Elite Traveler September-October 2016

INFLUENCE CONSERVATION COLUMN

elite traveler SEPT/OCT 2016 58

Henry Tuakeu Puna on the Cook Islands Saving the world’s oceans and wildlife is a priority for Henry Tuakeu Puna, PrimeMinister of the Cook Islands. But, as he explains, there needs to be a global effort for this to ever be achieved

calling it Marae Moana, which means sacred ocean. With assistance from international non-profit organizations, we are in the process of zoning the MPA, checking regulations across a swath of sea twice the size of California. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called Marae Moana a landmark decision, an important example to other oceanic nations. In September I’ll be in Honolulu for the IUCN World Conservation Congress – a conference convened every four years to unite international leaders, businesspeople and advocates in a discussion about healing the planet. Joining me from the Cook Islands are staff from the local non-profit Te Ipukarea Society and some of our traditional voyagers, who navigate canoes over thousands of miles using not a compass, but just the stars. We are attending the conference to be part of a necessary global conversation. As Pacific Islanders, our foremost environmental concerns are ocean degradation and climate change, and these are issues we look forward to discussing at the Congress with others from all over the world. My hope is for us all to start seeing the ocean not as an open space with pockets of protected areas, but as a protected space with pockets of commercial activity. My hope is that we return to treating the land, sea and sky as sacred. These targets are too big for the 12,000 people living in our tiny island country to achieve, so humbly I ask you to join me in supporting organizations around the world that are working toward environmental justice. The people of my islands want to be able to invite you to our pristine paradise for many generations to come, to share with you and your children our seafood, our flowers, our mountains and our lagoons. But we can’t do that without your help. We hope to greet you with a warm kia orana in paradise soon.

Kia orana . We use this term in the Cook Islands as a greeting, translated literally it is a wish for a long and healthy life. Our hello reflects our ethos, our view of the world, born of our ancestors who valued the health of people and the planet above all else. Respect for the environment has always been at the center of our culture. For us, conservation is not a trendy buzzword or a facet of corporate social responsibility; it is our history and future. We have to care about protecting our oceans because we depend on them. Most of our islands lack a supermarket. Some island get a delivery from a cargo ship twice a year. We have to care about waste management because there is just one landfill in our country. We have to care about soil contamination because we are not separated from our food source. We are connected, spiritually and culturally, to the space we inhabit. By law we cannot sell our land and by nature we cannot exist without our oceans. It is our duty to take care of

both, just as our ancestors did, so we might raise our families here too. All of our villages still honor the ancient ra’ui – the practice of limiting or restricting access to an area for as long as it takes natural processes to restore the balance. Setting and lifting a ra’ui remains the prerogative of all our chiefs. We still plant according to the ancient lunar calendar, rotating crops seasonally to maintain the health of our soil. Traditional knowledge was enough for our ancestors, but we live in a different world now. Our challenges are new – melting ice caps, acidifying oceans and disappearing fish – and so we must learn to adapt in new ways. This is a challenge we in the Cook Islands are taking on. So far, with help from the New Zealand government, we have eliminated the need for fossil fuels on six of our 11 inhabited islands. We have a government department dedicated solely to climate change adaptation. We have also declared more than half our territory – upwards of 411,000 square miles – a marine-protected area (MPA); we’re

“My hope is for us all to start seeing the ocean not as an open space withpockets of protected areas, but as a protected space with pockets of commercial activity”

Henry Tuakeu Puna is the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands