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FRIDAY, October 23, 2009
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Option for sea level rise: Relocate
This Week's
Inside Stories
Yards of
MEC meters
MEC’s plan to install prepaid meters for Majuro power customers is moving ahead with Interior Department, Asian Development Bank and Pacific Power Association assistance. MEC General Manager David Paul said a request for proposals advertisement will go out through the Fiji-based PPA, which will also help review bids received from overseas companies.
Shortage of statistics
US and RMI leaders want to see better performance in government services, and have set new requirements for the ministries of Health and Education to improve data collection and to use it to demonstrate if they are meeting required standards. Two resolutions from the recent US-RMI Joint Economic Management and Financial Accountability Committee (JEMFAC) meeting in Honolulu focus on the need of RMI to improve its collection of data and to strengthen the link between data and budgeting.
Fish market
moves foward
The first Japan-funded infrastructure project for the Marshall Islands to get approval in four years is scheduled to begin construction in early 2010 in Majuro. Japan government and Marshall Islands officials opened bids in Tokyo last week for an $8 million fish market to be constructed at Uliga Dock in Majuro.
PII fights
Anil for CMI job
Pacific International Inc. filed suit against the College of the Marshall Islands Friday in a dispute over a construction bid that went to another contractor. The dispute is over a $2.3 million contract to build a new administration building for CMI that was recently awarded to Anil Construction. The suit in the High Court is only the second in recent memory by construction companies, which rarely sue the RMI or its agencies over construction bids.
Many Pacific islands are in danger of extinction from sea level rise and should seek relocation aid at a global meeting on climate change in Copenhagen later this year, said a Fiji-based scientist who is in Majuro this week for the climate change meeting.
“By 2100, I don’t see how many islands will be habitable,” said Professor Patrick Nunn, a climate change researcher at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji who moderated the Pacific Climate Change Roundtable meeting in Majuro that opened Monday. Fourteen Pacific countries and territories are attending the Majuro meeting to sharpen their strategy for the United Nations meeting on climate change in December in Denmark. Scientific projections show the pace of
sea level is “rising faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected in its 2007 report,” Nunn said. “We’re now looking at a more than one meter (three feet) sea level rise by the end of the century.” For coral atolls such as the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Maldives — most of which are barely a meter above sea level — habitation will be impossible. “But it is a mistake to perceive this as an ‘atoll issue,’” Nunn said. “In most larger islands in the Pacific, there is much less concern for sea level rise because they have a hinterland to move to. It’s not as easy as it sounds.” He says it is urgent that political leaders of countries with low-lying areas start planning for relocation. “It needs sound planning,” Nunn said. “If relocation is to happen by 2050, then by 2020 a plan must be in place. “The biggest challenge is getting policy makers to understand the need for a profound change in the way Pacific people live,” he said. While the world has heard much about the need to relocate the population of tiny Tuvalu, there are three times the Tuvalu population living in the Rewa Delta in Fiji who will be affected by sea level rise, he said. “Relocation is one of the most difficult things to talk about and to convince people that the home they’ve lived in for centuries is no longer a viable option,” said Nunn, who has researched climate change for 24 years from his Fiji base. Nunn warned that New Orleans, Venice, Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands — among other low-lying areas — are all facing the specter of sea level rise. While various mitigation and adaptation projects are being proposed for low-lying areas to withstand sea level rise, Nunn believes “there are no real options in Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and other atolls other than to move people.”
Return of the Kessai?
By SUZANNE CHUTARO and GIFF JOHNSON
Following Wednesday’s historic no-confidence vote, President Litokwa Tomeing’s opponents were mum about who will be the next President. Their one-vote majority also suggests the potential difficulty in successfully electing a new President.
But former President Kessai Note (pictured), who led the charge against Tomeing, is a front-running contender along with Ailinglaplap Senator Christopher Loeak. Jaluit Senator Alvin Jacklick is also likely to be considered. “It’s not decided yet who will be President,” Senator Tony deBrum told the Journal minutes after Wednesday’s vote. “It will have to be a coalition government because we’re both a minority.” Wednesday’s ousting of Tomeing after 22-months in office is eye opening not only for being the first successful no confidence vote. There were many sub-plots, some obvious — the often angry words of criticism that will reverberate in this
small community long after a new President is in office, and the Note-Tomeing showdown — and others less so — the Senator Tony deBrum versus Tomeing advisor Fred Pedro battle, which deBrum alluded to on occasion during his remarks Wednesday. Of great significance in Wednesday’s vote is the unseating by Nitijela of an iroij (chief), a move that required the support of not only commoners but other iroij.
But while Acting President Ruben Zackhras holds the top post temporarily, the Marshall Islands will be buzzing about who’s next. Will it be Kessai? Christopher? Alvin? Or someone else? The Nitijela has 14 days to decide, and if it cannot, then Tomeing automatically gets the post back. One issue revolving around the group that came together to remove Tomeing is that those of Aelon Kein Ad affiliation campaigned against Note in the 2007 election, strongly criticizing the Note administration for Compact II. As party lines have blurred through three no confidence motions in the past 12 months, new alliances have emerged. Time will tell if this alliance with a one-vote majority will hold up to elect Note or another senator as President, and Friday’s Nitijela meeting will be the first test. The no-confidence vote Wednesday was the first successful vote in the 30-years of Constitutional government in the Marshall Islands. The vote was a close 17-15, but just met the Constitutional requirement of a majority of the 33 members of parliament. Speaker Jurelang Zedkaia named Ruben Zackhras as Acting President shortly after the vote and called for Nitijela to return Friday. The vote took place at about 2:10pm Wednesday and followed three-and-a-half hours of harsh and often painful debate and finger-pointing in the chamber Wednesday, and two previous days of equally intense debate, witnessed by many hundreds of Marshall Islanders and representatives of the three on-island embassies. Speaker Zedkaia finally called off the debate at 1:30pm Wednesday saying the Nitijela had to move to the vote because if they continued with airing “bad stuff against each other” the public will vote all of the Nitijela out of office.
Former Presidents Litokwa Tomeing and Kessai Note in better times.

Journal 10/24/1970
P1 Negotiations to reach a final settlement for the Army’s use of Kwajalein Atoll as a missile testing facility took place this week at Kwajalein. Representatives from the Trust Territory government and Army met with selected Marshallese leaders including Iroijs Kabua Kabua, Albert Loeak, Lojellan Kabua and his son, Senator Amata Kabua. Marshalls Distad Oscar deBrum said in the remaining three days of meeting the Iroijs were to meet with the people of the Mid-Corridor island at Ebeye to reach a final settlement. The residents of these islands were relocated to Ebeye in the early 1960s as a safety precaution because the Mid-Corridor islands were declared a “hazard area” by the Army due to tests conducted in the area. In 1964, a 99-year lease for
P1 The US Congress has refused to provide the funds needed to begin cleanup and rehabilitation of Enewetak Atoll, according to Lt. Gen. Warren Johnson of the Defense Nuclear Agency. He said apparently some members of Congress were not convinced the US is committed to carry out this project.
P1 The US Army command at the Kwajalein missile base was understood to have been in a quandary of confusion over recent developments in the drug situation in the Trust Territory. The concern developed over the legalization of the popular “marijuana” last July by TT High Court Chief Justice Harold Burnett. The Army on Kwajalein, who were in reality only transmitting
the word from Redstone Arsenal, took no chances and told the TT attorney general’s office to make sure that the confusion was cleared up and that MaryJane was illegal. Admittedly, this is not much of a story here but it does point to the very real interest the military has in everything that goes on here.
P7 More than 400 high school, Pontec and Community College of Micronesia students attended a series of meetings with the Education for Self Government Task Force in Ponape last week. According to Halverson Johnny, several PICS students expressed concern that more and more Micronesians are moving into the district centers and increasing their dependence on the money economy. They said this is beginning to create problems in that such people will tend to forget their values and lives under the usual traditional set-up.
Kwajalein Island was agreed upon by both parties. This lease provided compensation in the amount of $500 per acre for “past use,” since the end of World War II, and an equal amount for future use. An additional payment of $40 per month was provided to the original 148 relocated Mid-Corridor residents.
P2 A Spartan missile intercepted a ballistic missile nose cone higher over the Pacific in the second successful test of the controversial Safeguard anti-missile system, the Pentagon announced. The Spartan, fired October 3 from the test facility at Kwajalein, was guided to the target — an ICBM launched from California — above the earth’s atmosphere by the ABM system’s radar.
P10 Majuro might have its two new air-taxi companies operating here by the end of the month. At least these are the optimistic predictions made by the heads of both companies, Guy Hofferty, manager of Marshall Islands Air Taxi Service, and James Pruter, President of Lagoon Aviation. “Our plane is bought and paid for,” said Hofferty, but added that Alaskan weather, where the plane is located, is unpredictable this time of year. Pruter has been on the mainland since October 7 to speed up delivery of their seaplane. Both companies have purchased “Super Widgeon Twin Engine” seaplanes, and are flying via Alaska, Midway, Wake and finally to Majuro. But what did Hofferty say about Alaskan weather this time of year?

Journal 10/23/1992
P1 RMI and Chinese officials inked a deal Thursday evening that is to bring the first garment factory to Majuro.
P1 The visit this week of an Asian Development Bank team has set the framework for two multi-million dollar loans for education and Majuro water improvements beginning in 1993. The ADB will lend the Marshalls about $7 million for water improvements and $5 million for primary school construction and teacher training.
P3 The Marshalls “walap” (voyaging canoe) and the three other Pacific outriggers generated a high level of excitement and intensity of emotion at the Festival of Pacific Arts in Rarotonga, according to a fax received from Dennis Alessio in the Cook Islands. Even with the walap’s mast breaking during the 140-mile voyage from Aitutaki to Rarotonga, the sleek 50-foot canoe was still the first to arrive, said Alessio, the Waan Aelon Kein project director.
P4 The Marshalls Energy Company got a real nice pat on the back this week from the visiting ADB team. “MEC is a good example
of a utility that is moving in the right direction,” ADB mission leader Paul McCabe told us. “They’re doing so well they don’t need ADB help.” He paused, then added: “They’re a bloody winner. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
P23 Majuro’s Little League kicked off this weekend after a formal opening ceremony. The five-team league opened with Kids Vice knocking off Recon 15-10. The five teams with their coaches are: Eagles (Atbi Riklon), Rainbow (Hackney Wase), Recon (Helkena), Rita Braces (Mike Kilo), and Vice Kids (Veer Morales).