Editor’s Comments: Looking Out to Sea

“Palau is a small place. If the boat sinks, we sink with it. We will be the first ones under water.”

Those words were part of a speech by Noah Idechong, the senior advisor to the Palau Minister of Natural Resources, Environment, and Tourism, last month in Honolulu, HI. He was speaking at the 13th International Coral Reef ­Symposium, where a number of other officials from Pacific Island countries joined scientists from around the globe to talk about the state of the world’s oceans.

Although many subjects were on the agenda, including sea level rise, the presidents of three countries—Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands—held a special summit at the event particularly to request help from the scientific community to protect coral reefs. The reefs have been in decline, especially in the Pacific, because of pollution, overfishing, and ocean acidification. The three presidents outlined the many ways their countries depend on coral reefs, not only for their livelihoods—fishing in the habitats the reefs create—but also for protection from erosion and storm surges.

For most stormwater programs, even in coastal cities, coral reefs are not uppermost on the day-to-day agenda, even though what goes into our urban runoff can ­eventually have a significant effect on them. A few organizations are looking to change that; the Coral Reef Alliance and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are now advocating low impact development and green infrastructure stormwater techniques to protect the reefs by reducing the runoff—and therefore the volume of pollutants—flowing to the oceans.

NOAA, in fact, has created a well-designed guide especially for Pacific and Caribbean islands’ stormwater programs (available here). It shows step by step, with local examples, how to implement many LID techniques and discusses considerations particular to island environments, such as the difficulty of finding appropriate soils and compost for bioretention systems. The Coral Reef Alliance has a similar LID guide aimed very specifically at Hawaii’s hotel industry (available here). It includes many of the same techniques and even encourages hotels to highlight their commitment to the environment by offering “sustainability tours” for guests. Both guides are good introductions to LID—even for those not on an island—but their emphasis is on the connection between stormwater runoff and reefs.

It seems fitting that while many of us are gathering at StormCon in August to discuss, for the most part, technologies and solutions for a gamut of local stormwater concerns, we also take a step back to look at some of the wider implications of what we’re doing. In Palau, for example, where typhoon season lasts nearly half the year, a barrier reef rings and protects the eight major and 250 smaller islands, which total only 177 square miles. As the coral dies, the water is starting to seem much closer. Scientists believe that climate change will continue to affect the reefs, but most also say that if other effects such as land-based pollution and overfishing are reduced, then the reefs will be better able to withstand the inevitable changes.

The Pacific Island leaders at the summit said their approach is twofold: applying science-based techniques at the local level to improve conditions as much as possible there, and also participating in international discussions on the larger issues like sea level rise that are out of their control. “Our actions will never be enough,” said Palau’s Noah Idechong in his speech, “but at least we can prolong livelihoods for our people and make sure we are doing the best we can while we work on bigger picture change.”