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Emerging Patterns in Environmental Legislation in Pacific Island Countries (Article) [2003] JSPL 15; (2003) 7(1) Journal of South Pacific Law

EMERGING PATTERNS IN ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION IN PACIFIC ISLAND COUNTRIES

By: Professor David Farrier^[∗]

ABSTRACT

There is a widespread assumption that Pacific Island Countries (PICs) should enact environmental legislation. Much of this appears to be driven by commitments under international conventions. PICs have been evaluating their needs in this regard, in the case of some countries for a number of years. For the most part, however, proposals remain in the form of Bills, and some of these have been through a number of iterations, indicating that the issues they address are difficult and controversial. This paper surveys recent legal developments in a number of PICs. It takes as its starting point that the need to enact environmental legislation must be carefully justified rather than assumed, and the precise components of that legislation must be tailored to the policy context and needs of PICs and not based on imported models from developed countries. In light of this, it argues that more attention needs to be given to the development of community-driven, strategic land use planning processes.

INTRODUCTION

Starting in the closing decades of the twentieth century, most Pacific Island Countries (PICs) began to develop legislation which claims on its face to be broadly concerned with environmental issues.^[1] In some cases, this has led to the enactment of statutes, but other proposals have not got this far, sometimes languishing in the form of Bills for a number of years. The issue of environmental legislation is clearly controversial. There are a number of reasons for this.

In the first place, environmental protection and conservation have a relatively low priority in countries where people suffer from relative disadvantage in terms of unemployment, educational opportunities and health care. The primary commitment of PICs is to economic development. Legislation which presents itself as being concerned with the environment, and the threats posed to the environment by human beings, risks being depicted as a barrier to economic development, rather than being seen as an intimate component of sustainable development.

Secondly, where legislative proposals involve setting up an environmental agency, or empowering an existing one, they arouse intense suspicion from those other government agencies that have traditionally dealt with aspects of environmental management and fear loss of prestige, power and resources.

Thirdly, any proposal which smacks of land use regulation will create varying degrees of anxiety in the broader community. Environmental law is often focused on attempts to induce people to adjust their current use of land or to modify, or even abandon, proposals to develop it. Traditionally, this has taken the form of command and control regulation, or orders backed by the threat of criminal sanction in the event of breach.