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Environment
and development in coastal regions and in small islands |
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Environment
and development in coastal regions and in small islands |
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Palau workshop papers
Small Island
Voice – Inter-regional Workshop Preparatory Document - Palau
Tiare
Holm, Joe Chilton, Tarita holm, Joe Aitaro
Small Islands Voice Activities
After an initial
site visit in February 2002, e-mail and teleconference contact between Small
Islands Voice (SIV) Coordinators Claire Green and Gillian Cambers, the Palau
UNESCO National Commission, and Small Islands Voice focal point Joe Tutii
Chilton continued. In July 2002,
Gillian Cambers visited Palau. After
meeting with representatives from the media, the Office of Environmental
Response and Coordination (OERC), Palau Conservation Society, the UNESCO
National Commission and others, it was decided that the best focal agency for
implementation of Palau’s participation in Small Islands Voice activities
would be the OERC. The contract
between UNESCO and OERC was then drafted and signed for the first six months of
the project. Key activities to be
implemented were outlined and included the following:
The
Small Islands Voice
Youth Forum
Global
Forum
Small
Islands Voice Inter-regional Workshop
Survey
of 1% of Palau’s population
A Coordinator,
Ms. Tiare Holm, was identified and contracted in October.
The following provides an overview of Small
Islands Voice activities conducted in Palau since
October 2002.
The Small
Islands Voice Youth Forum
The Small Islands Voice Youth
Forum is, for now, a trial
young islanders
Internet-based forum, which is being held from September to December 2002.
The forum involves at least one school in each of the five island
countries: St. Kitts and Nevis, and Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines),
both in the Caribbean; Seychelles in the Indian Ocean; Palau and Cook Islands in
the Pacific. Students between the
ages 13-15 are asked to post and respond to articles on the forum addressing
issues directly related to their daily lives.
If successful, after this trial the forum may be expanded to include
other schools and other islands in 2003.
Meetings were held with two
schools – Palau High School (Palau’s only public secondary school) and
Mindzenty High School (the largest secondary private school in Palau).
During these meetings, the principals and social studies department heads
of both schools were briefed on Small Islands Voice.
They conveyed strong enthusiasm for student participation in the Youth
Forum. Six students were
immediately identified from Mindzenty High School to participate in the Forum
– Klebeang Oiph, Lei Rengulbai, Ben Miko Jr., Marka Rur Gibbons, and Jesse
Mangham. A meeting was then held
with the students to brief them on Small Islands Voice, the Youth Forum and how
to participate. At the meeting
students also identified Ms. Jesse Mangham as the writer for the group and
launched into an informal discussion on the topic for an article that they were
responsible to write and post on the forum.
The article was to address the issue of ‘Drug and Alcohol use Among
Youth in My Island’. Students were informed that they have weekly access to
computers and Internet through a partnership with an Internet café that is
popular with students, Café@Palau.
Several days later, students logged on to the forum and began
participating by posting responses to articles already on the forum.
The students then met on their own time to discuss their article.
The article was written and has been posted on to the Youth Forum.
Students are enjoying participating in the Forum and have already
expressed their hope that the Forum continues into next year.
Their responses on the Forum, as well as their article, are collected and
delivered to their social studies teacher, Mr. Martin Carl.
Small
Islands Voice Global Forum
The Small
Islands Voice Global Forum is also an Internet-based forum in which anyone
can participate. In October an
article was posted titled ‘Development
at Any Cost’. Authored by
Scott Radway, the article discussed the issues related to the building of the
Compact Road in Palau. The posting
of the article has ignited discussion on the topic of the Compact Road in the
Palau community. Discussions on the
article specifically have taken place informally in various offices, among
friends and family members outside the workplace as well as on the “Bridge”,
an email discussion group between on and off-island Palauans and individuals
with special interests in Palau.
Small
Islands Voice Inter-regional Workshop
The Small Islands Voice Inter-regional Workshop has been scheduled to take place in Palau from November 18-22, 2002. Arrangements have been made to accommodate the workshop, which includes two field trips. The workshop, in addition to bringing representatives of all the Small Islands Voice participating sites together to exchange ideas and experiences will also acquaint participants with key issues in Palau related to sustainable development on a small island. Included in the workshop will be discussions between participants and representatives of Palau’s media, non-government organizations and communities.
Survey of
1% of Palau’s Population
As part of Palau’s Small
Islands Voice activities a survey
is being conducted of at least 1% of Palau’s population.
The purpose of the survey is to gauge the opinions and the concerns of
members of the Palauan community as they relate to the future of Palau and
sustainable development. A
questionnaire has been drafted and it has been decided that the survey will be
administered through interviews with respondents.
A meeting was held with the President of the Palau National Youth Congress (PNYC) during which it was agreed that the PNYC would identify youth as enumerators to carry out the survey. A total of 28 youth are being identified for this purpose. The enumerators will be identified by November 8. During the week of November 11-15 a briefing session with enumerators will be conducted and the survey will begin.
Emerging
Local, National and global Issues
With Palau’s participation in Small Islands Voice activities having actively begun in October, it may be pre-emptive to try to identify many keys issues that are emerging directly as a result of Small Islands Voice activities. However, two issues have emerged and are being discussed more frequently because of Small Islands Voice activities.
Compact
Road
Issues related to Compact Road
construction are now being discussed more frequently since the posting of Scott
Radway’s article ‘Development
at Any Cost?’ on the Small Islands Voice Global Forum.
The Compact Road is a national road project, which, once completed, will
allow thousands of residents in Koror who are originally from the island of
Babeldaob (by far Palau’s largest island) to return to Babeldaob.
It is a road that has been promised and awaited for over a half a
century. The road is viewed as the
key to developing Palau’s largest island.
Controversies surrounding the road project exist over the debate on key
issues including:
Drug and
Alcohol Use among Youth in Palau
As a result of the Youth Forum,
students have been discussing
the issues of drug and alcohol abuse among youth in Palau.
The timing is especially meaningful, as there have been two teenage
deaths within the last four months, both of which have been linked to alcohol
and possibly drugs. As Palau has a
fairly small population, these two deaths have deeply affected teens in Palau. During the initial Youth Forum meeting with students from
Mindzenty High School, there was a profound sense of sadness.
Students discussed several key questions related to drug and alcohol use.
These included:
Ideas
for Small Islands Voice Activities in 2003, National, Regional, Inter-regional
Suggestions for Small Islands Voice activities in 2003 include the following:
National
Youth Newsletter: There
is a growing group of key youth who are involved with Small Islands Voice as
well as with environment and community development activities and issues.
During a Pacific
Islands Conference on Environment held in Palau in June, the Honorable
Sandra Pierantozzi, Vice-President of the Republic of Palau, pledged
office-space and a computer to a group of involved youth, for the purpose of
starting an environmental youth newsletter.
Since then the group has had difficulty in launching the newsletter for a
variety of reasons including:
This may be an ideal
opportunity to work in partnership with the Office of the Vice-President to
assist these key youth in getting organized and launching Palau’s first youth
newsletter on environment as well as other important community issues.
Community
Visioning: designed to provide for community
involvement in planning and managing each state’s future development, began in
Palau in 2000. Various organizations and individuals came together during a
workshop to inform active community members on how to use community visioning as
a tool for achieving agreed, collective community goals for development.
As a result of this workshop a core group was formed to carry out the
process and make community visioning available to all states in Palau.
The concept calls for each
community to participate in preparing plans for the type of development they
want to see in their area (or state) in the future. One of the products of the
visioning exercise is an agreed and stated vision which feeds into the master
land use plan for each state. The visioning exercise could lead to master land
use plans in each state which are meaningful to, and agreed upon, and supported
by the entire state community. These
plans need to be formally endorsed by each state, and then implemented.
After the initial workshop in
2000, a training workshop for facilitators was conducted and several states went
on to hold initial visioning sessions with state and community leaders.
Over the last year (2002) the community visioning process has slowed to a
stall for several reasons. The main
causes of the lack of movement forward with community visioning have included:
Lack
of consistency in coordination leading to little priority given to community
visioning within daily schedules and work plans,
Lack of resources to carry out state and community meetings.
It is hoped that in 2003, the
Palau Community Visioning Process will be undertaken as one key Small Islands
Voice activity. The Community
Visioning Project would include the following activities:
1. Campaign (‘Participate in
Deciding Your Future’)
A campaign could heighten
community awareness about visioning and to encourage community members to take
an active role in deciding the future development goals for their states.
Campaign materials and tools would include:
A ‘refresher’ workshop
would be conducted to reawaken information, awareness and enthusiasm in key
players of the community visioning exercise.
An additional workshop to train additional facilitators from each state
could then be conducted to re-launch to visioning process.
2. Implementation of Visioning
in each state
The community visioning process
would be carried out in at least 6 states, with the goal of achieving vision
statements and documents which have the commitment of state community members,
leaders and planners and are being used
in the planning process for each given State.
Regional
Small Islands Voice Pacific Newsletter/Magazine:
As a way of continuing the exchange between
islands in our region it has been suggested that Small Islands Voice consider
undertaking the development and publishing of a quarterly regional newsletter or
magazine targeting community issues, opinions, concerns and events in our
region. Youth columns, special
interest stories and information on the latest in community development
strategies and activities are just a few items that could be featured in such a
publication.
International
Continue Global and Youth Forum: It
has been strongly recommended that both the Small Islands Voice Global Internet
Forum and the Youth Forum continue into 2003.
This is mainly because the general consensus is that more time on both
forums is needed to meaningfully assess their impacts on awareness in local
communities and because they are already seem to be very useful in sparking
discussion among community members on key issues.
Bring youth representatives from Small
Islands Voice sites together: The
idea was mentioned during a recent Small Islands Voice Teleconference to
consider bringing students who have played a key role on the Youth Forum
together to meet one another and forge what would hopefully be life-long
friendships. This idea is strongly
supported. It is hoped that this
kind of meeting would lead to a long-term network of individuals discussing and
addressing sustainable development issues in their communities and peer groups.
Small Islands Voice Newsletter/Magazine: The
idea of a regional newsletter or magazine has been earlier mentioned.
This idea could also carry over to a global publication with regular
input from all participating sites.
