PACIFIC NATIONS START TALKS FOR INTERNATIONAL MEETING ON SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES

PACIFIC NATIONS START TALKS FOR INTERNATIONAL MEETING

ON SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES

APIA, SAMOA, 5 August -- The first multinational gathering leading up to next year’s International Meeting on Small Island Developing States is taking place in Apia, Samoa this week to review the progress achieved in ensuring the positive long-term development of small islands.

Over 100 representatives from Pacific island nations are attending the Apia meeting, taking place from 4 to 8 August.  Specifically, they are discussing progress in implementing the Barbados Programme of Action adopted in 1994, which attempted to address the host of challenges that small island States face due to their small size and fragile ecosystems, as they work towards development that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.

Among the challenges facing island nations are rising sea levels, geographic isolation, environmental degradation, poor trading opportunities in a globalizing economy and limited resources -– natural, human and institutional.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 –- the Rio Earth Summit –- agreed that small islands are “a special case both for environment and development” and called for a special conference to focus on these issues.  The resulting Barbados Programme of Action has been used as a tool for guiding and promoting sustainable development in small island regions.  Much progress has been achieved towards its implementation, yet the process is not complete.  There are major tasks ahead to ensure that sustainable development becomes a reality for all island communities.

In order to reach an international consensus on the steps required, the United Nations will convene the international meeting in Mauritius in August/September 2004 to review the implementation of the Programme of Action.  The preparatory process includes regional consultations such as the current meeting in Apia.  They will prepare regional reports that will describe the actions taken, successes reached and problems encountered, and will suggest possible solutions.  Each regional report will then be presented to a larger gathering of all small island developing States in January 2004, from which a consolidated position will be produced.

In Mauritius, the international community as a whole will discuss these recommendations, and it is hoped that a new era of cooperation for sustainable development in small islands will be ushered in, in line with the objectives of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002) and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

“The road ahead is full of challenges”, said Manuel Dengo, Chief of the United Nations Water, Natural Resources and Small Island Developing States Branch -- the Secretariat group in charge of the organization of the international meeting in Mauritius.  “The key aspect is for island nations themselves to demonstrate their resolve and commitment to sustainable development, and to carefully explain the policies and measures that they wish to utilize in their quest for achieving sustainable development”.

This week’s meeting will be an important opportunity to discuss these issues within the Pacific islands group, and to prepare a regional overview of the sustainable development needs and concerns of the Pacific.

The United Nations is supporting this endeavour through its small island developing States Unit of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the Inter-agency Task Force on the Mauritius International Meeting.  Technical and financial support has also been received from the Council of Regional Organizations of the Pacific, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme and the Government of New Zealand.

For more information, contact:  Rolando Gomez, United Nations Department of Public Information (New York), tel.: +1-212-963-2744; e-mail: mediainfo@un.org; or Coral Pasisi, South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (Apia), tel.: +685-21-929; e-mail: coralp@sprep.org.ws; Web site: www.sidsnet.org.

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