Annex

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Tonga: environmental awareness programmes ¹

In Tonga, the radio is the most popular communication and education medium as it reaches all the in-habitant islands of the Kingdom. This is the situation throughout the PICs. Newspapers and television, so important elsewhere in the world, have far less import for most of the population of the Pacific Islands. Full advantage has not been taken of this the most powerful communication medium in creating environmental awareness through-out the sub-region.

Tonga, more so than most PICs, makes extensive use of workshops, conferences, village meetings or specific group meeting are also widely used. Some specific events that promote environmental awareness in Tonga include:

Events	Purpose/feature
National Environmental Awareness Week	features various activities to promote local actions and to draw local awareness to a specific issue in the environment
Clean-up the World Day	all activities are targeted to draw attention to the prob-lem of solid waste and litter in Tonga
Tourism Week	Stresses the vital contribution of the environment to the tourism sector
Villages Inspection Competition	promote cleanliness, tree planting (fruit trees, medicinal trees, culturally important trees and ornamental trees)
Youth Week	features environmental themes
World Food Day	feature the linkages between a healthy/vivacious environment, abundant of healthy food and a healthy population
Non-smoking week and the AIDS awareness week	promote healthy behaviour and living

¹(Synthesis paper on institutional arrangements and mechanisms in Pacific islands p. 143, para 496, unpublished)