Bio-fools or Bio-fuels?

PS: Let's accept the fact that if our biodiversity (wildlife) is disappearing, not only is this a foolish thing to allow, but we need to accept that we are the only bio-fools allowing it to happen. Loss of biodiversity globally has been fuelled by need for more energy, and bio-fuels now may be our answer here in the South Pacific.



Just the words, ‘South Pacific’ or ‘South Seas’, bring to mind for most quite quickly a feeling of ‘romance’ and ‘exotic holidays’ luring holidaymakers onto tropical palm-fringed golden beaches, even some 200 years or more after the first earliest discoveries by European explorers, missionaries, whalers and traders.

But the Pacific, today, as you’ll soon realize, may have changed considerably after these initial and more recent and more fatal impacts on the lives of today’s Pacific Islanders. These impacts are now daily, so, for the past two centuries or more, an accumulative effect has led to a more non-sustainable lifestyle for most Pacific Islanders.

These impacts have been largely driven by outside influences from the so-called developed world that is today no longer coping financially, morally, socially or environmentally. The health and education of Pacific Islanders is also at stake. We need to find solutions, earlier rather than later, and if this means planting bio-fuel crops, becoming independent power producers, replacing our diesel imports and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, then we Pacific Islanders are prepared to do anything to save our islands and peoples from the devastating impacts of global warming.

The Pacific languages in Oceania, all 3000 or more, are the fastest disappearing of any region in the world. And our Oceanic avian species are also now the most threatened of any region in the world. Why? A cash economy is now leading to mass destruction of ecosystems, both terrestrial and marine, and little effective technology has been implemented to reduce this increasing demise.

The Pacific is facing a global energy crisis, rising energy bills and/or failing energy supplies. And the global food crisis is pushing the cost of imported low-quality foods up within the Pacific. The impoverished are now even more impoverished, leading to even further widespread destruction of ecosystems that are so vital for the survival of the Pacific’s unique biodiversity and the integrity of its diminishing watersheds and cultures. Even alternate hydro-power options are declining as once perennial rivers cease flowing for many months. Action must be taken now to transfer this technology across or, better still, allow Pacific Islanders to better manage their own natural resources.

The choice is to remain a bio-fool or lunge into bio-fuels and help save this planet for future generations.

However, a new wave of energy saviors and energy investors are now needed, and urgently so. The Pacific needs some cost-effective alternate energy sources and alternate income sources, but where are these technologies in the Pacific today? Some Pacific countries are already rationing their energy supplies, many Pacific families have already reduced their energy demands, and now our standard of living can all but fall as we resort to a more subsistent existence compounded by irreversible climate change impacts (i.e. extinction of species being one).

There is a plethora of alternate technologies in the South Pacific, and yet these technologies are available worldwide, well so it is presumed. Samoa is poised to lead the way as it continues its fight against climate change, using both adaptation and mitigation technologies and methodologies.

Samoa and Fiji, for example, have sufficient fertile lands to grow bio-fuels, albeit just coconuts for now. But alternate and possibly more suitable biofuel crops (e.g. palm oil, Arundo donax [giant reed] and Jatropha curcas) already exist in the Pacific. And that is why it is so critical to integrate our emerging lifestyles into a low carbon economy with a stronger emphasis on biofuels. But how do we do this if we are the bio-fools that we are?

To conclude, today’s tourist brochures and websites for the South Pacific have as yet not dispelled this myth of a magical paradise full of pristine ecosystems and laced with happy villagers living an idyllic energetic lifestyle. Not one South Pacific ecosystem has escaped global climate change impacts, pollution is now global, mostly atmospheric and oceanic in origin. But, just imagine holidaying in a South Pacific ‘carbon-neutral holiday destination’, off-setting your carbon footprints with renewable energy technologies at your resort, visiting bio-fuel energy plantations that are producing more than just energy, and no longer being the bio-fool you thought you were.

Tourists today would welcome this opportunity to witness firsthand how Pacific Islanders are having to adapt. But, it will take a certain amount of money, and surprisingly, Samoa may soon have all the money it needs to make this transition thanks to the Clean Energy Fund, numerous Climate Change Funds and possible Clean Development Mechanisms that may further assist Samoa and other Pacific Island Countries.

With your help, we can energize the Pacific, saving our unique biodiversity and even saving the lives of Pacific Islanders. It is now time to prepare for a carbon-constrained economy within Samoa, taking it regionally and even globally, but with you bio-fools, it ain’t going to be easy.