It is an issue that we cannot afford to ignore...but it has been an issue all along...since 1980's. My friend, Cynthia, told me that back in 1970's, South Padre Island...it was desolute beach, but very stunning and beautiful place to be.....but now, it is now "littered" (yes, littered) with resorts established along the beach to bring the tourists and vacationers to the beach....pushing the wildlife out of its way of life....trashing the environment without any regards....Well, not everyone does that, but it throws the delicate balance of ecosystem into chaos if majority of people do not respect the environment. I know it firsthand when I go scuba diving and was floored to see how bad shape the coral reef was....cuz of stuff we put into the water that destroy the nutrients that the coral reef needs...and not only coral reef needs, but the fish that lives among the coral reef.....Coral reef and fish depends on each other to survive. *sigh* Enough of ranting it on but it is something that we need to think about..that's if we are doing some thinking AND walking, not just thinking and talking.
Garbage Threatening Beauty of 'Paradise' Islands
By HANS GREIMEL, AP
Klaus Toepfer of the United Nations warned about a massive buildup of solid waste in popular tourist destinations.
JEJU, South Korea (March 30) - Island "paradise" countries are increasingly threatened by piles of garbage and sewage they don't have the money or space to dispose of, the United Nations warned Tuesday at a global environment summit.
The new trend is a health and economic hazard and linked to exploding tourism in places like the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, the United Nations said in a report.
Garbage now rates among rising sea levels, overfishing and water shortages as a top danger to these small countries, and may be turning off tourists, the United Nations said.
The findings were released as environment ministers from around the globe gathered for the second day of a U.N. Environment Program summit dealing with water and sanitation. The summit ends Wednesday.
"Small islands across the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific are some of the most vulnerable nations on Earth," UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer said. "Handling solid wastes from industry, households and tourism is emerging as another issue with which they need advice and help."
Developing small island countries are burdened by an influx of tourism, but often lack the landfill space, expensive incinerators or treatment plants to deal with garbage and human waste.
Since the early 1990s, the level of plastic waste on small islands has increased fivefold, according to the UNEP study. In the Caribbean, about 90 percent of sewage is discharged untreated into surrounding seas; in the Pacific, about 98 percent.
Worldwide, about one in 20 people who go swimming in the oceans get sick because of such discharge, said Veerle Vandeweed, chief coordinator of the study.
Ironically, most of the environmental damage from tourism comes during the construction of resorts, not their operation, because of decisions to build too close to fragile coastlines and industrial waste, Vandeweed said. In the Caribbean alone, the number of tourists rose 19 percent to 17.1 million a year from 1993 to 1997.
The rapid development could backfire on the islands, if their allure as a tourist destination is spoiled by environmental degradation, UNEP warned.
The shoreline of the Pacific isle of Nauru, for example, appears blue-green in aerial photos, not from coral reefs, but from mounds of discarded beer cans, UNEP said.
The piled-up trash also supports vermin such as rats, which carry such diseases as plague, scabies and other tropical sicknesses.
Economically, polluted coastal waters create oxygen-starved dead zones devoid of fish that undermine traditional island fishing industries.
The Alliance of Small Island States, a group of 45 island nations, is working with aid agencies, private industry and other governments to win access to better waste disposal technology and funding, chairman Jagdish Koonjul said.
Sanitation problems are exacerbated on the islands because of the lack of fresh water. Rising ocean levels worldwide, triggered in part by global warming, have meant that freshwater wells are increasingly tainted with seawater, Koonjul said.
Globally about 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, while another 2.4 billion lacked access to basic sanitation, UNEP said. Nearly 5,000 children die every day from diseases caused by a lack of water.
The discussions in Jeju, a South Korean resort island, will form a basis for talks next month in New York with the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development
That meeting will assess progress toward the United Nation's target of halving the number of people with no access to safe drinking water or basic sanitation by 2015.
The current forum will try to generate a Jeju Initiative that will identify concrete measures to be taken to reach those goals, UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall said.
Supplying safe water is increasingly difficult because the world population is growing so fast, by about 77 million people a year, UNEP says.
03/30/04 14:10 EST
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