Monday, May 12, 2008

Small Islands, Big Problems

Money alone will not fix the problems SIDS face. Delegates at the CSD should take the opportunity offered them by this day to have a real interactive dialogue to find some real, new and viable solutions.

By: Juan Hoffmaister, ANPED

It is SIDS day again. Like last year, we will hear of the incomparable challenges faced by the people of smalls islands scattered across the globe. The Commission will take stock of the situation in small islands states, and some comments might capture the harsh reality of the island people. The discussion will probably stress the importance of further support for the implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action (BPA) and Mauritius Strategy for Further Implementation, and call on the developed world to support island nations by giving more money. But SIDS day should be about lot more than just that. The future of small islands depends on how well we are able to solve the pressing problems of our environment, and addressing their needs requires more than Monday diplomacy. While there is real urgency in supporting SIDS, a lot more than simply dispensing cash must happen. We have to help these small nations create and support governance systems that are adaptive enough to the changing conditions of our planet.

Too much paper, little action

There are too many declarations, too many laws, too many agreements - and making sense of them on the ground is harder than writing them. To implement the Mauritius Strategy and the BPA, it is first of all imperative to develop the necessary governance structures. Having had the fortune of working closely with islands in the South Pacific, I was often confused and disillusioned by the disconnect between the environmental ministries and the rest of the official government structure. While the concept of sustainable development and risk management in SIDS is elaborated in the different declarations, the understanding of the issues in ministries is not well prioritized or just not implemented.

Secondly, you cannot implement the Mauritius Strategy and BPA agenda if you are pushing two different agendas on the same island — one agenda is science driven built on scientific insights, while the other is created in response to the immediate need to get money and fight poverty, in ways that may not be sustainable. The disconnect between the sustainable development agenda and the development agenda in small islands states is a threat to achieve the vision set in Rio. This of course is not simply an issue faced by SIDS, but is an obstacle to be overcome in most of our development efforts. A new solution, a new approach, and hope in reconciling the economy with the needs of today and the future, requires a whole new way of thinking of sustainable development.

Third, it is imperative to ensure community support to enable action on the ground. The disconnect between the people of the islands and the agendas created in their name is a constraint to the advancement of the visions set in the different declarations. As the final actors of these plans, communities in small islands need to appropriate the strategies to cope with their changing environment. The solutions must come from within. NSDS, NAPAS, and all other documents written won’t be of much use if the only people reading them are the outside donors. These documents often have very insightful information, but stakeholders have not been empowered to make the information provided their own. To implement the BPA and the Mauritius Strategy, we need to engage civil society in small islands to see the documents become meaningful.  The people on the islands need to be empowered, not constrained, by the solutions and programmes.

Not just money

Engaging communities is not the same as raising awareness. Workshops, organised by international organisations, NGOs, or governments, come with the tides in the islands. It seems like there are workshops on every imaginable topic, from traditional knowledge management to capacity building for conservation. In addition to financial resources, going past the ‘awareness raising’ stage and incorporating this knowledge in national planning requires bringing the BPA and Mauritius Strategy beyond archives environmental policy. We need solutions that are appropriate to the context, that respect the traditions of small islands, that strive towards providing food security, a decent livelihood, and not just focus on increasing GDP. The money needs to be directed to the community level, and there are ways to do that without attaching paternalistic conditionalities to money given or loaned. Instead of funding huge programmes with monitoring criteria and evaluation forms, the money needs to be directed to the communities and grassroots organisations that have already taken it upon them to find solutions to the challenges eroding their livelihoods.

Pointing fingers will not help

It is easy to criticize and complain about the work that governments do, but in the case of SIDS it’s not as simple as pointing fingers. The governments of SIDS are trying to do with the resources that they have, whether financial, human skills, or natural. The challenge of SIDS forces us to question how we work on international aid, how we incorporate environment in planning, but more importantly, how does our ‘do’ here, in this smoky and windowless basement, support the ongoing struggle of the people of islands? Perhaps today, the SIDS day of CSD-16, delegations can put down their prepared statements and engage a new dialogue — a dialogue that pushes them to interact differently from the way we have always done, and perhaps, hopefully, get something different from what we always get.