Project Title: Conserving Biodiversity of Tongareva Atoll through Training, Revegetation, and Waste Management.
Conservation: focuses mainly on protecting or restoring habitats that are used by our endangered and migratory species. We use rahui (a traditional form of sustainable resource use) to close any harvest that we are concerned about ~ it works very well.
Climate Change: This is the major cause of our problems nowadays. The impacts are varied and severe, but include ocean acidification; coral bleaching; death of the giant clams; many of the pelagic fish left, followed by large birds that prey on them; many trees died and the soil dried out and blew away. A tragic set of events for our simple subsistence way of life. Our people have a Sacred duty to pass on a healthy, abundant and diverse ecosystem to our future generations :just as the Ancestors bequeathed to us.
Remote as our homeland is, the uncaring behaviour of the outside world still impacts our beautiful atoll. "We wish you would wake up!"