Savai’i still
p. 47 · Read in the full issue
under threat
By Ian Williams
A YEAR after Cyclone Ofa, the water supply system on Savai’i, Samoa’s biggest island, is still under repair. The United Nations Development Pro gramme has contributed US$3OO,OOO for water pipes and equipment to help reconstruct the 15-kilometre network of pipes to 22 villages in the Western and Northern parts of the island. Almost 10,000 people have been left without regular water supplies since the wind and waves tore through the island.
In Tuvalu, UNDP has also contrib uted US$3OO,OOO for rebuilding 65 houses on the island of Vaitapu destroyed by Ofda. Most of the families were still living under canvas since the usual local materials, coconut and pandanus, were also destroyed by Ofa.
UNDP will provide the materials, and the Tuvalu government skilled carpenters to help the homeless build “cyclone-proofed” new homes, using structural timber frameworks, rockfill floors and corrugated roofs. Most of Tuvalu is less than four metres above sea level, making a repetition of the disaster very likely.
Indeed in April, the UN Secretary General released a report requested by the General Assembly on the possible effects of sea level rise on island states.
The South Pacific was, he said, com prised of over 3000 isolated islands divided between 24 political entities, including 14 Pacific Island States “which would be severely or profoundly impac ted by even low to medium projected levels of global change ... such islands and island nations are threatened with damage to coastlines and groundwater sources by rising sea levels, or even with total destruction should sea levels rise by more than one metre, or should waves and storm surges increase as expected from intensified cyclone activity”.
The Reporrt continued, “Although the population of the region is relatively small in absolute teerms, numbering approximately 5 million, the cultural diversity is enormous (one third of the world's languages are spoken in Melan esia). The social, political and economic integrity and physical and biological environments of more than 800 separate human cultures will be threatened”, if people were forced to move as “environ mental refugees”.
“Cultural identity, an extremely im portant concern in the Pacific islands, is difficult to maintain in migrant com munities”, he concluded. □