Small Island States Awash in a Sea of Trash

JEJU, South Korea, March 30, 2004 (ENS) - Island beaches that once were tropical paradises are now littered with beer cans, plastics, even furniture. Delegates from island nations such as Mauritius and Fiji attending the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Governing Council meeting are asking for affordable recycling equipment and help to return their beaches to their former beauty.

The Pacific island of Nauru, for example, now has a "blue green shoreline," that comes from the mounds of discarded Fosters and Victoria beer cans washed up on the beach.

Jagdish Koonjul from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius chairs the Alliance of Small Island States. "We urgently need access to effective and affordable technologies including recycling equipment before this issue of wastes becomes critical," he said. "It is a cry for technology transfer."

"Many small island developing states, including my own country of Mauritius, have launched public awareness campaigns and the people have responded," said Koonjul. "But the fact remains that unless you have ways of re-using and recycling rubbish, it is difficult to know what to do with materials such as plastics including plastic bags, aluminum and paper."

Trash at sea sooner or later washes ashore. (Photo courtesy NOAA)

Steve Lonergan, director of UNEP's Division of Early Warning and Assessment discussed the impact of armed conflicts, indicators of environmental change, dust and sandstorms, a persistent atmospheric brown cloud, and transboundary issues for shared water.

The objective of the ministerial discussions in Jeju is to identify workable approaches, based on actual experiences, for expediting the goals of the Millennium Declaration and the World Summit on Sustainable Development commitments related to the environmental aspects of water, sanitation and human settlements, and the centrality of ecosystem approaches in water management.

Many of the developing countries called for technical, financial, capacity building, and assessment and monitoring assistance.

UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer is sympathetic to the waste issues confronting the small island states. "Handling solid wastes from industry, households and tourism is emerging as another issue with which they need advice and help," said Toepfer. "Such wastes are not only unsightly and a threat to wildlife, they can also contaminate rivers and groundwaters as they slowly degrade."

UNEP, together with other United Nations agencies and waste institutions, has been assisting small island developing states to prepare waste minimization plans, draw up directories of environmentally sound waste management technologies and promote cleaner production techniques that generate less pollution.

The wastes not only threaten public health but also livelihoods as visitors are less likely to return to an island or recommend it to friends if the landscape, shoreline and coastal waters are disfigured with industrial and household rubbish.

And visitors are part of the problem. The Cook Islands Tourism Corporation figures show some 72,900 tourists visited the islands in 2000, a record high. The increase in tourism has been a boost for the economy, but it has also produced an increase in solid waste that is hard to handle in a small country with a resident population of fewer than 14,000.

One UNEP report released at the Governing Council meeting estimates that in the past 10 years the levels of plastic wastes on small island developing states has increased five fold.

The report points out that problems of rubbish and litter are part of a wider waste crisis. For example, 90 percent of wastewater is discharged untreated from islands in the Caribbean. In parts of the northeast Pacific, the level of untreated sewage is 98 percent.

This report "UNEP and Small Island Developing States: 1994-2004 and Future Perspectives," and several others have been compiled by UNEP's Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities and UNEP's Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA).

The new reports will be formally presented to ministers attending a key small island developing states conference, called Barbados Plus Ten, taking place on Mauritius later in the year.

Debris washed up on the beach at Kahuku on Oahu's north shore in the Hawaiian islands. (Photo by Butch Tilley courtesy Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Sanctuary)

Creeks running into Apia harbour in Samoa are heavily choked with domestic rubbish adjacent to people's homes and the roadway, and despite annual cleanups on islands, social attitudes appear to be unchanging. The same amount of rubbish and waste quickly piles up again and placing "a burden on the availability of land which is acute in small islands," the report states.

In Madagascar, an island nation off Africa's southeast coast, only six percent of rubbish and wastes are routinely collected. Over half of the population dispose of their wastes "anywhere convenient" including on or near beaches and in mangrove swamps.

The levels of rubbish in the capital Antananarivo alone are estimated to be 65,700 metric tons.

When ships dump wastes at sea, they do not go away, they wash up on islands such as the World Heritage Site of Aldabara, famous for its giant tortoises, and now known for the high levels of rubbish washed ashore.

The report argues that improper disposal of rubbish and wastes is encouraging vermin, including rats, which in turn carry diseases such as plague, scabies and other tropical diseases.

Poor disposal of wastes, especially containers, is also generating increased risk of malarial infections especially in Madagascar and the Comoros. The containers, ranging from old plastic bags to paint tins, accumulate rain water which is an ideal breeding ground for the disease carrying insects.

One GIWA report warns, "Pollution of water supplies is potentially regionwide, due to inadequate treatment of domestic waste water and inadequate solid waste disposal."

The Global Ministerial Environment Forum is also taking place on Jeju this week, attended by close to 100 ministers and delegations from over 120 countries. These delegates will attend a workshop on the dust and sand storms that are a health, economic and environmental threat in Asia and beyond.

The storms are caused by land degradation and desertification in Mongolia and northern China, but there is a link to the environment of small island states. Scientists have recently found that similar storms, originating in the Sahara, have damaged coral reefs in the Caribbean.

All of the discussions at Jeju will inform the 12th meeting of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development to be held in New York in April. There progress towards the commitments related to the water, sanitation and human settlements made at previous international meetings will be reviewed.