Bostwana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa early in the
19th century, had by the turn of the 20th century been reduced to two
relict populations on the Zimbabwe- Mozambique border and the Umfolozi
Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
A conscientious decision had been made on their protection and numbers
soon increased over the years from 700 animals in 1960 to over 11,500
free-ranging southern white rhinos in 2002.
The southern white rhinoceros is now listed as near threatened on the
IUCN Red List.
But the IUCN’s Red List also demonstrates how little is known about
the world’s biodiversity.
“Undoubtedly this is an underestimate as many species have not
been assessed. In fact only three percent of the world’s species
have been assessed in this Red List,” said Brackett. “Other
habitats are also under threat but we do not know quite enough of them
yet.”
“However, the fact that we have many gaps in our knowledge should
not be an excuse for inaction,” added Brackett. “The 15,589
threatened species on the Red List require urgent conservation attention
if they are not to slip further towards extinction.”
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