$10m boost for the environment

By Ian Williams

SPREP, the South Pa cific Regional Envir onmental Programme, is to get a USSIO

million boost from UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme. Be ginning in August/September, the grant from the organisation’s Global Environ mental Facility is targeted at identifying and establishing conservation areas in South Pacific countries.

Among proposed sites to be surveyed are Lake Lanatoo and Mt Silisili, in Samoa; Ambye, Ambryn and Malekula islands, Vanuatu; and Babeldaup in Palau. In Fiji, Taveuni and Sovi Basin and marine areas around Yadua Taba are proposed for surveying.

In addition the funding will be used to help existing and planned biodiversity conservation programmes such as for estry seed banks, marine turtle pro

grammes and bird conservation areas, and to boost the regions’s awareness of the need for conservation. There are serious weaknesses in research on ecosystems in the South Pacific and in the identification and classification of its marine species. The programme includes eight internships for local scientists to gain expertise in these areas.

Justifying the large allocation, UNDP point out that 75 per cent of the mammal and bird species to become extinct in recent years were island dwellers. A change of habitat through tourism, forestry or mining, or the introduction of predators can devastate an island’s fauna within weeks or months, eliminating species “that help maintain the stability of island ecosystems which provide the water suppliers, soils and land on which human survival depends.”

It stresses that the Conservation Areas will not be “national parks” taken out of normal use. They will be areas “in which

sustainable development practices are

undertaken which respect and enhance critical habitats, while providing for the economic well-being of the local land owners and communities”. It adds that the unique patterns of customary owner ship of land and marine resources call for close co-operation with rural communi ties if conservation is to work.

Natsuki Haratsuki from UNDP ident ified two key issues for success. “It will depend on the governments harmonising biodiversity with economic development

objectives.

“The key aspects will be what income generating schemes can be established to take advantage of the Conservation Areas in the short term, and in the long term, by fostering public appreciation of the need for biodiversity.”

Papua New Guinea will not benefit from this project. “There is a specific project for PNG which will be closely linked to this. Papua New Guinea already has the Forest Action Plan and other initiatives, and it will soon have its own Global Environment Facility allo cation,” says Hiratsuka. □