Sepik
pp. 7-8 · Read in the full issue
Letters
What are
the real
Kanak issues?
LIKE most Kanaks in our independence movement, I am used to foreigners giving me advice about our struggle or telling me things about my country I already know. I usually tolerate such people and accept their comments in the
spirit they are given.
But in dismissing my article as polemic and claiming the real issue in New Caledonia is the environmental, health and military implications of the nickel industry, Susi Newborn’s letter is the most racist, patronising and arrogant I have ever encountered.
Who is she to define what Kanak priorities should be? And how dare she
:all me an “unsuspecting accomplice”
in France’s plans because I didn’t discuss this particular aspect of French :olonialism in the limited space avail ible to me. Anyone with a longer issociation with these issues would mow that they have been a major :oncern of the Kanak people and an mportant focus of our struggle for lecades. As long ago as 1977, in the irst project of PALIKA’s Committee or External Relations, I helped to iroduce a 28 page booklet (including ome extracts from articles in PIM) /hich was published in English and Tench entitled, New Caledonia. Nickel: \ofits and Pollution.
Only those who have experienced it ould ever understand the personal iffering I and so many other Kanaks ave endured as a result of the poverty, ollution and repression caused by rench colonialism. So many of my imily have lived and died in the ghettos ewborn claims to be an expert on. In ic years before my grandmother died in 562, it was my job to empty bowls full disgusting green mucous from her mghing seizures; a result of living ithin metres of the Noumea nickel riel ter. She moved there to look after the /e children of her brother after his wife ho had died from the pollution. Two of ese children, who I grew up with and
were like my brother and sister, also died from the same cause. My father (59 years old), my daughter (2), two sisters (1 and 2) and a brother (9) all died of poverty related illnesses.
Since 1974, I have had an apartment in one of the housing estates within a kilometre of the smelter. Kanaks are forced to live in these areas because there is no employment on our reserves and it is too expensive and often too dangerous to live in the white suburbs.
Those who stay on the reserves are also affected by pollution. In 1983, the people from the tribes of Koinde and Ouipoint held a peaceful protest against their stream (their water and food supply) being polluted by a sawmill. They were attacked by the army and, when they killed two soldiers in self-defence, the whole village was tortured and many people imprisoned. In response to this incident, I chained myself to the French High Commission for 20 hours in the rain together with four other women from the GFKEL, and I interrupted a live television news broadcast to demand the rights of the Kanak people to have unpolluted streams.
In 1986, one of the young people from our housing estate was killed by the army in a demonstration focusing on many of the issues Newborn seems to think she has just discovered. We are acutely aware of these problems, but we also know that as long as all political and economic power in New Caledonia is controlled by France, there is little that can be done to solve them. That is why, unlike some of France’s “unsuspecting accomplices” in the environment movement, Kanak people did not open champagne and give flowers to France when (for its own politico-military reasons) it announced a 12 month break in its nuclear testing programme. It may also be why (con trary to the report in the introduction to my article) France will still not allow my husband and I to live together in New Caledonia.
Newborn may think I missed the point, but my people do not. Many Kanak people have told me how pleased they are that the issues I raised through PIM have finally been aired. Newborn seems determined to shift the focus away from our priorities and onto hers.
In their rush for the limelight, Western environmentalists have often adopted the role of knight in shining armour coming to save us ignorant natives. In recent years, some of these people have got
down off their horses and learned to listen to us. Susi Newborn has not.
Susanna Ounei-Small
Noumea New Caledonia
Lotto
fever
I refer to the article “Lotto fever hits the Cook Islands” — PIM, July 1992.
While the article reflected the success of the project in the Cook Islands, it did injustice to the Victorian Government rebate to the Cook Islands Sports and
Olympic Association.
Of the 35 per cent of subscriptions for Lotto usually retained by the Govern ment of Victoria, 99 per cent of this amount is returned to the Cook Islands.
Only 1 per cent is retained by the Victorian Government for administra tion.
I would be pleased if you would publish this correction.
John Hycenko
Melbourne Australia
Sepik
problem
WATER is the life-source of the Sepik people. There is a flood every year. But every 10 years the water level during the flood rises much higher. This is a nature bound fact. I was told, living since 1990 near the Sepik River, the water rose in 1982 and 1973 even higher. Nothing was done then.
The provincial health service came to a standstill last year due to mismanage ment by the government. It hasn’t fully recovered yet. The Sepik people are suffering from malaria, pneumonia and skin-diseases. Relief is awaited but not much has arrived up to now.
Wally Hiambohn, I guess you could have written a much better story than you did —“ln The Wake of a Disaster” {PIM, June 1992).
Pius Weingartner
Papua New Guinea
Accurate reporting
on Pacific global
warming needed
DAVENDRA Sharma’s article (“Doomsday delayed?” PIM, July 1992) is misleading on several counts. First, he stated that “government leaders in Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Niue, can rest their fears of the greenhouse effect thanks to a new United Nations study”.
If Davendra checked his information and followed the international develop ment on the greenhouse problem closely, he would realise this is not a new UN study as he claimed, but it is an updated version (referred to here as IPCC92) of the 1990 Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientific report (referred to here as IPCC9O).
Secondly, Davendra goes on to say “the report’s conclusion, based on a computer model of the world’s climate are the results of the fullest assessment possible of changes in vegetation, ocean circulation and cloud cover”. This is a particularly dangerous misrepresen tation of science. It is not the fullest assessment on these area. For example, IPCC92 did not deal with the influence of biological feedbacks (eg marine phytoplankton, which is the largest biological system on the planet) on global warming. The implications of this omission were not elaborated for the edification of policy makers. This was not the case two years ago in IPCC9O in which several ecologists and paleoecologists contributed.
When the IPCC92 report was released with the model-predictions been scaled down from what they were in IPCC9O, the minority of sceptic scientists, indus try, some major GHG emitter govern ments and to some extent the media, eager to create a controversy for news purposes, latched on to this new revised IPCC scenarios to undermine the risks we face. This has spread to our region as well. What Jim Eade of SOPAC did not state in IB Pacific , March 1992 were the reasons why these were lowered, in order to give a balance to the debate. These were the effects of the sulphate aerosols cooling effect, ozone depletion feedback, methane concentration which were not fully known in 1990 and the “sink” in the biosphere which tends to stimulate veg etation growth. A full review of impli cations of revised IPCC92 emissions scenarios is published in Nature , May 8, 1992 by Drs Wigley and Raper of the Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia and recently in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 1992 by our Director of Science, Dr Jeremy Leggett.
Even if the predictions are lowered, these reviews concluded that “changes in temperature and sea level are predicted to be less severe than those estimated previously but are still far beyond the limits of natural variability”. Therefore, there is no major cause for relaxing concern, because ecologists anticipate that any increase in global average temperature in excess of 0.1 degree C per century would pose grave threats to the world, being too fast to allow many ecosystems to adapt.
Davendra then made reference to Sir Hougton, chairman of the IPCC saying that “early environmentalists are guilty of scare-mongering and the doomsday scenario was never credible”. He may be right but we are all facing the task of formulating a policy response to global warming on the basis of risk assessments.
The minority of some of the sceptics scientists have subscribed us to the best case analysis of feedback interaction and ask all of us to place our faith in the expectation that negative feedbacks will come to our rescue to cool the planet.
The problem I see crippling up slowly in our region (and globally) is instead of our problem, the sceptics and footdragg ing governments, and to some extent, the media, seem to portray the issue as between “us”, environmentalists, and the “rest of the world”. We based our arguments on the latest scientific findings and even hired independent scientists.
We never went out and preached a “5 meter” sea level rise. If Davendra understood the issue well, he would realise that we are only talking about 2mm/year rise.
If we were guilty of scaremongering, I would like to draw the attention of your readers to the credible magazine, New Scientists, (March 1992) which acknowl edged the role we environmentalists played in the ozone depletion problem.
We failed to heed the warning of ozone depletion in time and our children and our grandchildren will have to live with the consequences. The impacts of global warming pose even greater threats.
Davendra therefore not only misrep resents the 1992 IPCC update report but also our efforts to steer the debate on climate change to meet the urgent response required to avoid catastrophe.
The lowering of prediction by the 1992 IPCC report should not be used as an excuse for deferring cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
We just have to look around to see evidence of a lengthening list of environ mental degradation affecting our region.
The insurance companies have taken the “early warnings” and have pulled out of cyclone affected islands. According to the World Climate Conference Scientists statement which urged cuts, and pointed out that cuts of more than 60% would be needed to stabilise concen trations in the atmosphere so we are far from alone in this view.
The Pacific needs more accurate reporting on the most serious threat facing our region.
Penehuro Lefale
AtmospherefEnergy Campaigner (Pacific) Greenpeace New Zealand