ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN THE PACIFIC

IT is so very obvious that Pacific environment is not the same as it was before western contact.
This obvious change is from the needs of human needs. During the pre-contact era there were
lots of trees, abundance of herbal medicines, abundance of food and a greener environment.
However, as western contact came into picture things started to change drastically, the forest
once rich with herbal medicines and wild life was needed to make room for farming, houses,
industrial development etc. As westerners settled in the Pacific the population increased. In
one way or other this all activities gave rise to all types of pollution.

After the European contact many changes were made in the Pacific environment. European
bought metal, tools and machinery with which they soon destroyed much of the remaining
forest of New Zealand, Hawaii and New Caledonia in order to farm sheep, cattle horses and
deer and grow commercial crops. Despite the damage, some European crops and animals
thrived in New Zealands cool climate, but not in the tropical islands, where forest were
ravaged to make way for plantations for coconuts, sugar, cotton and other crops and cattle.
Sandalwood was harvested almost to extinction. Nuclear testing was the next environmental
hazard. Testing live bombs on Pacific Islands has caused major destruction and extinction to
environment and its wild life. European contact bought in ideas and tools that help destroy the
environment further more however they also bought in something valuable as well which was
education. Which was one of the ways to taught people about environment and its benefits and
also how to take care of it. The technologies bought in by the European were not all bad. It all
depends on how people make use of it. One of the leading factor that leads to environmental
hazards are the rapid population growth of the last two generations, and concentrations in
towns, at mines, resorts and military camps, has led to waste disposal becoming a problem.

Environment change is evident from increasing sea water rise, global temperature rise,
warming oceans, shrinking ice sheets, declining arctic sea ice, glacial retreat, extreme events
and ocean acidification. All this events are happening every day at rapid rate which is fearing all
human race and wild life all around the globe.


There is a call for a healthy natural environment. Healthy natural environment can be
achieved by wild life management, air conservation and land and sustainable forestry. From a
personal perspective air conservation can be achieved if only everyone gets involved actively
and encourage others to get involved and change their silly yet environment threating habi ts.
One of those silly habits is going shopping with plastic bags, knowing the fact that a plastic bag
does so much damage to the environment.
In the past thirty years, the use of plastics and other synthetic materials has expanded
at a rapid pace. As new uses for these materials have been developed, applied, and
made available to more people, the quantity of plastic debris entering the marine
environment has undergone a corresponding increase. Many of these products degrade
very slowly. Those that are buoyant remain suspended at the sea surface for a long
time, and those that are not, sink and remain on the bottom for years or even decades.
The accumulating debris poses increasingly significant threats to marine mammals,
seabirds, turtles, fish, and crustaceans. (Laist, 2003)
An alternative option can be to use paper bags but than again, paper bags are made from trees,
buring paper releases carbon dioxide into the air and paper bags are good for single or couple
more use. A better option will be to use cloth shopping bags which are long lasting. I propose to
enfore law at local level that shopping service business do not provide with plastic bags nor
paper bags , but cloth shopping bags be sold at resonable affortable price and customers only
use these bags for shopping.

To add on, to achieve natural healthy environment wild life management to be done. I
personally propose that at local level large areas of forest to be left untouched by mankind.
These forest should be marked so that none human can get access to these forest not even for
study purposes humans should be allowed in these forest. These forest should only belong to
wild life and lesft undisturbed.

Further more, healthly natural environment can be achieved by land and sustainable forestry.
Defoestation and lack of laws regulating deforestation is an issue in Fiji. I propose that at local
level more regulation to be put in place that governs the deforestation. Heavy fines should be
imposed to those loggers who fails to comply with the regulation.

Lot of damage has me done to our precious natural environment, which can not be undo. The
best we all could do is to put hand in hand and converse what is left from mother nature.














Bibliography
Crocombe, R. (2008). Environmental Hazard. The south pacific seventh edition combined, 1-29.
Laist, D. W. (2003, June 16). Overview of the biological effects of lost and discarded plastic debris in the
marine environment. Marine Pollution Bulletin, pp. 319326.

Forum Post
Environment is largely affected by the needs of human beings. Earlier, the population,
industry was less and nature played a big role in keeping the equilibrium. However
increase in population and growth of industries and cities have led to massive drastic
changes in the environment mostly negative. The major one has been the increase in
population which has led to releasing of greenhouse gas. Unless nature is restored and
pollution controlled, things will not be the same.