Demographic Issues

Ministerial Conference on

Environment and Development

in Asia and the Pacific 2000

Kitakyushu, Japan 31 August - 5 September 2000

Demographic Issues

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (February 9, 1999 - PACNEWS)---The head of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Nafis Sadik, says the organization has achieved major changes and development in population issues such as reproductive and sexual health and family planning in the Pacific. She says a Fiji-based team conducts and provide programs to Pacific Islanders on health and sex education as well as reproductive advice and education and the delivery of health services. These programs also provide prevention methods as well as information about HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in collaboration with the UNAIDS office in Fiji, under the direction and supervision of the World Health Organization.

She says Pacific programs are becoming costlier compared to services in other regions, due to transportation and communication links, as some of the islands are very difficult to access.

UNAIDS Executive Director, Peter Piot, says the organization is implementing a number of activities with multilateral organizations and member states organizations in the Pacific. Japan has also allocated a special fund to work with UNAIDS and non-government organizations as well as governments.

The fastest growing cities in the region are in the countries with the highest population growth. For example, in the Marshall Islands, the annual urban growth is 8.2%, in American Samoa 8.2%, in Vanuatu 7.3%, in the Solomon Islands 6.2%, the Northern Mariana Islands 5.6% and in PNG 4.2%.

Throughout the region, people are migrating from the outer islands to the provincial or national seats of government, and from rural areas to the urban centres. Inadequate school, medical and other facilities on outer islands encourage parents to migrate to the national or provincial capital in order to provide their children with a better start in life.

Urbanisation is proceeding faster than urban housing facilities and services. In crowded shanty-towns surrounding many Pacific urban centres, the migrants are exposed to high rates of crime, homelessness, and suicide.

Tensions are compounded by a lack of public services, poor infrastructure, and high costs of living, with low wages and high unemployment rates. Potable water is scarce, toilets few, solid waste disposal limited and hence intestinal diseases, and ear and eye infections, and insect borne diseases such as Dengue Fever prevalent. At the same time medical and dental services are limited and hospitals understaffed and under-equipped.

Introduction

Population growth and urbanization are major issues for the Pacific island countries. Unless the problem of population growth can be resolved, the other sustainable development and environmental issues will be constantly fighting a loosing battle.

Population pressures vary dramatically between different island groups. In the Polynesian and Micronesian countries emigration is an important population safety valve. Although these countries have high fertility rates, the steady stream of people moving to the Pacific rim countries keeps the resident population growth reasonably low. For example, the Tongan population increased by only 0.3% per annum over the last twenty years but the fertility rate is 4.2 births per woman. In the Cook Islands, each woman had an average of 3.3 children but emigration (mostly to New Zealand) kept the population growth at below 0.4% per annum. The population of Kiribati grew at only 1.4% despite a fertility rate of 4.5 children per woman. The population of Tokelau actually decreased -0.9% despite a fertility rate of 5.7 children per woman. Niue’s population decreased -1.3% with a fertility rate of 3.5. There are, in fact, more people from Niue, Toikelau and the Cook Islands living in New Zealand than on their home islands. American Samoa’s resident population is estimated to be only one third of all the people born there.

On other islands, populations have soared (4.2% in the Marshall Islands, 5.6% in the Northern Mariana Islands, 2.9% in Naru, 2.6% in Palau). Melanesian people choose not to emigrate and populations are rapidly increasing on their islands (3.4% in the Solomon Islands, 2.8% in Vanuatu, 2.6% in New Caledonia, and 2.3% in PNG. Fiji’s population growth remained low primarily because of emigration of large numbers of Fiji’s Indian population following the racially inspired coup of 1987. (Population figures from SPC 1997)

Where islanders have the ability to emigrate easily, large families are an economic and social advantage. The brightest students inevitably leave the islands to obtain an education in Australia, New Zealand or the United States. French youth go to France for continuing education. Only a very small proportion of those who leave the islands return on a permanent basis. In developed countries, the young people find employment and send funds back to their families. These remittances comprise a major portion of foreign exchange income and are especially valuable on islands where there are few local employment opportunities. There are, in fact, few employment opportunities in Pacific islands beyond the major urban centres. For example, of the 54 inhabited islands of Tonga, only two islands have any meaningful level of local employment, Tongatapu and Vava’u.

Suva, Nadi, and Lautoka (Fiji), Port Moresby and Lae (PNG), Port Vila (Vanuatu), Honiara (Solomon Islands), Noumea (New Caledonia) and Nukualofa (Tonga) now have populations of unemployed people living in poverty in squatter housing. Squatter housing is often on marginal land. In Nukualofa, for example, there has been substantial new housing development and squatter sites in prior mangrove swamps. The people in these areas are vulnerable to storm flooding, insect borne diseases, and sanitation problems.

People living on atolls, and other low-lying coral islands, are perhaps the most vulnerable in the Pacific. They have very small, poorly producing agricultural land. This is compensated for, in part, by marine resources, but the communities are especially vulnerable to storm surge, drought, and pollution of water supplies. The 28,000 people that live on Tarawa, the Capital of Kiribati, depend on a thin layer of fresh water that floats on top of sea water in the sandy soil just two meters below the highest land on the island. The water on most of the inhabited islands has been severely polluted from sewage or from increased salinization of the water supply. Coastal erosion, caused by removal of sand from lagoon and reef areas for construction, has become a serious problem. Elevated sea levels from global warming are expected to accelerate both of these environmental problems, perhaps making the island uninhabitable.

Urbanization and associated environmental issues are difficult to resolve in Pacific urban centres because of:

· high population pressures on small and low land masses

· vulnerability of coastal urban areas to sea level rise

· economic and cultural dependence on the natural environment

· prevalence of natural disasters

· vulnerability of freshwater lens on atolls to environmental impacts.

· lack of urban planning and management.

· a tendency of governments to keep assistance and development investments on the capital islands and neglect rural development opportunities.

In addition, health facilities, sewage, and potable water supplies can be lacking in rural areas of the Pacific islands and many families living in the peri-urban environments in the Pacific islands are not substantially worse off than those living in some rural areas. In addition, urban dwellers often manage to find some work (or excitement) to offset the lack of amenities.

In most cases the people living in the shanty towns are there voluntarily and can (and do) retreat to their rural communities if there are serious (perceived) problems. Shanty-town residents often obtain food and even funds from rural relatives. The extended family concept tends to soften the impact of peri-urban living.

Action for demographic change

Actions required to mitigate urbanisation include:

· Improved rural health and education services and economic opportunities.

· Informing and involving people at the grassroots level, particularly local NGOs and villagers, in decisions affecting the allocation and management of local resources;

· Recognising and respecting the key role of traditional practices, cultures and the subsistence economy in many Pacific Island countries; and

· Meeting the challenge of distance, isolation, dispersion and national budget constraints in designing and implementing environmentally sound and sustainable development programmes in the region.

The governments and people of Pacific island communities have taken major initiatives in recent years to begin to articulate their urban development needs and priorities. Fiji is addressing a need to reduce planning and infrastructure standards through its Public Housing sector; Kiribati is working on an urban management plan for South Tarawa; the Marshall Islands is approaching a Majuro water supply and sanitation project and Vanuatu is developing an urban growth management strategy in the areas of water supply, environmental sanitation, environmental health and urban expansion.

Actions for reducing population growth in the Pacific Islands

The Programme of Action (PoA) of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) of 1994 is widely acclaimed as a landmark multi-country agreement, signifying the dawn of a new era in how the world community views the interface between population and development. The overriding objective of the Cairo PoA is to raise the quality of life and individual well-being, and to promote human development by recognizing the complexity of interrelationships between population and development policies and programmes. The ambitious aim is to achieve poverty eradication, sustained economic growth in the context of sustainable development, wider access to education, especially for girls, gender equity and equality, the reduction of infant, child and maternal mortality, the provision of universal access to reproductive health services, including family planning and sexual health, sustainable patterns of consumption and production, food security, human resources development and the guarantee of all human rights, including the right to development as a universal and inalienable right and an integral part of fundamental human rights (UN, 1994 and UN, 1999).

The PoA recognises that the goal of empowering women to give them greater autonomy and to improve their political, social, economic and health status is inheritantly important and is a prerequisite for national sustainable development. The right to education, especially of women and the girl child, must be promoted to meet basic human needs. In particular, the PoA calls for the elimination of all practices that discriminate against women and affirms that advancing gender equality and equity and the empowerment of women, and the limitation of all forms of violence against women, are the cornerstones of all population and development-related programmes. The ability of women to control their own fertility is an important and strategic human right and is highlighted throughout the PoA.

The PoA affirms that reproductive rights embrace certain human rights which rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health.

The implementation of the PoA is closely related to other major UN conferences held in the 1990s, especially the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 and its Platform for Action. Progress in implementing the PoA should be supportive of and consistent with the integrated follow-up to all major UN conferences and summits.

Pacific POPIN

United Nations Population Information Network (Popin)

UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)

Participating countries : Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Western Samoa, SPC, UNFPA, USP

Pacific POPIN, the first population network of its kind in the South Pacific, was established in 1991 through the Library of the University of the South Pacific (USP). Pacific Governments meeting at the High-level Ministerial Meeting on Population and Sustainable Development in Port Vila in 1993 formally recognized it as a subregional network in Asia-Pacific POPIN.

Pacific POPIN comprises Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Samoa, with participating institutions being the South Pacific Commission and the University of the South Pacific. The subregional centre is based in the Pacific Information Centre of the USP Library, which is responsible for coordinating the activities of Pacific POPIN.

The national centres in this subregional network are based mainly in the statistical offices of the respective national Governments. In two countries, they are based in the Government's planning department.

The long-term and immediate objectives of Pacific POPIN are as follows:

v to raise awareness of the importance of population information directed mainly at decision- and policy-makers, politicians and planners; and

v to provide access to timely and accurate population information to a broad cross-section of the community, including the media, health workers, teachers, researchers, students, academics and consultants.

The immediate objectives of the subregional POPIN centre are:

v to coordinate among the national POPIN centres in each country;

v to encourage and promote the use of population information for the integration of population variables and issues into national development planning;

v to identify gaps in population information and find ways and means to close these gaps; and

v to coordinate and collaborate with Asia-Pacific POPIN, global POPIN, NGOs as well as regional and international organizations.

The functions of the Centre are to:

v identify, collect, organize and disseminate a core body of population information and data from national POPIN centres and other regional information producers;

v liaise with and act as a central link with population information users and producers on the collection and dissemination of population information;

v improve the production, repackaging and dissemination of population information products and services to targeted groups of users;

v provide national POPIN centres with support in training and advisory services; monitoring and reviewing activities at the national level; establishing standards; carry out TCDC (technical cooperation among developing countries) activities; undertake cooperative activities in acquisitions, interlibrary loans, document delivery etc.; improve communication skills such as report writing and presentation skills, library and information skills and the repackaging of information;

v liaise with other population development information personnel, experts etc., within the region;

v seek financial and human resources for the establishment and maintenance of the national and regional POPIN centres;

v improve the flow of population information through the production of publications such as directories, bibliographies and current awareness services from a centralized facility; and

v liaise with other regional organizations involved in population information activities.

As a result of previous training, Pacific POPIN has a core of trained personnel in CDS/ISIS, which is the standard software for Pacific POPIN work, primarily in the production of various directories.

The Centre makes available to users the POPLINE database on CD-ROM, and PASIFIKA, the on-line database of the Library of the University of the South Pacific. Requests for searches from these two databases are accepted by fax, airmail and satellite through USPNET, the University's satellite network. "E-mail" communication is available within the USP Network and is therefore a facility available to Pacific POPIN members.

http://www.undp.org/popin/regional/asiapac/pacific/pacpopin.htm

Ministerial Conference on

Environment and Development

Action for demographic change

Last updated: May 18, 2000.