SAMOA BIODIVERSITY ASSESSMENT NEEDS
PACNEWS JUL 28, 2000
APIA(Pacnews): One of Samoa's representatives at a workshop on
Climate Change for Small Island States currently underway in Apia
says, they are facing many challenges and constraints in dealing
with issues relating to biodiversity conservation.
Private consultant Tepa Suaesi says at the systems level, there
is a lack of financial and administrative support for the
coordination among stakeholders.
"And a lot of aspects need clarification of jurisdictions of
regulation and enforcement and the development of new legislative
and administrative measures to address new but priority areas,"
Mr Suaesi said.
He also highlighted the need for trained technical expertise in
specific areas of biodiversity monitoring and management, saying
the need to increase the size of staff may conflict with the
government's push for downsizing public service workforce.
Mr Suaesi presented a paper on Samoa's assessment needs in the
area of biodiversity conservation at the 2nd Alliance of Small
Island States (AOSIS) workshop on Climate Change Negotiations,
Management and Strategy today.
About 100 delegates from the Pacific, Indian Ocean and the
Caribbean are in the Samoan capital of Apia for the two-week
workshop.
Today's discussions focussed on capacity development needs among
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with the intention of
developing a framework for SIDS in the Capacity Development
Initiative (CDI).
Mr Suaesi also highlighted a lack of knowledge and practice of
key principles such as accountability, clear guidelines and
democratic decision making for effective developments at village
levels.
On an institutional level, he said policies on biodiversity
conservation are in drafting format and yet to be screened for
possible overlaps and conflicting objectives.
Mr Suaesi also said generally there is a lack of technical staff
in many key government agencies.
"Due to budgetary constraints and unattractive incentives and the
difficulty of retaining well-trained staffs from leaving for
other more attractive employment opportunities in the private
sector."
Mr Suaesi has suggested increasing financial and human resources
support for multi-sectoral consultative processes for the
development of a common broad understanding of issues.
He sees the need to establish appropriate administrative or
policy measures in the area of biodiversity conservation and
other related development areas.
Mr Suaesi adds that there is a need to increase finance and
human resource support for multi-sectoral public awareness
raising and training activities.
More finances and human resources, he says, are required to
improve systems of managing, accessing, updating and sharing
available and new substantial information on the status of
Samoa's biological diversity on a multi-sectoral approach.
Mr Suaesi says his assessment has shown that in order for Samoa
to significantly advance the fulfilment of it's obligations to
the Convention on Biological Diversity, it needs an outlay of
financial and human resources commitments, that far exceeds
current experience.
"However in order to be in line with the current spirit of the
Global Environment Facility (GEF) - United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) approach to capacity development, it's important
for capacity development support to advance in consonant with its
peoples and communities self-generated efforts at the three
levels of capacity development -individual, institution and
systemic."
SOURCE: Pacnews
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