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03/30/2004: Nauru Nauru

Nauru: Piled High With Beer Cans
from AP

According to the UN, "[t]he shoreline of the Pacific isle of Nauru, for example, appears blue-green in aerial photos, not from coral reefs, but from mounds of discarded beer cans, UNEP said." No mention of whether or not our apartment in Waltham appears this way on recycling day, but certain unnamed Athenators were reportedly high enough to take aerial photos.

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SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

DISTRIBUTION: Asia; England; Europe; Britian; Scandinavia; Middle East; Africa

LENGTH: 561 words

HEADLINE: UN: World's island paradises trashed with garbage

BYLINE: HANS GREIMEL; Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: JEJU, South Korea

BODY:

Small island "paradise" countries are increasingly being trashed by piles of
solid waste and sewage they have neither the money nor space to cope with, the
United Nations warned Tuesday at a global environment summit.

The new trend is a health and economic hazard and linked to exploding tourism
in places like the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, the United Nations said in a
report.

The findings were released as environment ministers from around the globe
gathered for the second day of a U.N. Environment Program summit dealing with
water and sanitation. The summit ends Wednesday.

Developing small island countries are especially vulnerable because they are
burdened by an influx of tourism, but often lack the landfill space, expensive
incinerators or treatment plants to deal with garbage and human waste.

Since the early 1990s, the level of plastic waste on small islands has
increased fivefold, according to the UNEP study. In the Caribbean, about 90
percent of sewage is discharged untreated into surrounding seas; in the Pacific,
about 98 percent.

Worldwide, about one in 20 people who go swimming in the oceans get sick
because of such discharge, said Veerle Vandeweed, chief coordinator of the
study.

Ironically, most of the environmental damage from tourism comes during the
construction of resorts, not their operation, because of decisions to build too
close to fragile coastlines and industrial waste, Vandeweed said.

The rapid development could backfire on the islands, if their allure as a
tourist destination is spoiled by environmental degradation, UNEP warned.

The shoreline of the Pacific isle of Nauru, for example, appears blue-green
in aerial photos, not from coral reefs, but from mounds of discarded beer cans,
UNEP said.

The piled-up trash also supports vermin such as rats, which carry such
diseases as plague, scabies and other tropical sicknesses.

Economically, polluted coastal waters create oxygen-starved dead zones devoid
of fish that undermine traditional island fishing industries.

The Alliance of Small Island States, a group of 45 island nations, is working
with aid agencies, private industry and other governments to win access to
better waste disposal technology and funding, chairman Jagdish Koonjul said.

Sanitation problems are exacerbated on the islands because of the lack of
fresh water. Rising ocean levels worldwide, triggered in part by global warming,
have meant that freshwater wells are increasingly tainted with seawater, Koonjul
said.

Globally about 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, while
another 2.4 billion lacked access to basic sanitation, UNEP said. Nearly 5,000
children die every day from diseases caused by a lack of water.

The discussions in Jeju, a South Korean resort island, will form a basis for
talks next month in New York with the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development

That meeting will assess progress toward the United Nation's target of
halving the number of people with no access to safe drinking water or basic
sanitation by 2015.

The current forum will try to generate a Jeju Initiative that will identify
concrete measures to be taken to reach those goals, UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall
said.

Supplying safe water is increasingly difficult because the world population
is growing so fast, by about 77 million people a year, UNEP says.

LOAD-DATE: March 30, 2004


Tuesday the 30th of March, Abe Froman noted:


We need to find a way to move these to Michigan were we can get 10 cents a can.


Tuesday the 30th of March, Cosmo Kramer noted:


I tried it, you blow the margains on gas


Tuesday the 30th of March, santo26 noted:


so baisically nauru is a sawin's pond in the middle of the pacific ocean? where is this photo?


Wednesday the 31st of March, awiggins noted:


Blue-green huh? Does that mean the the Naurians drink Rolling Rock?