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SMALL ISLANDS VOICE

 Do you live in a small island? Tell us what you think.

 For many islands, it may already be too late. Thomas Goreau writes from Jamaica (Caribbean): Since early childhood, I watched all the reefs of Jamaica killed by algae whose uncontrolled growth was caused by untreated sewage. Waves of algae spread outwards from all the sewage sources over a period of 40 years, as each part of the coast was developed, until all of our reefs were smothered. Foreign experts came afterwards, did superficial studies, and blamed the fishermen instead of sewage! The result of their wrong diagnosis, based on faulty science and ignorance of local environmental history, are proposals that cannot possibly work. They advise to create marine protected areas and stop people from fishing and then the corals and fish will thrive. Yet these protected areas are full of dead and dying corals and the algae have not vanished! In fact, the only way to get rid of algae is to starve them, by cutting off the fertilizers and other nutrients pouring into the sea. When this is done the algae quickly die; I saw a bay in Jamaica cleaned up in only a few months this way. The only way to restore the fisheries is to restore the health of the coral reef habitat that maintains them, not to pretend that sick areas that are protected can support more fish. At the United Nations Experts Meeting on waste management in Small Island Developing States, I wrote the review chapter on the effects of land-based sources of nutrients (from detergents, sewage, fertilizers, pesticides and other sources) on coral reefs and fisheries. The problem can be solved by using biological tertiary treatment to recycle all the nutrients on land. In this way the productivity of the land can be improved, and we don’t poison the sea and kill our corals and fish. The entire group of experts called for complete elimination of all human caused sources of nutrients to the coastal zone and the sea. But this message was lost completely at the United Nations Summit for small islands in

2005, and has also been totally ignored in the Small Island State Position Paper for the forthcoming United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development meetings on energy and environment. All the key points have been dropped. It seems that we do not want to learn from our experience. If so, we only have ourselves to blame.