Striking the heart of Pacific Islanders

Asterio Takesy
In wishing everyone all the best for 2007, I hope we will all take every opportunity to bridge partnerships that were forged last year, build on those alliances and develop stronger ties to raise the bar even higher for environmental conservation.

In this context I am raising a subject that strikes the heart of Pacific Islands communities—sustainable livelihoods—in relation to marine resources. As an inter-governmental environment organisation, SPREP is concerned with striking a balance between the conservation of natural resources on one hand, and maintaining a livelihood that remains sustainable for future generations.

Maintaining that balance is a challenge. SPREP continues to urge its 21 Pacific member countries and territories to carry out best environmental practices when developing strategies for marine conservation and for harvesting marine resources.

Pacific Islands communities rely on coastal fisheries and other marine resources for their livelihood. These communities have a close connection to their coastal surroundings for socio-economic and cultural reasons.

Aquarium fish and coral for instance, are two products from the marine environment that interest the international marine aquarium trade and also provide income for some local communities in the Pacific region.

To encourage the adoption of conservation measures to protect coastal resources from over-exploitation over the long-term, many community-based resource management projects have included alternative income-generating activities such as ecotourism, aquaculture, or traditional craft in their project design.

While this practice is reasonable, it’s important to ensure those activities are financially viable and also don’t impose any cost to the community over the long-term.

In 2005, two studies were published evaluating the economic benefits of cultured and live coral (The Financial Assessment of the Marine Trade of Corals in the Solomon Islands by Lal and Kinch; and The Financial and Economic Analysis of Wild Harvest and Cultured Live Coral and Live Rock in Fiji by Lal and Cerelala). These studies were conducted for SPREP and the Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific International (FSPI), and the Governments of Solomon Islands and Fiji.

For the latter Pacific Islands Countries, the trade in marine aquarium products is an important source of revenue for rural communities.

International interest in marine aquarium products has steadily increased. Live rock and coral are the most important in the trade, with interest in ornamental fish and other invertebrate species having grown worldwide also.

In 2004, Fiji supplied about 161,927 pieces of hard and soft coral and 1.36 million pieces of live rock to overseas markets, mainly the USA, Hong Kong, Japan, and Europe. Fiji also exported 169,143 ornamental fish and 31,900 invertebrate items (according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora [CITES] database with the Fiji fisheries department, July 2005).

The Solomon Islands industry earned approximately S$5.0 million/year gross from the export of live and dead coral, cultured coral and other aquarium products.

There is a growing international concern over the environmental effects of harvesting wild coral and live rock, even though scientific evidence of the extent of the ecological impacts is limited. The harvesting of wild coral and, particularly, live rock has been discouraged while proposing cultured coral and live rock as alternative sources of income for rural communities. It was not known if coral and live rock culture is financially viable or if cultured products can compete with wild harvesting as a source of income. The studies indicate that coral farming is a real economic opportunity for rural communities. However, in most cases, wild harvesting remains more profitable partly because the price paid to communities is the same for cultured and live coral. The value of conservation measures, then, is not reflected.

There are ways to improve the financial returns of coral farming. One approach is farming fast-growing coral species and using village-based technologies with larger operations that are most likely to be more successful.

Accreditation is another tool to ensure that conservation benefits are included in the price that is paid out for cultured corals.

Developing alternative sources of income that result from conservation efforts are a reality. SPREP, FSPI and the International Coral Reef Action Network (ICRAN) are proposing to do a review of alternative livelihood projects in the region. The ultimate aim is to develop tools appropriate to communities to enable them to evaluate options themselves.

Conservation measures are critical to maintaining the long-term availability of resources to communities. For livelihoods to be sustainable for rural communities, there is a need to involve the local population in all coral reef and marine resource management initiatives. That fine line called balance could make the difference between a net full of fish and three strings of fish in the future. I hope you make the right choice.