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Press Release: International Waters Project

Training local facilitators has immediate impact in Fiji

7/27/2004

National Coordinator, Sandeep Singh, says the Fiji International Waters Project, is providing local communities with skills to improve the management of their own resources. She says a recent programme to train local facilitators has had a significant impact in raising awareness and empowering people to address their environmental concerns.

“We have been helping local facilitators from Vunisinu, and neighbouring villages from Rewa Province in Viti Levu, to work together with their communities to identify the “root causes” of environmental problems and find low-cost solutions that the community members can implement themselves,” she says.

“These communities have already started working towards introducing some practical, achievable solutions. Vunisinu has restructured its environmental sub-committee and put teams of facilitators in charge of management of waste, piggeries, and fisheries. Facilitators are looking for ways to transport their waste to the municipal landfill so that they no longer dump their rubbish in the villages. They also now plan to move their piggeries away from the river. All this is a direct result of understanding the effect of the rubbish dump and the piggeries on their freshwater and coastal resources,” she says.

Sandeep says Vusninu was chosen in June 2003 after a rigorous awareness campaign resulted in more than 400 villages vying to be selected as the project site. “Vunisinu was selected because its environmental concerns fall directly within IWP’s focal areas of waste reduction, protection of freshwater resources, and sustainable coastal fisheries,” she says.

However Sandeep says because Vunisinu, and the neighbouring village of Nalase, are downstream villages, some problems, such as river siltation and polluted mangroves, are not necessarily of their own creation. “The Vunisinu and Nalase communities now want to work together with upstream communities to address the root causes of these environmental concerns. Vunisinu has become very engaged with the process and wants to provide a model for how Fijian communities can work together to protect their environment and coastal resources at a national level,” she says.

Sandeep says the next step for the project is to train local facilitators on how to collect scientific and socio-economic baseline data. This important information will provide the community with greater guidance on how to implement its long-term environmental management plans.

Contact Name	Sandeep Singh
e-mail	iwpfj@connect.com.fj
Phone	(679) 3311699
Fax	(679) 3312879

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