Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2002GU10B

Regional Dissemination of a Locally-developed Integrated Island Ecology & Resource Management Textbook, Website, & Teachers Manual/Activity Guide

Institute: Guam
Year Established: 2002 Start Date: 2002-03-01 End Date: 2003-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $29,700 Total Non-Federal Funds: Not available

Principal Investigators: John Fury, Craig Smith, Danny Wyatt, Gerald Smith, Vince Riley

Project Summary: Problem: Throughout the Pacific island region, human populations suffer from the combination of distressed social and financial economies, growing populations, and limited and fragile island resources. A locally-applicable program of integrated environmental education is critical to address these issues and the need has been widely expressed throughout the region in recent years. This project proposes to directly address this need. Experts in field of environmental science and in the field of education are often recruited from non-island areas and lack needed foundational information of island ecology and island resource management regimes to adequately address island needs. Regionally-applied two year professional contract programs--originally meant to automatically lapse and therefore provide professional opportunities to islanders who complete their collegiate studies and professional training--effectively cause an exporting of expertise, leaving little environmental and educational knowledge behind. Oftentimes, any reports that are left behind are written in such scientific ese as to be uninterpretable by many local program directors. The Northern Mariana Islands made a concerted effort to address this problem since 1996 and developed a highly readable, regionally-appropriate, 800 page Island Ecology & Resource Management: Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands textbook. The book was designed to be applicable throughout the region and permission to cut & paste from it is part of the books purposes. Objective: This proposal seeks to, in part, address the above-identified problems through a concerted effort to regionally disseminate this comprehensive island ecology/resource management textbook/curriculum throughout the Western Pacific to encourage fellow island education and resource management entities to model it to address their own needs and to save years of start up and drafting and editing time.Methods:1. The Activity Guide/Teachers Manual for the Island Ecology & Resource Management: Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands textbook will be revised and printed.2. A website will be established.3. Travel to ten islands will be undertaken by the PI to share the work and encourage regional adoption, revision, and transformation of the information into language and frameworks applicable to each islands needs.4. A $600.00 honorarium start-up contribution towards such a local effort for each of the ten islands will be provided to help overcome supply and material needs of each jurisdiction.