Small business-the key to conservation

conservation

By Alan Ah Mu

Environmental protectors are taking on the business world in a bid to make conservation financially viable. If this sounds like a contradiction, it becomes all the more harder because it is happening in a region where the idea of conservation for its own sake is not a favourite or even viable option.

Most Pacific Islanders want, and in cases need, to continue to use their diverse environmental resources. But to push the point that islanders can conserving resources while still making money out of them, the South Pacific Regional Environ ment Programme (SPREP) enlisted the expertise of the Samoa Business Enterprise Centre (SBEC).

The task of the business/environ ment alliance is to make the many “conser vation areas” now established in the region generate income to provide for their owners and conserve resources at the same time.

Most communities that have agreed to con servation areas wish to continue to use the natural resources in a sustainable manner.

Some of these uses, such as fire wood, artisanal fishing and shifting cultiva tion, are essentially subsistence in nature.

Others, such as handicrafts, eco-tourism, nut oil production or dried fish production, are undertaken to earn cash income for school fees, cooking oil and various processed foodstuffs and a range of con sumer goods.

Tamarii Tutangata, director of SPREP, says, “Conservation for the sake of conservation has never been a concept close to us from the Pacific.”

Imposing tapu on resources for cer tain periods of time to allow time for regen eration is a historic habit in the South Pacif ic so the idea of conservation for the sake of sustainable use is not new - but protection was the servant of use.

Tapu and other traditional sanctions “passed on from our ancestors were aimed at community survival,” said Tutangata.

“Nowadays, they call this process sustain

able development.”

But the process today often runs on a big

ger scale with relatively large areas parti tioned off for conservation.

The problem has come to a head because funding from the South Pacific Biodiversi ty Conservation Programme (SPBCP) for SPREP is ending. This will make it virtual ly impossible for SPREP to manage 17 con servation areas in 12 countries in the region.

Communities now have to come up with ideas to protect the areas while using resources to make money to continue envi ronment protection programmes and sup port themselves.

Enter the regional workshop of 22 participants held in Apia in September, called Conservation Enterprises and Income Generating Activities: A Skills Development Programme and Workshop for SPBCP-supported Conservation Areas.

Tutangata says this will be “the ultimate test of success and represents a very chal lenging stage of each conservation area.”

It’s hard, he said, to set up a small enterprise that aims at conserving natural resources while providing revenues because it involves reconciling three key elements: Pacific cultures, nature conserva tion and hard-core business decisions.

“The odds of setting up a successful business anywhere in the world are already slim. Now imagine that not only are we looking at promoting ventures that are financially viable but they also need to be both ecologically and socially sustainable,” he says. “To achieve this we need a bit more than hard work and dedication to con servation. We need a no-nonsense and basic business training and a set of benchmarks.”

Learning how to manage conserva tion areas as a small business started last year at the SBEC training centre with regional conservation area staff shown how

to identify potential income generating

activities, assess financial and operational feasibility and prepare basic business plans.

In the year following the first workshop, five small enterprises in four different con servation areas were being set up, mainly

following business plans developed during

that workshop.

“I can name a community sea-kayaking eco-tourism enterprise in Ngaremeduu, that’s in Palau, two small budding eco tourism enterprises at Saanapu and Sataoa in Samoa, a Direct Micro-Expelling Coconut oil enterprise in the Huvalu Forest conservation area in Niue and a rainforest beekeeping venture here in Samoa at Uafa to. Not bad for a first initiative,” says Tutangata. “Now that most of our conser vation areas are well established, it is time for us to help our local community partners turn them into sustainable endeavours.”

But there is another area that conser vationists have to contend with - lack of discipline regarding finances that has caused many small island businesses to fail.

Samoa’s veteran finance minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi says just when a busi ness starts to generate profit, the urge crops up to use it for other purposes.

He says small business operators that fail forget to save part of the profit to keep the enterprise alive. But within the island communities themselves, the business per son “expected to give much more than oth ers,” Tuilaepa said, and this is helping to kill off enterprise.

But environmentalists and business do have a common ground, he says - the

struggle for sustainability.

Apete Meredith, principal consultant of Bioglobal Pacific, one of the workshop trainers, said the communal pressure to siphon profit away from the needs of a business to other communal matters is not

just a Samoan problem.

He says it exists in Fiji, Tonga, the Cook Islands and other South Pacific coun tries where “too often people tend to put social objectives in front of commercial

objectives”.

The simple answer is awareness, Meredith says, to explain what business is about.

“That’s an added (risk) factor in business in the islands,” said Meredith. “It’s a very dif ficult issue. And the emphasis is on the per-

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son owning the business.”

He says one of the responses to crip pling requests for money could be: “Ah well, I can’t really give it to you because it

will cause the death of my business if it’s a straight out loan but ... I’ll give you some of these products you can sell and make some money out of it”.

“Give them alternatives that won’t affect the business ... at least cover your

costs. There are different ways you can do it but you got to be tactful. It’s not easy.”

For the sake of the environment, islanders need to leam to put into practice these and other business principles. ■