Sustainable sea transport for Alson Kelen is not just about getting down to zero emissions.
“We have to understand that sustainable sea transport also means helping with non-communicable disease, helping education, helping many, many things that we talk about when we go to these big UN meetings; women’s rights, gardening, and all those things,” says Kelen, who is co-founder and Director of Waan Aelõñ in Majel (WAM or in English, Canoes of the Marshall Islands).
Sitting by the lagoon in Majuro, Kelen describes their evolution—from securing their first grant when the then-Australian Ambassador was so impressed by a ride on the canoe and what possibilities it posed, wrote a grant application for them, to their recent work developing a unit on canoes for Marshall Islands’ elementary schools.
From its early days, WAM looked for ways to connect young people on outer atolls who were falling through the gaps, to broader opportunities.
Kelen observed many young people interested in the canoe building they were doing on these remote islands but who had failed to progress at school, and asked village elders about their prospects. He was told: “That’s why we have a lot of copra makers. They were kids. And now they have kids. So that’s it for these kids.”
“That’s in our schooling, I guess, survival of the fittest. But that’s sad, because in a modern world, there should be opportunities for many, many kids out there,” he said.
Leaving the atoll where he had this conversation, Kelen was told “the voyager canoe goes wherever you go.”
He took that to heart. In the years that have followed, WAM has done the hard work of raising funds, partnering with other local educators and organisations, and has supported a generation of ‘pracademics’, practical academics.
“After a while, people start asking, ‘So you’re going to have all these thousands of kids who know how to build canoes and go sailing. But at the end of the day, what do you want them to do?’”
Kelen and his co-founder realised that the skills their young boat builders were learning equated to more traditional learning; canoe building was wood-working and the same skills could be used to build many other things. Measurement was geometry and applied mathematics, literacy skills were required to read instructions, and English was needed to name powered tools and other equipment being used. Climate change studies came by seeing first-hand how the tides were changing. And in a country where the rate of non-communicable diseases is high, they learn about nutrition and healthy lifestyle choices from medical professionals WAM brings in.
This means that many of these young people have been able to attain their General Educational Development certification (equivalent to high school graduation) through their work with WAM. Others have now gone on to study at university and college.
Working with young people required the WAM team to have other skills. Kelen studied to become a behavioral counsellor and the team includes a mental health counsellor.
The program has worked to be inclusive, and started with the recognition that “women brought navigation to the Marshall Islands. Women brought sails to the Marshall Islands,” Kelen says.
“It shows how important our mothers are to us. And it shows that we cannot do anything without the skill of our woman. Everybody has their own role, including chanting.
“Right now, every guy in the canoe house, if you go there, they know how to weave the sail.”
Kelen says their work demonstrates that traditional knowledge is “not of yesterday, but is a knowledge that is, and will, bring us into the future.
“If you look at our canoes… the hull is asymmetrical. That’s the same shape on an airplane wing. Without this shape, the airplane won’t fly. So our forefathers sailed in our lagoons using that shape thousands of years before the Wright brothers put it on the airplane wing. That’s how futuristic our knowledge is.
“Look around, it’s people that survive on these rocks. They’re scientists, people that know about the moon and the lagoon and the ocean…I respect those older folks that are skilful in this knowledge. I think they should be all considered as national treasures. Our kids go to school for a few years, come back and they’ve got a master’s degree. And they get praised everywhere. But our elders, they’ve been doing it for 40 years and 50 years. And we consider that ‘grandparents knowledge’. How sad.”
Kelen hopes that this knowledge, and the way it is now being applied, will receive more support from institutions, and on a national scale.
“It’s time for this country to wake up,” he says.
One WAM design for a fishing vessel has a plug in one hull that allows it to be partially filled with water. When fish are caught, they can be stored, still alive, in that hull, eliminating the need for ice. Another design for a cargo catamaran uses “the two things we are so rich with, wind and sun”, an important innovation in an environment where fuel costs are high and eat into the earnings of remote communities.
Kelen says while Pacific nations stand on global stages at the IMO and other meetings (see sidebar), there is still a lot to do at home. Attracting home Marshallese who are graduating all over the world for one. Working with the national school system to get a unit on traditional canoes into the elementary school curriculum is another. And rebuilding the WAM offices, which burned down earlier this year is also on the cards.
“We’re hoping to extend a little bit… but we also have to protect the environment. Maybe make it higher or something. We can only go to heaven,” Kelen says with a smile.
The bid to cut carbon emissions in shipping
When the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) meets in London in early July, it will discuss ways to cut shipping emissions.
The IMO’s Pacific Island members, led by the Marshall Islands, are pushing for an improvement on the organisation’s current goal of halving emissions by 2050. They want emissions at zero in that same time frame.
Writing ahead of the IMO negotiations in Islands Business recently, RMI President, David Kabua noted: “Equally important, they will determine if a greenhouse gas levy on global shipping can be used to make clean fuels cost competitive, while generating the funds necessary to finance this transition and ensure that the most vulnerable countries are supported as they deal with the impacts of climate change, as the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, and others in the Pacific have proposed.”
While local initiatives such as Waan Aelõñ in Majel in Marshall Islands and the Uto ni Yalo in Fiji have pioneered the scaling up of traditional, sustainable transport at the community level, Project Cerulean—an effort to research and design a low-carbon, wind powered, commercially-operating freighter to stimulate outer-island Pacific trade, proved not to be viable in a post-pandemic market.
As Andrew Irvin wrote for Islands Business earlier this year: “A key research finding is that moving a localised shipping transition agenda forward requires additional prioritisation and capitalisation by Pacific states and financial partners ready to support decarbonisation of public services under an economic model of avoided loss, not commercial profitability. Building upon this unique and valuable analytical and design work will enable our countries to make more informed shipping decarbonisation decisions for their domestic fleets.”
Pacific Elders Voice—a group which includes former RMI President, Hilda Heine—says the IMO meeting will have long-term consequences for the economies and societies of the Pacific.
“As many commentators and experts have noted, MEPC80 is the industry’s last opportunity to secure a 1.5 degrees-aligned pathway. Failure to agree on a Revised Strategy will result in a patchwork of regional measures, further isolating developing countries as decarbonisation becomes more expensive, and leave them grappling with the impacts on their small and fragile economies with no assistance or intervention,” PEV said in a statement.
For updates from the IMO meeting, visit islandsbusiness.com
