Kiribati's urban plan to be developed

Transcript

Kiribati's urban plan will get an overhaul by a New Zealand volunteer to help the country address its sanitation and land development issues.

Rapid population growth has put pressure on the country's infrastructure with half of the country's 110,000 people living on the capital Tarawa Atoll.

The resource planning advisor for Volunteer Services Abroad, Shifani Sood, says the dense population is causing health and sanitation issues.

She told Daniela Maoate-Cox the current urban plan is ten years old and she will spend a year in Kiribati from September working with the people to update it.

SHIFANI SOOD: They've got numerous challenges that the Kiribati people face. One of them being their water supply being contaminated, the other is their relationship with the land and climate change. So you've got a whole raft of issues going on where their land's becoming more and more difficult to live on and you've got quality of life that you have to look at.

DANIELA MAOATE-COX: Kiribati actually takes up quite a large proportion of the ocean but the land mass itself is really small so what kind of solutions or challenges are there in terms of efficient use of land area?

SS: From what I understand, they've got very high density on South Tarawa which is where I'm going. When you've got a lot of people concentrated in a small area, you've got issues with diseases and you've got issues with sanitation which is a major issue for them already so in terms of the solutions it will really depend on what my workshops reveal, whether people even perceive those matters to be issues. They might not see the lack of sanitation as a big issue as we do here in the West. So it really depends on what the findings would be and that is part of my role.

DM-C: You mentioned sanitation there, there's also probably a problem with waste in terms of rubbish and a rubbish dump, on such a small land where does all of this waste and rubbish go? Is that something you also have to look at?

SS: Yeah, that's going to be a major part of the thinking process. They've got a lot of imports that come in and the waste has absolutely nowhere to go. And from what I understand the general practice is just to throw it into the lagoon and hope for it to go away but obviously it doesn't and it just keeps being washed up on the shore which is becoming a big problem, but at the moment it's just being dumped on the land. I know they've had some recycling efforts done but whether they're being carried on or not is something I'd have to go and see and find out for myself.

DM-C: Clearly you're coming in from the outside through the Volunteer Service Abroad, do you think more countries need to come in and help Kiribati deal with these issues?

SS: I think so yeah, but one of the biggest challenges for volunteers is that we all want to do a lot and we want to do it really quick but sometimes we forget that the needs of a society may not be the same as what we think they might need. So short answer, yes we do need more volunteers but we need those volunteers to understand what the society needs.

DM-C: When was the last urban plan written?

SS: For South Tarawa, what I was given I think was written ten years ago but again with plans in these areas, if an external party's come in and written it, it may not be followed and I suspect that's probably what's happening so in terms of what I think from still being on the outside, the main issues I'd be looking at would be sanitation, waste, housing, how they live their communal lives, health related issues and the understanding people have of planning, and one thing I would love to be able to understand is what the local people think urban planning is and whether they even see it as important as we do here in New Zealand.