Donovan Storey

Kiribati: an environmental ‘perfect storm’

Abstract Recent environmental discourses and headlines on small island developing states (SIDS) have heralded the grave and impending threats of global warming and associated sea-level rise. These are undoubtedly significant challenges for SIDS, including atoll nations such as Kiribati. Nevertheless, securing small island state futures also requires a renewed commitment to addressing the obvious and immediate threats of urbanisation, pollution and sanitation. Looking at pressures of development on freshwater, this article argues that the future survival of small island states and their societies also greatly depends on managing the impacts of development. Approaches which can concurrently strengthen the resilience of communities and their ecosystems will result in mutual benefits for both sustainable development and climate change adaptation.

The poverty consensus: some limitations of the ‘popular agenda’

The New Poverty Agenda is said to represent a break with the past and to offer a rationale for aid that is built on partnerships towards a common and realizable goal - the elimination of poverty. However, recent critiques have highlighted problems with the practice of poverty policy, and particularly limitations identified from its association with global actors which stand accused of contributing to poverty. For some, there is no new agenda; a poverty focus merely represents a different path to the same ends (i.e., political reform and economic adjustment). This paper investigates the implications for smaller donors, such as Australia and New Zealand, of adopting poverty policy as defined by the World Bank and others. It argues that certain contexts, such as the Pacific, demonstrate the weaknesses of an all-encompassing policy that remains muddled and contradictory. In terms of effective partnerships, much more could be gained by first seeking to learn more about the nature of poverty in the immediate region and its underlying causes.

Dilemmas of development in Oceania: the political economy of the Tongan agro-export sector

This article critically engages with the recent diffusion of the orthodox development model in Oceania and highlights some evolving dilemmas. In particular, it explores the social, economic and ecological tensions arising from economic reforms that are exacerbating the fragility of already vulnerable nation-states and communities. In order to illustrate its arguments, a case study of the impacts of agro-export growth in Tonga is presented. Attention is drawn to the socially inequitable and ecologically unsustainable outcomes of rapid growth in this sector. In analyzing the political economy of the squash pumpkin sector, the authors point to the important role that culture plays in mediating and conditioning development outcomes. Reflecting on the Tongan case, it is argued that to better understand the implications of orthodox developmental reform in the region, research must seek to more explicitly incorporate distributional and ethical analysis.

Beyond the beach : Balancing environmental and socio-cultural sustainability in Boracay, the Philippines

Abstract Though considered the ‘number one beach’ of the Philippines, Boracay has been through periods where it has been considered as an example of environmentally and socially unsustainable development. In response there have been a number of programmes since the late 1990s aiming to improve Boracays sustainability. In these, significant attention has been given to the aesthetic landscape of tourisms consumption, most especially ‘the beach’ and associated water quality. This paper further examines the dynamic growth of coastal tourism development and sustainability practices in Boracay, inclusive of broader socio-economic and cultural change and impact. The intent is to highlight those aspects of contemporary resort growth that need greater attention by policy makers and planners. While a number of interventions have led to improvement of the ‘visual’ environment, the concept of environmental sustainability needs to be expanded beyond visual cleanliness and more effort is still required on social and cultural sustainability.

Development implications of hazardous waste in urban environments: A problem that cannot be buried

Although the problem of hazardous waste has always been with us, relatively little is known about its effects on human health and the environment in many localities throughout the world. Nevertheless, as industrial economies and mass production systems emerge in the global periphery, hazardous waste has become an increasingly serious ecological, social, economic and political problem. As attempts to bury toxic waste have clear limitations, the need to educate the public, industry, and government is apparent. With the use of practical examples from African cities, this paper attempts to further awareness about the implications of hazardous waste in urban environments. We argue that adverse impacts of hazardous waste threaten to disrupt socioeconomic development strategies, and thus derail sustainable development initiatives.

Environmental management in the absence of participation: a case study of the Maldives

This paper explores environmental assessment and management practices in the Maldives with a focus on the role of the public in environmental decision-making. As one of the worlds most vulnerable states, the Maldives is undergoing rapid political, economic and environmental transformation. Yet environmental impact assessments (EIAs), and environmental policy in general, take place within a framework of limited democratic representation and participation. Thus environmental assessment is reinforcing unsustainable practices through curbing debate and information on the sources and consequences of environmental threats. While historic democratic elections in 2008 opened the door for political and social change, tensions remain between state desire for rapid economic growth, and environmental vulnerability and democracy.

Networks of waste: Informal economic systems and sustainability in Bali, Indonesia

This article examines solid waste management in Badung Regency, Bali. It argues that current conventional centralised and decentralised solid waste management approaches are not proving effective and fail to cater to the needs of the majority of the population, particularly poorer communities. In contrast, it was found that informal waste networks achieved higher standards of economic efficiency, service coverage and resource recovery, contributing both to environmental protection and livelihoods. Much can be learned by planners in developing nations from these ‘networks of waste’, and in building upon the economic and environmental principles and behaviour around which informal waste networks function.

Planning for social inclusion in a multicultural urban South East Queensland

Abstract South East Queensland is projected to grow by an estimated 1.3 million people over the next 20 years. To date, much of the debate on how best to respond to this unprecedented rate of growth has focused attention on the need to provide better infrastructure, more housing and to sustain and protect ecosystems and habitats. Less attention has been paid to the human dimensions of growth, and how the needs of an increasingly diverse population are to be met – including planning for a more multicultural urban future. Utilising a social inclusion framework this article explores the challenges for planning where nearly half of South East Queenslands growth results from overseas migration. In providing a case study of Moorooka, Brisbane, we argue that the sustainability and liveability of a more urban South East Queensland depends greatly on the creation of a socially inclusive and progressive environment. This will inevitably involve renewing the very practices of planning itself.

Review of: Journeys towards Progress: essays of a geographer on development and change in Oceania By Ray Watters

Ray Watters’ Journeys towards Progress provides both a professional reassessment and personal reflection drawing on work spanning five decades of research in Oceania. In any such endeavour the parts are likely to be stronger than the whole, butWatters provides a contextualisation and a selfcritical perspective that should encourage readers to see this work as being more rewarding than a collection of essays. This is a valuable collection, though at times weakened in the awkward layering of revisionist perspectives which do not always sit well with earlier work. But, as a contribution to Pacific scholarship, this is a book that deserves to be read and its shifting viewpoints reflected upon. Watters is best known for his celebrated study of village life in Koro: economic development and social change in Fiji (1969) and his more contentious but ultimately valuable MIRAB thesis on Pacific microstates. Both receive adequate attention here, but equally Watters’ work in Kiribati, New Britain and Vanuatu is covered across several chapters. In introductory and concluding chapters, Watters critically and very personally reflects on the shaping of his intellectual and personal journey, and its ultimate contribution to Pacific studies. As the reader will discover, it is not easy and perhaps not that useful to assess Watters’ shifting judgements narrowly over five decades of great change. The reward is perhaps greater in assessing the longevity (or otherwise) of the many conclusions drawn in each of the chapters. The chapters reach across scale, from village level studies of the 1950s and 1960s to broader questions of political economy, international trade and relations of the early 21st century. It is perhaps the earlier work which stands out here for its thoroughness, critical enquiry and enduring value. Less impressive are the summaries from rural development consultancies in West New Britain which provide a litany of challenges and recommendations typical of such tasks, in a style not out of place in 2009. Watters entered into Pacific studies in a period which he describes as enlightened ignorance, when a prevailing modernist view dominated the social sciences. This not only shaped emerging development theory and policy but also his own professional views, though they were clearly more attuned to indigenous epistemologies than many of his contemporaries. Watters’ upbringing in a small, isolated and somewhat naive rural New Zealand also shaped an early approach bent on discovery, understanding and fascination with the outside world, not limited to Oceania. In completing a PhD at the London School of Economics on mid-19th century Samoa, Watters must have been somewhat of an oddity, but it also gave him the opportunity to soak up the late colonial debates of the period, especially on leadership. Much of his work in the region reflects the significance Watters’ attributed to post-colonial leadership, though a clear frustration and disappointment emerges in latter chapters. Watters work is also remarkable for its interdisciplinarity. Driven by a desire to understand, and by the dynamic environment provided in the emerging and diverse geography department at the Victoria University of Wellington at the time, Watters himself reflects that: ‘In my role as geographer, I have become increasingly aware that geography as it is taught and studied today must by necessity contain a strong anthropological, sociological and economic component as well as its traditional environmental and physical perspectives’ (p. 35). Journeys towards Progress is fundamentally a story of change and adaptation, and the evident and forthcoming pressures facing conservative rural societies and modes of production. While primarily a rural geographer, Watters’ passion for anthropology emerges in his earlier studies of rural society. His work reflects both a faith in rural knowledge and systems but an equal concern for the failure to adapt to the winds of change. Tensions are always evident. In the chapters on Nalotawa and Sorolevu, Fiji (adapted from Koro), villagers strive to increase yields, maintain custom and develop new technologies, but equally yearn for better transport links to markets, schools and growing urban areas. In part, Watters embodies the ‘uncertainties and anxieties’ (p. 125) of the world he is describing. At times tradition is heralded as honourable, timeless and at the heart of the