PRESS BRIEFING - ISLAND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK REPORTS ON THREE REGIONS UNVEILED AT UNEP BRIEFING

Press Briefing

ISLAND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK REPORTS ON THREE REGIONS UNVEILED AT UNEP BRIEFING

At a press briefing at Headquarters this afternoon, Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), unveiled a series of reports on environmental conditions in three major small island developing States (SIDS) regions -- the Caribbean, the Western Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Toepfer said the reports, released to coincide with the two-day special session of the General Assembly on the sustainable development of SIDS, were the joint contribution of UNEP and the European Union to the special session.

(Mr. Toepfer’s remarks to correspondents were followed by brief statements from Ambassador Neroni Slade (Samoa), Chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS); from Gerald Miles, of the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme; and from Franklin McDonald, Acting Director of the Nature Resource Conservation Authority of Jamaica.)

The three reports were an integral part of UNEP’s activities undertaken within the framework of the Global Environmental Outlook, GEO-2000. The UNEP had relied on a regional participatory approach in preparing the reports, drawing on input from the three regions involved and in partnership with the University of the West Indies Centre and the Indian Ocean Commission. While the reports noted the ecological fragility and economic vulnerability typical of most SIDS, they also cited examples of successful trends and of sound governmental policies. Such policies included efforts to increase public concern over environmental issues (including a more central role for environmental education), to enhance collaboration between governments and regional associations and to support the significant global role being played by AOSIS. The reports mentioned the signing and ratification by SIDS of relevant multilateral environmental agreements, particularly marine- oriented and climate-change-related conventions, as well as enactment of associated national legislation.

Indeed, said Mr. Toepfer, SIDS could be said to be in the lead in ratifying and implementing those global conventions and protocols. Hopefully, that would send a solid signal to other countries to join and make best use of those global, legally binding instruments. Another positive sign was the successful evolution of the Kyoto Climate Change Protocol, which was, of course, of utmost importance for SIDS.

However, despite those efforts by the island States themselves, progress on the environment had fallen far short of what had been hoped for at the 1994 Barbados Conference. Overall, the three regions were on an unsustainable course. Environmental degradation threatened their very foundations, and in a number of ways. Many island populations were on the rapid increase. In the Pacific islands, the population had almost tripled since 1950, jumping from 2.6 to 7.5 million. Those population changes, coupled with changing patterns of production and consumption and heavy reliance on an often-limited national resource capital, were imposing heavy pressures on the environment. For example, per-capita waste production had doubled in the last two or two-and-a-half decades. Nor was it merely a question of quantity, for the nature of the waste (linked to changing consumption patterns) was less and less degradable.

Land degradation, waste management, freshwater supply and quality were major concerns for many islands in all three areas. Sea-level rise, associated with climate change, was expected to further bedevil the situation. A serious problem was the severe depletion of forest and fishery resources by over-harvesting. The unique marine and terrestrial biodiversity of many of the islands was severely threatened by a higher proportion of species on the endangered list than in larger land masses. About one third of the coral reefs in the Caribbean and Pacific were at high risk due to a combination of near shore pollution and offshore over-harvesting. Coral bleaching had also destroyed large stretches of reef. The UNEP was backing the coral reef initiative decided upon in Barbados, which it believed to be of the highest importance for the overall stability of the ecosystem.

Furthermore, the majority of the islands’ capital cities and settlements were susceptible to sea-level rise, putting 22 per cent of the population of the Indian Ocean’s small islands alone at risk. And, given the likelihood that the frequency and intensity of weather extremes -- hurricanes, cyclones, floods and storm-surge -- will increase, the ability of SIDS to develop a strong productive base for sustainable development was increasingly jeopardized.

Finally, the great importance of sustainable tourism made it imperative to integrate tourism within the social and environmental picture as soon as possible. The UNEP had launched an initiative directed at tour operators. It was hoped to distribute copies of a special issue of UNEP’s house publication to airlines travelling to SIDS in order to raise tourist awareness of the beautiful but fragile and vulnerable environment of those regions.

While he did not want to present a negative overall picture, said Mr. Toepfer, it was important to create a very honest, clear informational basis for decision-makers in the drive for sustainable development. The international community had to concentrate its efforts on tackling root causes, particularly poverty, unsustainable consumption, and population growth. There must be an integrated approach to environment management in relation to economic needs and development potentials. Furthermore, the international community had to prepare itself for climate change, first of all through mitigation – for example, by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions -- but also by filling the knowledge gap. The world must be better informed, with the most up-to-date facts on developments in SIDS. Finally, it must do everything in its power to mobilize further action, with the help of the collaboration centres, the governments of the three regions, and the European Commission. He said that in preparing the reports, UNEP had taken a very small, but necessary step, and much remained to be done. He hoped the special session of the Assembly would be a success in backing implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action.

Mr. Slade said that the reports, coming as they did on the fifth anniversary of the Barbados Conference, were timely and most welcome. All he had to add in the way of comment was that the reports not only summarized the status of the SIDS, but identified responses to the critical issues. They, therefore, embodied much sense and practicality, setting out possible – but workable -- strategies for the future. Moreover the reports, compiled with the active cooperation of the regions in question and interested scientific experts, had been objectively peer-reviewed. The reports were, therefore, not only as accurate as they could possibly be, but they had been independently assessed. But they left the world under no illusions. Indeed, they largely confirmed what was already known -- namely, that the island regions would continue to face serious but steady decline. Taken together, the problems outlined by Mr. Toepfer added up to bad habits. “I think we have to own up to our own lifestyle in the islands”, he said. Already, for example, island roads were clogged with motor vehicles: it was time for SIDS to respond and make a meaningful contribution to cleaning up the global environment. By their combined power, human beings had altered and continued to alter the global environment. What was not yet known was how to respond sensibly, and in unison, to the health problems of the global environment. The reports presented today clearly illustrated that islands provide a vital litmus measure for the environment. The ultimate value of the role SIDS could perform was their own conduct, their own acceptance of solutions and their own implementation of what they could manage to do with the help of the international community.

Asked whether there had been any measurable sea-level rise in the five years since the Barbados Conference, Mr. Slade replied that it was impossible to measure sea-level rises in the short term by country or by region. But it was known in specific communities that there had been significant salt-water seepage into drinking-water reserves. The phenomenon was widespread, he added.

A correspondent asked, in view of “lack of progress” since the Barbados Conference, why the panel felt that it could do much more now to deflect SIDS from what Mr. Toepfer had characterized as an unsustainable course. Mr. Toepfer said that he had already identified increased awareness of the problems -– both in SIDS and at the global level -- as a positive sign. The process of consciousness-raising must go on, first of all through education. He acknowledged, however, citing the scanty information surrounding such questions as coral bleaching and reef-depletion, that there was no easy answer. He could only reiterate what had already been said -- namely, that the reports should not be viewed as a nightmare scenario. Such scenarios were always linked in people’s minds to alibis for inaction. On the contrary, they should be viewed as honest statements of position. They made clear that action both at the SIDS level and at the global level could indeed lead to clear solution of the problems. Not on a short time scale, of course. He truly believed that if blue-eyed optimism was neither called for nor possible, resignation was not possible or necessary either. As the regional experts had said, the reports now before correspondents were indeed living documents. They were not blueprints for implementation. They should be viewed as stimulants for further action, and hopefully as sources of better information for the future. A correspondent asked to what extent alternative government policies were contributing to the solution of SIDS problems. Mr. Miles said that alternative policy options to promote sustainable development could, in fact, add to the problems. In general, the major drawback was that such policies tended to be applied piecemeal. But there were encouraging policies at community level -– for example, programmes to link tourist penetration of conservation areas with the preservation of rare fauna, or the imposition of excise levies on such environmentally undesirable articles as plastic bags.

Mr. McDonald offered a Caribbean perspective on the question, pointing out that, for the past five years, the region had tried systematically to tackle the issues raised. First, by seeing to what extent it could meet the requirements of international environmental conventions. But capacity problems were a serious challenge. It was not easy to establish inventories, reports, and environmental assessments overnight. But secretariats and national governments had been working towards solutions to problems. Not all environmental conventions had funding mechanisms, but he understood that UNEP was re- examining the extent to which secretariats could better harmonize and rationalize their work. At a regional level, governments were seeking to put in place national sustainable development strategies. In Jamaica, sustainable tourism strategies which had emerged from the tourist industry itself were being actively examined. Jamaica was also actively promoting an environmental education action plan. He added that not many countries of the developed world were walking the path to sustainability. While the problems enumerated today might be more urgent for the SIDS, those same problems had not yet been overcome in the developed world.

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