Transcript
KALANI ENGLISH: You know for us it's a matter of looking into our past, to see whether there has ever been a precedent for this, whether there has ever been a concept like this. Really it's an old Polynesian concept, the idea of a land appearing on the ocean, a land or plenty, a land of a lot of water, a lot of food and a lot of happiness. So that's the legends. What it does for us today is I think it informs us that our ancestors had this concept and we also know that Polynesians are very quick to adapt the latest technology. That's always been the case from ancient times to the present so if we take the cultural context and say 'alright, this is in our past, we have an idea and a concept of it, now what are the most modern technologies that we can use to make this happen?'.
SALLY ROUND: And just looking throught the line-up of speakers, there seem to be a lot of people with expertise, who've studied floating communities in the Netherlands, for instance. What are you hearing about the possibilites that idea is actually a goer?
KE: Well, yes people are very intrigued. I mean on the streets of Papeete it's been on the news, it's been on radio, it's been on television, so of course it's a topic of conversation on the streets of the capital city and as I go around, and I have friends and family here, their first question is 'well, how does this benefit us?', you know. And I have to use the example of the cellphone. I said 'look, remember way back in the early 1990s and those big bricks came out and we had the first celllphones, it was very expensive, very, very hard to get and very few people had it but over time in the next twenty years it became standard and pretty soon it was everywhere. Everyone had a cellphone and it revolutionised communication. Likewise with floating islands. This is the prototype and they're trying to establish, doing the tests, and seeing how we can make it and make it better, and then after that once it's perfected, we can expect prices to drop and the technology to improve. For the Tahitians, especially for the people in the Temotu Islands, some of the atolls will submerge within the next fifty years and so what happens to their language, their culture, their sense of being, their place? And if these islands are feasible and economical enough, they can go into the lagoons of the atolls and hopefully people can migrate there.
SR: And what about for Hawaii? Do you think this is something Hawaii would be interested in?
KE: Yes, I think Hawaii would be interested in this, because for example our airport and Honolulu International Airport is what's called a reef runway. It was built in the sixties and seventies and they bascially went out into the reef, filled it in and put the airstrip on that. Well with sea level rise that would very quickly go underwater. One of the presenters today, Dr Huang from Singapore, showed us huge floating airports that were created in Japan during World War Two, how the US actually created this floating airport for aircraft in the Pacific so he said you know this technology is not new and it's actually proven to land planes. So I think for us in Hawaii this is something that we're going to look at much more carefully. I'll be taking home a lot of information and sharing it with our people.
SR: Just as a representative of Pacific island people, do you have any concerns that a refuge like a floating island is really just a place for rich outsiders and do you think that would infringe on the Pacific island community?
KE: Well you see that's the part that needs to be worked out and that's the negotiation that happens with the local people and the local communities. I mean, in may of the Pacific islands, the families still own the ocean, right? So I don't really know the answer to that and I'm unsure how it's going to move ahead but I am sure of one thing that the technology is certainly there and as we find with all the technologies that come on board, equilibrium's found at some point. You know, there is some concern at creating outside communities in the middle of the Pacific that are unto themselves but maybe part of the concession is that part of the community's included in that. I don't know.
