BRIEFS August 19, 2014 ANNOUNCEMENT: Invitation To Bid For Kanifay Municipal Building Renovation Project COLONIA, Yap (OPB) — The Government of Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia, will receive sealed bid proposals at the Office of Planning & Budget (OPB) on September 12, 2014 at 1:30 PM, local time for the furnishing of all labor, materials and tools necessary to complete the project under the contract entitled Kanifay Municipal Building Renovation Project. The project scope consist of renovation of an existing building with dimensions of 20 x 50. It also includes an outside toilet facility with a concrete septic tank. The project is located at Neff Village in Kanifay Municipality. All proposals shall be placed in an opaque envelope addressed to: The Director Office of Planning & Budget Yap State Government, Federated States of Micronesia P.O. Box 471, Colonia, Yap 96943 ... and be labeled proposal for Kanifay Municipal Building Renovation Project and shall incorporate the name and address of the company on the outside of the envelope. A pre-bid conference to answer any questions will be held on September 5, 2014 at 1:30 PM at the Office of Planning & Budget. Attendance is highly recommended. Copies of the project documents may be obtained only from the Director, Yap State Office of Planning & Budget. CNMI Governor Asks Obama Not To Expand Pacific Marine Monument SAIPAN, CNMI (Saipan Tribune/PIR, Aug. 20, 2014) — Gov. Eloy S. Inos asked President Barack Obama not to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument which the governor believes is the first step in expanding other marine national monuments in the western Pacific, while at the same time lamenting that most of the promises made leading to the creation of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument in 2009 were broken and remain unfulfilled. The CNMI’s three northernmost islands of Maug, Uracas, and Asuncion are part of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument that the Bush White House designated in 2009. On behalf of the affected communities in the western Pacific who believe in the sustainable use of marine resources, I urge you to reconsider your proposal to expand the boundaries of the PRIMNM or any other marine monument, Inos said in an Aug. 15 letter to Obama, a copy of which was obtained by Saipan Tribune yesterday. Aug. 15 was the last day for comment submissions to the president’s proposal to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument seaward to the 200-nautical mile boundary of the exclusive economic zone. Inos said with great respect to congressional laws, the unilateral top-down approach in designating marine monuments via the Antiquities Act for conservation purposes is an affront to Pacific Island communities. We believe that wise conservation doesn’t necessarily have to be about preservation and establishing no-take marine protected areas, the governor added. Embracing the use of existing management regimes such as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, he said, will help ensure sustainable harvests. Rep. Anthony Benavente (Ind-Saipan), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said yesterday he supports the governor’s position, adding that his committee will be recommending full House adoption of Rep. Richard Seman’s (R-Saipan) joint resolution that basically asks Obama not to go ahead with his marine monument expansion plan. Benavente echoed Seman’s earlier sentiment that outgoing presidents always want legacies such as Bush’s ocean legacy that led to marine monument designations, and he said it is no different with Obama. While the Aug. 15 deadline for comment submission has passed, we would still be moving ahead with the recommendation to the full House to adopt the resolution, Benavente said in a phone interview. Benavente was referring to Seman’s House Joint Resolution 18-19, which asks Obama to withdraw his proposed marine monument expansion. Obama’s proposed expansion deals with the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument which is south and west of Hawaii, protecting areas around Kingman Reef, Palmyra Atoll, Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, and Wake Island. Like the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument was also established by President Bush in 2009. In his two-page letter, Inos said the Marianas archipelago is home of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument which he describes as a paper park that has been mostly neglected since it was designated in 2009. The former Administration was only able to gain local support for the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument after a series of promises were made at the last minute during December 2008. To date, most of those promises were broken and remain unfulfilled, Inos told the president. Fisheries, he said, are very important to the CNMI economy, especially due to its geography which puts it between three and four hours flying time from every East and Southeast Asian country. The governor said the CNMI has a history of supporting U.S. tuna fisheries, including pole-and-line fishing, purse seining and long lining. The continued loss of U.S. waters reduces the attractiveness to the CNMI of supporting these fisheries and industries. While other Pacific islands are actively developing their tuna fisheries with strong support from their governments, the U.S. appears to be more intent on arbitrarily closing commercial fishing ventures based on an East Coast conservation paradigm, Inos added. Inos also said that the president’s proposed expansion is of great concern not only to the CNMI but also to those he has talked to in Guam, Hawaii, and American Samoa. Noticeable impacts will likely be experienced by the Hawaii longline fleet, as well as the tuna cannery in American Samoa. Less obvious will be the continued gradual deterioration of Pacific Island culture and tradition as more waters in the western Pacific are taken out of sustainable use in the name of conservation, he said. The governor also said that although the western Pacific represents different island cultures, the common thread that binds them together is their island heritage, strong cultural association with the sea, respect for the environment, and the belief in the sustainable use of natural resources. I find it ironic that the primary purpose of Congress for passing the Antiquities Act was specifically to protect the culture and heritage of Native American Indians. Now, one hundred and eight years later, this very same law is being used to threaten the culture and heritage of native Pacific islanders, Inos said. He added that Pacific island communities are strong and proven advocates of conservation, and have an active and effective collaborative approach to conservation that is based on heritage and sustainable use of natural resources. Copies of the governor’s letter to Obama were also sent to Guam Gov. Eddie Calvo, American Samoa Gov. Lolo Letalu Matalasi Moliga, Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP), CNMI Senate President Ralph Torres (R-Saipan), CNMI House Speaker Joseph Deleon Guerrero (R-Saipan), Interior Secretary Sally Jewel, DLNR Secretary Arnold Palacios, and Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council executive director Kitty Simonds. The Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council, whose voting members include Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam and the CNMI, earlier said that expanding Pacific marine sanctuaries betrays U.S. fishermen. They said the plan would provide no added conservation benefit to marine resources, but will economically harm the area’s fishermen and those reliant on Pacific marine resources. Pacific fisheries chief sees unregulated longliners coming under island control SUVA, Fiji (Marianas Variety, Aug. 20, 2014) — The transformation in management of the purse seine tuna fishery in the Pacific will soon be expanded to include the over 3,000 largely unregulated longline vessels that catch tuna for global sashimi markets, said a regional fisheries official here in Suva, Monday. The Parties to the Nauru Agreement or PNA tuna management is “about control and securing rights over the fishery,” PNA CEO Dr. Transform Aqorau told a group of senior journalists from around the region at the opening of a seminar for media in Suva sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a Washington, D.C.-based conservation group, and PNA. “We have had sovereign rights (over our 200 mile exclusive economic zones), but mostly this was exercised on behalf of the distant water fishing nations,” Aqorau said. “These rights were not exercised for our people.” The PNA, a bloc of eight central and western Pacific nations, has implemented a vessel day scheme for the 290 purse seiners that limits fishing effort while increasing the price of access to lucrative fishing grounds that supply over half of the world’s skipjack tuna. The entire tuna fishery in the western Pacific was valued at $6 billion last year. Revenue flowing to the eight island members has increased four-fold since 2010, and is set to rise again in 2015 when the minimum fee for a fishing rises from $6,000 to $8,000 per day. Adam Baske, Pew’s manager of global tuna conservation, said the western Pacific is the world’s largest fishery, providing two-thirds of the world’s tuna. Baske said that while stocks of most tuna species are healthy, bigeye, a tuna prized in Japan’s sashimi market, is over-fished and urgently needs action to reduce catches. Heavy fishing by purse seiners and longliners over the past several years has caused bigeye tuna stocks to plummet below sustainable levels, prompting widespread calls for action to reduce catches. “The fact that stocks are in decline has given PNA a reason to take measures to shape the industry,” Aqorau said. Longliners target bigeye and yellowfin for global sashimi markets, while purse seiners catch mostly skipjack tuna used for canning. “PNA management is about empowerment of Pacific islanders,” Aqorau said. “Most fish is caught in our exclusive economic zones so it is only fair that Pacific islands should expect a fairer share of the value.” Despite a four-fold increase in revenue—from $60 million in 2010 to about $240 million last year—the money going to the eight member islands remains about 10 percent of the value of skipjack tuna caught in the region, said Aqorau. It took 10 years for PNA’s vessel day scheme for purse seiners to become fully operational, with huge and growing financial benefits to PNA member countries, he said. Looking to the future, Aqorau said the next step is to roll out a vessel day scheme for longliners to bring this side of the fishery under management control. Improved control of longliners is essential to reducing catches of bigeye tuna to rebuild the stock. “This is the next fishery to address,” he said of longliners, the majority of which fish on the high seas and, unlike purse seiners that mostly fish in PNA waters, do not fall under the jurisdiction of island countries. “There are thousands of boats and it is a more complicated fishery than purse seiners,” he said. The vessel day scheme won’t take care of all the problems but over a five-to-10 year period it will change the dynamics of the longline industry by bringing it under the management control of Pacific island nations, Aqorau said. “We want to control and secure rights with the longline industry, just as we have with purse seiners,” he said. “Establishment of a purse seiner vessel day scheme took 10 years. The results we’re seeing in 2014 are from what people started 10 years ago. Maybe 10 years from now, we’ll see better control of the longline industry.” Longline fleets of many distant water fishing nations—including Japan, South Korea and [China]—fish primarily on the high sees. Aqorau said three of the eight PNA nations have already agreed to move forward with a vessel day scheme for longliners. “We need five members for it to go into force,” he said, adding that he believes a majority of PNA members will agree to the scheme for longliners because “we must have a transfer of rights from flag states to coastal (island) nations.” SIDS Conference Venue To Become UN Property For 5 Days APIA, Samoa (Talamua/PIR, Aug. 18, 2014) — The lands and buildings at the Tuana’imato sports complex will become the property of the United Nations for five days as the venue of the Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) conference. A special ceremony will be held 30 August 2014 to officially hand over the complex to the United Nations by raising the Samoan flag as the host country and the UN flag. Once that is done, the UN will have control of the security and everything inside the conference venue. A similar ceremony is scheduled on the 04 September 2014 to officially lower the flags and the property handed back to Samoa when the conference ends. This was confirmed by Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi today in a brief ceremony that dedicated the upgraded facilities for the conference. The two gymnasiums have been transferred into state of the art conference rooms, first for SIDS and to host future international meetings. Overseas specialists have been contracted to ensure that lightning and the sound systems for the conference. There is also a media unit and food court venue for the delegates. There are special booths for the media and translators in the conference rooms and Walkways have been erected to link the buildings. Huge Cuts At Australian Broadcasting Corporation To Affect Pacific CANBERRA, Australia (Radio New Zealand International/PIR, Aug. 19, 2014) — An analyst with the Australian think tank, the Lowy Institute, says there is huge concern across the Pacific at the cuts made to services provided by Radio Australia and the Australia Network. The ABC was forced into making cuts after the Australian government ended a long-term TV contract. The broadcaster decided to make the cuts in its international arm, which now has just 40 percent of its previous budget. Dozens of jobs are going, with a number of prominent presenters and journalists already out of work. [PIR editor’s note: Radio Australia reported that one tangible outcome of the budget cuts is that veteran Pacific correspondent ‘Sean Dorney is leaving the ABC after 40 years reporting on the Pacific—a region very different today to the one he first covered in 1974.’ RNZI also reported that ‘There are observations other nations, such as China, are filling the vacuum caused by cuts to Australian broadcasting services in the Pacific... A non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, Tess Newton-Cain, says nature abhors a vacuum and the space is already being filled. .. In particular we have seen—as my colleague Jenny Hayward-Jones has noted—we have seen an increase in broadcasting into the region, in English, by Chinese broadcasting services—both in terms of TV and radio. And I think that we can expect to see more of that.] A non resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, Tess Newton-Cain, says Radio Australia is vital to peoples understanding of critical events in the Pacific. There is a huge concern across the region that people are losing what has been and what continues to be a really vital resource, says Newton-Cain. -END- COMMUNITY MESSAGE: They came, did their things, even extremely destructive things, and left. And all of it was for their own good and interest. Not ours. And no say on our part if they could come, let alone doing their things, even though it was our home and we had done nothing wrong to any of them. And it is not certain that they or some others may not come for the same or similar things—control our lives and little we have in resources. The last group got us so dependent on a little bit of this and a little bit of that in order to secure what would serve them best and, afterward, demanded, and continues to do so at even a greater level, self-sufficiency on our part. But, have we learned a thing from any of the awful experiences to avoid another? It does not seem so. Maybe, we just want to go through another.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 19:58:49 +0000
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