H.E. RATU EPELI NAILATIKAU - KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT THE 9TH PACIFIC ISLANDS CONFERENCE ON NATURE CONSERVATION & PROTECTED AREAS

02/12/2013


HIS EXCELLENCY RATU EPELI NAILATIKAU
CF, LVO, OBE (Mil), OStJ, CSM, MSD
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF FIJI
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KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT THE 9TH PACIFIC ISLANDS CONFERENCE ON NATURE CONSERVATION & PROTECTED AREAS
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Vodafone Arena Monday, 2nd December, 2013
SUVA 9.30a.m.
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 Ministers from Pacific Island Countries
 The Fijian Attorney-General and Minister for Environment, Hon Aiyaz Saiyed Khaiyum;
 The Dean of the Diplomatic Corps;
 Your Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps;
 The Director General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program - Mr. David Sheppard and your Staff;
 The Chairperson of the Pacific Islands Round Table - Mr. Taholo Kami and Members of the Round Table;
 Private Sector and Civil Society Representatives;
 Representatives from Academic Institutions and the Scientific Community;
 Distinguished Guests;
 Ladies and Gentlemen.

Good morning, ni sa bula vinaka, asalam alaykum, namaste.
It is a great pleasure for me as President to welcome you all on behalf of the Fijian people to this, the 9th Pacific Island Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas.

I extend a special welcome to delegates from overseas and our panel of distinguished speakers, whose presence alone indicates the importance being attached to this gathering.

Ladies and gentlemen, since its first gathering in 1975, this conference has established itself as the region’s premier event for biodiversity conservation. It is open to all and brings together a grand coalition to address the challenges before us - government representatives, NGOs, development partners, international organizations and individual communities from throughout the Pacific.

Fiji would like to see that coalition broadened and strengthened to include more representatives of the corporate sector.

Because we are convinced that only through an effective public/private partnership and a holistic approach to conservation can we tackle the complex challenges now before us.

Each successive conference over the past 38 years has generated an action strategy as a guiding framework for our collective conservation effort for the ensuing five-year period. One of our key tasks this week, therefore, is to formulate a strategy for the next five years, to take us to the end of 2018 and beyond.

It is six years since we last gathered for the 8th Conference at Alotau in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea.

It was decided then – quite rightly - that individual communities are the backbone of successful conservation strategies in the Pacific Countries.

We needed to empower ordinary people to take responsibility for the protection of their immediate environment for us to have any hope of implementing effective national or regional conservation strategies.

The 8th Conference laid down a five year action strategy with precisely that theme - of “empowering local people, communities and institutions” to place them at the forefront of our collective conservation effort.

Since then, much has been done to implement that strategy: the Coral Triangle, the Micronesia Challenge, the Phoenix Island protected area and the emerging Pacific Ocean 2020 challenge, to name a few.

And we continue at this conference to emphasise the crucial role of the grass roots, the ordinary men and women of our islands, in keeping and ensuring the protection of our precious surroundings.
Our theme this year is “Natural Solutions: Building Solutions for a Changing Pacific”.

So we have resolved to comprehensively examine the current state of conservation, identify which areas warrant the most urgent attention, and devise solutions that are practical, affordable and sustainable.

For our part, Fiji believes that we need to dramatically step up the work already done since the last conference to involve ordinary people in the conservation effort.

We especially need a revolution in personal attitudes, to make every citizen realize that it is their personal responsibility to safeguard the environment on land and at sea, or in the words of the slogan – “from the ridge to the reef”.

For too long, pacific peoples have embraced one of the worst facets of western consumerism – the culture of the throwaway package.

Our villages, towns and cities are strewn with litter, our beaches with plastic bottles and plastic bags, and other non-biodegradable containers of every kind. We can blame the manufacturers for packaging their products in these containers in the first place. But the responsibility for disposing of them properly is solely our own – all of us.

We need to inculcate a new culture in the Pacific, one of personal commitment to conservation and sustainable development and the daily observance of it in all our lives. Do not use our pristine environment as a rubbish dump. If you see a piece of rubbish or a plastic bottle, pick it up and dispose of it properly. When you go to a shop, choose items that are biodegradable and come in biodegradable packaging.

And tell the person at the checkout point that you do not want a plastic bag because you have brought your own woven basket.

At the community level, do not dispense with your sewage in the sea, band together and get a portable sewage treatment plant. If trees need to be cut down, more trees need to be planted.

Reforestation should be a national priority in every Pacific community, in every Pacific country.

Fiji has instituted a range of initiatives to encourage this cultural transformation that could well be emulated by other Pacific nations.

We now have zero rated duty on biodegradable plastic, zero duty on portable sewage treatment plants and zero duty on water desalination plants for use in areas where fresh water is scarce.

One of our manufacturers sells water in a plastic bottle that completely dissolves within twelve months.
Just imagine the transformation of our surroundings if every plastic bottle strewn around the pacific could be gone in a year.

We need to work more closely with the corporate sector to extend the use of this technology and channel this into other products.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this conference we need to build on our successes thus far with a renewed commitment to do better – much better.

Yet we do so at a time when the overall picture has become decidedly bleak.

We have to confront the fact that however much the control we can exercise over our immediate environments as pacific islanders, there are much bigger forces at work that are beyond our control. They require a global response and unfortunately the world is not responding adequately enough.

Fiji, along with the rest of the region, is deeply concerned and perplexed at the demonstrable lack of resolve on the part of the global community to address the issue of climate change.

Nothing we do as Pacific Islands Developing States to conserve and protect our natural environment can save us if we are eventually swamped by the vast ocean around us.
Yet that is what is beginning to happen as the ice caps melt and rising sea levels encroach on our coastal settlements.

In some places, sea walls have been breached and arable land has been spoiled by seawater. In others, whole villages and settlements are having to be moved. And in at least three instances, whole countries may eventually cease to exist – Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands.

We know that it is happening because of global warming but the world is locked in a seemingly endless debate about why that warming is taking place. Does the earth simply warm and cool over time or is it because of human activity – the increased carbon emissions of the industrialized nations?

In global forums, a large amount of proverbial hot air is being expended arguing the relative merits of both positions. The so-called climate skeptics keep attacking the mainstream scientific consensus that the current global warming is man-made and that we need deep cuts in carbon emissions to arrest that warming.

And while they slug it out, the major carbon polluters talk incessantly about the need to put the jobs of their workers first while their factories continue to belch out this rubbish.

Here in the Pacific, we sit back aghast while this argument rages, the water lapping at our feet.
While the global community prevaricates, our very existence, in some cases, it is under direct threat.

It is high time for the world to put aside the differences and embrace the binding targets to dramatically reduce carbon emissions. At the very least, it is the prudent thing to do.

Ladies and gentlemen, in a few minutes Fiji takes over as chair of this conference. We do so with pride, conscious that we need to make climate change our number one environmental priority. We have already assumed a leadership role on the issue on behalf of the Pacific Small Island Developing States at the United Nations and in our role as chair of the G77 plus china – the largest voting bloc in the un.

I urge you all to help make our voices heard. To send the message from this place at this time to our bigger neighbours and the world beyond that the time for argument and prevarication is over. We need you to stand shoulder to shoulder with us because our very survival is at stake.

Ladies and gentlemen, with these words, I invite you to make the most of these discussions as we share our collective passion to safeguard our precious inheritance for our own generation and the generations to come.

I also urge you to set aside time to enjoy more of our beautiful country and her people.

I now have the honour and the greatest pleasure to declare the 9th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas open.

Thank you, vinaka vakalevu, sukria, bahoot dhanyavaad.

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