Fishery WorkLab for Sustainable Development

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In the Carteret Islands Project, the fishery workshop is part of a open classroom concept of learning where resource owners learn community entrepreneurship and the management of their natural resource, fish, in context of learning how to live happy and productive lives.

The slideshow shows the construction of the fishery workshop which consists of the fish-pen and accommodation/ work area. The 35 footer boat seen in the pictures is the vehicle that is used to ferry people between the platform and islands on the Tulun atoll.

A PHOTOGRAPHY MONOGRAPH ABOUT THE CARTERET ISLANDS
We would like to feature aMonograph.com, a photography monograph about the Carteret Islands by Bjørn Stig Hansen and a platform for the development of “Tulun – a South Pacific Exodus.” New book content will be uploaded monthly at aMonograph.com and a limited printed version of the monograph in 3000 editions will be available. You can be part of this exciting project by Bjørn.

“Culture, tribal traditions, land ownership and a peaceful existence far from their mountainous neighbor, Bougainville – which is still struggling to maintain law and order after a civil war that ended ten years ago – are all strong arguments in favor of staying.

The tribe has lived isolated in the Solomon Sea for 400 years and communication with the outside world is limited to a two-way radio. The people live a simple life without stable electricity and use wooden canoes to travel between the islands on top of the Tulun Atoll’s 61 km (37.9 miles) long reef.”

Bjørn will dedicate the next 12 months to the writing of Tulun – a South Pacific Exodus. Tulun means “the people from the big sea” and is used by the Bougainvillians as the name for both the people and islands on the Tulun Atoll. He chose this name instead of the more commonly used Carteret Islands, which refers to the Westener who discovered the islands.

Documentary on Carterets Nominated for Oscar

Congratulations to Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger on the nomination of SUN COME UP in Best Documentary, Short Subject film at the 83rd Academy Awards for an an Academy Award, the U.S. film industry’s top prize. It was nominated for the Oscar from a list of 30 eligible entries which was narrowed down to eight. The Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2010 will be presented on Sunday, February 27, 2011. Look out for it!

Sun Come Up Trailer from Sun Come Up on Vimeo.

SUN COME UP has been described as “a lyrical documentary that follows the relocation of the first indigenous culture to lose their ancestral land to climate change – the Carteret Islanders, a community of 3,000 people living on a chain of low-lying islands in the South Pacific Ocean. This is a story about the human face of climate change and a people faced with the loss of a land in which their identity rests.”

The documentary was produced in 2009 when the Carteret Islanders were faced with no options but a bleak future. In that same year however, in May 2009, the Carteret Islands Project was birthed. This is a prototype community transformation project owned and driven by the islanders themselves and assisted by a venture philanthropic company based in Singapore in terms of funding, management know-how and technology. The success of this project would empower them with resources which would give them options to find alternative solutions other than relocation.

“The sentiment among Pacific Islanders suggests that they do not want to abandon their homelands or be absorbed into cultures where indigenous people already struggle for acceptance. “It is about much more than just finding food and shelter,” said Tarita Holm, an analyst with the Palauan Ministry of Resources and Development. “It is about your identity.” One clan chief said that ”he would rather sink with the islands than leave.” (Refugees Join List of Climate-Change Issues, By Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, May 28, 2009)

This project has struck a powerful chord with the islanders. If they had a choice, they would rather stay on in their island home. Now they have.

Director Redfearn says about the Carteret islanders’ plight, “I want to move people. I want to either make them angry, make them sad, make them frustrated, and I want to take that anger and that frustration and that sadness and turn that into action.” Voice of America | 7 February 2011

If you have been moved and you want to be part of something that will empower the islanders to stay on in their islands, contact us.

Rufina Moi: Our Treasure Is This Island

The article below and video produced by Telegraph UK on the Carteret Islands is a poignant reminder of how much the islanders love their island, which is their only home.

To watch the 2 mins video interview of Rufina Moi by Telegraph UK, click here.

Rufina Moi, sage of the Carteret community | Telegraph UK
7 December 2009

Rufina remembers life on the Carterets before the storms and the problems of a sinking island, and is fearful of life on the mainland.

At 68, Rufina is one the most respected members of the Carteret community of some 2,500 people.

Educated like many of her contemporaries in Roman Catholic schools on Bougainville and Buka, she worked as a teacher on those islands before returning to her beloved atoll last year. Two of her three children and eight of her 11 grandchildren live with her on Han, the most populous of the Carterets.

“When I came back I was thinking about my people and I thought, I earn money and eat every day, and I asked myself what my people were eating. I had to live as they as did to feel their hardship.”

She is convinced about sea-level rise but, like other elderly people on the islands, she cannot bear the thought of leaving.

“The old people say, we have never had the heavenly father ring up and say ‘I am going to sink your island’. They don’t believe it.

“There is nothing better than home. Our treasure is this island. We think of our mothers and fathers and grandfathers who are buried on the island and we cannot leave them. We might as well die with them because we love our Carterets.”

TULUN: A CASE STUDY
Photography by Bjørn Stig Hansen
For truly amazing photography of the people of the Carteret Islands by Bjørn Stig Hansen, click the above link or visit http://www.bjornstighansen.com to learn more about Bjørn.

In 2009 Bjørn first encountered the islanders of Carterets when he travelled to the Tulun Islands in the Solomon Sea and stayed with the locals in their bottomless huts for a month. Later the same year he had an opportunity to invite one of the chiefs to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, where he spoke on two occasions.

Bjørn’s projects have their roots in a long tradition of photojournalism, which has sought to bring unknown worlds to the consciousness of its readers. His work has been published in many prestigious magazines like The Economist /intelligent life (UK), Daily Mail (UK), Sermitsiaq (Greenland), VG (Norway), Submerge (USA) and many more. He has also won a number of photographic awards like Prix de la Photographie (Peoples Choice Awards), Nature/Environment pro, 1st place, 2010.