Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish

Environment

SOUTH Pacific nations are under increasing pressure from the northern hemisphere countries to become a dumping ground for hazar dous waste and this pressure will grow even faster as the major industrial nations run out of alternatives for waste disposal, New Zealand’s Associate En vironment Minister Peter Dunne told the Environment ’9O conference held in Syd ney. The main attraction for Pacific na tions was that becoming a garbage dump was a means to earn much-needed money, just as the Marshall Islands had been tempted last year to accept huge quantities of commercial and household refuse from the United Slates mainland.

The irony of this, as Dunne pointed out, is that many of the South Pacific states have not had even a chance to reap the material benefits the industrial ised and heavily polluting countries had earned from the processes which re sulted in all this waste. And, as these states develop, they will face greater problems disposing of even the waste they themselves have generated. He cal

led on Pacific countries to work together because collective action could prove vit al to the region’s survival. “While we have contributed relatively little to global environmental damage, the fact is that we reap an unequal amount of the con sequences of social, economic and en vironmental disruption and harm,” he said.

Proposals to dump hazardous and sup posedly safe municipal waste are con stantly being made to island govern ments. But most do not have the technic al capacity to evaluate the effects of such schemes; the Marshall Islands Govern ment was attracted by the idea of build ing the height of an island using garbage to offset the rising sea level expected because of the Greenhouse effect but did not take into account the damage caused by the garbage leaching into water sup plies and marine ecosystems.

"I think the Pacific will become in creasingly targeted not only because it’s a vast isolated area with plenty of space but because it is going to become a ma jor area of economic activity,” said Dun

ne. “The real difficulty in all of these situations is that you’ve got countries that are strapped for cash suddenly pre sented with something that looks like a real earner”.

The region still has a very diverse range of species, especially on the bigger islands in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

More importantly, the islands by the fact of their isolation had many endemic spe cies New Caledonia, for example, has 3250 native species of which 76 per cent occur only in that territory.

Pacific states also face the possible con sequences of deforestation. Papua New Guinea is belatedly moving to slow down the destruction of its trees, but landown ers there as in Vanuatu and Solomon Islands see the arrival of Japanese or Taiwanese timber companies as bringing new roads and wealth through royalty payments. Dunne adds the factors of population pressure, need for fuel and demands for agricultural land as adding additional pressure to rainforest areas in the island states. “The implications of stopping agro-forestry activities are pro found,” he said. “The survival of small communities and the rights of self determination for small states are at stake”. □