Transcript
KEVIN IRO: Marae Moana is going to cover the whole of the Cook Islands EEZ so it is about two million square kilometers.
DON WISEMAN: And that makes it the biggest marine reserve in the world, does it?
KI: Well we are really not looking at it as a marine reserve as such, and more of a marine managed area, so what the government and our traditional leaders and a lot of the people involved in conservation, we just want to change the mindset of how we look at our own ocean space or our own ocean domain. It's a paradigm shift in how we are going to look at our oceans. So basically we are going to call our whole EEZ or our whole ocean domain, Marae Moana, which loosely translates as 'Sacred Ocean' and then ask our commercial or industrial operators to carve out areas that they want to operate in, instead of saying 'where are your protected areas, or where are your areas of conservation, we change that around and say it is all sacred, it is all protected. People should be asking now 'where are your areas for fishing, where are your areas for deep sea mining for instance, you know. So it is a whole different way to look at the ocean and we believe that it is the indigenous way to look at the ocean. Our forefathers we believe considered the ocean as sacred and we want to bring that back and make the ocean sacred again and educate our children, re-educate them basically.
DW: Within all of this there is going to be very significant exploitation isn't there, in terms of, for instance, this big new fishing deal with the European Union.
KI: Absolutely and that is what you have got to understand. Our forefathers considered the ocean sacred because it was also a provider. So we are not saying that what we are doing will completely shut off all development or stop us from getting resources, but it will be done in such a way that it is more managed and its more transparent. And the whole nation should know where these activities are going to take place and where they can't take place.
DW: It's been on the table now I think for three years but you have still got to get legislation through parliament, don't you?
KI: Yes the draft legislation has been completed and now we are just waiting on our Crown Law agency to oversight that and then obviously it will go to Cabinet for approval. But it is very close and it has taken a long time, purely because we have consulted with all our people. We had to go right up to the north - it's very hard to get to some of our islands but we have consulted with all our people and all our communities and now we are ready to make a start. And like our forefathers, who put in conservation measures, or ra'ui, these are shifting or dynamic areas as well. So it is not to say things are set in stone, but we do have to start somewhere and we believe that we have come up with a good balance for industry and the commercial fishery, but we also believe that we putting in a whole lot more protection than we normally would have started with [applying] western conservation measures.
DW: In terms of legislation, under which ministry are you going to fall? Is it going to be Marine Resources?
KI: No under the new legislation, Marae Moana will have their own agency within the office of the Prime Minister. It is not going to be a big agency because it is really going to have a role just to work with other agencies and co-ordinate all the other agencies that come under the Marae Moana policies.
DW: There is going to be, given this vast area - 2 million square kilometres - it is going to require a fair degree of vigilance isn't it. What are you going to do? How are you going to do that?
KI: Well surveillance is always going to be a big issue especially when you are talking about large expanses of ocean that we have in our region, but as the years go by and technology gets better and satellite technology gets better and we are able to track just about every boat coming through our waters, that carry tracking systems - and it's much easier for us track the boats that are licensed to us obviously, but there is technology out there, they are testing drone technology and obviously satellite technology in other parts of the region that are working quite well. So it is just a matter, as I said, of starting from Point A and working from there, instead of waiting for the technology to come along.
DW: Costly though. So where are you going to get the money. Is it coming from donors? Where's it coming from?
KI: Well, we are hoping - we have been working for the last five to six years with Conservation International, we have partnered with Oceans Five who have been gib contributors to Marae Moana for the last few years also, IUCN, so we are hoping to continue and obviously there are partners who are waiting for legislation to pass so that they can assist us on the back end of implementation of Marae Moana. So it is quite exciting that there is a lot of interest shown in what we are doing, because it is quite unique what we are doing, and there are not many countries in the Pacific doing what we are doing, and have got a vision. We are trying to bring back that sacredness of the ocean and how we as Pacific Islanders see the ocean, and see things from our perspective. There are countries like Palau and New Caledonia doing significant conservation measures within their own EEZs, Kiribati is another one, so we are not along out there but it is going to be one of those things where as we develop things and other nations see that these are working, hopefully encourage other nations to follow suit.
