An Environmental Volunteer's Voice: From the Pacific Islands to the World

Wu Yu-chuan, completed one year's service in Tuvalu at the end of August 2010. She has just enjoyed a brief break in Taiwan, and is now returning to Tuvalu. Of the four volunteers who began service with her, she is the only one remaining. Seeing Tuvalu through her eyes will help us to appreciate the local customs of the island, and in a broader sense to understand the true meaning of the "global village."

Wu Yu-chuan has a friendly smile and a deep tan from the harsh equatorial sun. Before meeting her, I had already seen her blog: Life in an Endless Ocean-A Volunteer's Voice from Tuvalu. The humor and playfulness apparent in her observation notes is punctuated with some serious thinking-it becomes clear how well young volunteers are able to integrate into the local life of the island. The following is an extract from Wu's blog:

The young man working on the farm as substitute military service has been here for a long time, always surrounded by older males and local men of his age. He's looking tired and a bit downcast, so to cheer him up and provide a bit of intercultural exchange, we invited girls from the Fetuvalu High School, the only such institution in Funafuti, to come over for a dinner party.

The young Taiwanese from the mission provided food including green shallot pancakes, gourd pancakes, green peppers fried with walnuts (the walnuts donated by an Australian friend), gourds cooked with kelp (delivered from Taiwan by airmail), fresh raw cucumbers, and fried milkfish (the fish were a gift from the technician Luo, who brought them back from a visit to an outer island). All the vegetables were harvested from the technical mission farm in Tuvalu! The young people were proudly showing off the magnificent vegetables and other foods that their hard work had produced....

Three of the high-school girls prepared fried breadfruit chips, coconut milk mixed with fresh sweet coconut juice and coconut kernel, raw fish with onions and coconut milk (raw fish is an essential food at every meal for the locals), grilled chicken with fine dried coconut, and coconut meat mixed with coconut milk (much like sweet rice cakes).

It's clear from the menu that half of the food served in Tuvalu contains coconut in some form. And there are very few vegetables. This is one of the main reasons why Taiwan's technical mission needs to be here. (Posted July 21, 2010)

These two students, win-ners of a stamp design competition, are delighted that their designs will be printed and issued as commemorative stamps for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.

Wu Yu-chuan has a great sense of humor, but at the same time she is a serious environmentalist with an uncompromising spirit. Wu has spent a considerable period in Tuvalu, serving mainly in the waste management sector, so she knows the island's situation first hand. She has also been able to investigate some of the research into Tuvalu's environmental dilemmas done by number of different international organizations. And then she has written her own article based on her research. In a piece published in two parts in the May and August issues of the Society for Wildlife and Nature's environmental magazine Nature, "Is Tuvalu in Danger of Inundation-Victim or Perpetrator of Environmental Disaster?" she puts forward her own strong views.

"Reports about Tuvalu and other island nations in Taiwanese media have always taken a simplisticly tragic view. But my experience is that Tuvalu's most pressing issues stem from human development and pollution, quite aside from any sea-level rises. I feel burdened, knowing something that I feel a responsibility to reveal, so I have to write it out." "I want to urge people to be more rational and prudent in their thinking, to understand the causal relationships behind environmental problems, and not simply to make emotional decisions."

Wu, now 29, believes in the power that springs from knowledge and experience. She studied environmental science at National Chung Hsing University and in graduate school at National Dong Hwa University. After graduating, she joined the "Beijing to Paris Car-free Adventure," and spent a year exploring the wider world in very simple and relaxed ways: an introduction to adulthood. Returning to Taiwan, she worked briefly with an environmental group, the Society for Wildlife and Nature, and finally fulfilled her wish to become an overseas volunteer in September 2009. "At this stage of my life, I have been focused on broadening my experience and seeing the world, rather than fattening my bank account."

In Tuvalu, Wu's main task is to assist in the waste management and waste reduction programs. Her biggest accomplishment has been the reusable shopping bags program at the end of 2009, supported by the ROC embassy in Tuvalu and the ICDF. She believes that Tuvalu still has a hard road ahead with the reduction of waste. The key to the problem lies in getting the relevant departments to cooperate and implement policies of waste separation and recycling. "The government also needs to reduce imports of plastic products and bottled water."

Wu Yu-chuan, an environmental scientist and very active in her field, is Taiwan's grassroots Goodwill Ambassador in Tuvalu. The picture shows the amazing results of the postcard exchange program: Send Tuvalu to the World-more than 400 postcards with sincere greetings from countries around the world.

As this year marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, with the support of the Tuvalu government and the ICDF, a number of Taiwan's overseas volunteers including Wu Yu-chuan, Lin Fangyu in tourism, Zhang Lingwen in livestock, Lu Xinxian in IT, and military service draftee Chen Qing'an, together planned and performed programs on four themes: "Drawing My Home-Stamp Design Competition," "The Story of Earth Day," "Send Tuvalu to the World," and "Restoring the Mangrove Forests."

First, they organized a stamp design competition with the theme of "Drawing My Home," and used this to introduce the story of Earth Day at Funafuti's two primary schools.

The children, who had never heard of Earth Day, all happily and innocently depicted the island as they see it: daily scenes of the endless ocean, the pink-bluish sky extending to the horizon, coconut trees, fishing boats, buildings covered with pandanus leaves and rainwater collecting tanks alongside roofs.

The schools then each selected two works to be printed and issued as commemorative stamps by the Tuvalu Postal Bureau. More than 400 postcards with eight styles and layouts were prepared by Chen Qing'an, who is good at graphic design.

After the postcards were printed, they visited every classroom in Funafuti over the next couple of months. This was an opportunity to visit primary schools in outer islands as well, inviting the children to write or draw on the postcards. Then the larger task was begun. They contacted in advance a well-known postcard exchange site (postcrossing.com) that was able to provide 422 random addresses from 66 different countries. Everyone was very busy sticking stamps on postcards, checking the details of names and addresses, and taking photos for filing. D-day was April 22, as the Fiji flight called at the capital on that day.

Since July, more than 100 postcards from people around the world have arrived in dribs and drabs (the senders are also randomly selected by the same website), and some overseas recipients have also taken the initiative to respond by e-mail to say hello. The responses from around the world will be displayed in the schools, providing a good opportunity for children to develop contacts with people from other cultures-and to improve their geography.

From September this year, Wu Yu-chuan will be the only Taiwan overseas volunteer left in Tuvalu, but she has no intention of feeling alone and helpless. She is enthusiastically preparing to participate in the Alliance of Small Island States on behalf of Tuvalu, attending the climate change conference to be held in Cancun, Mexico at the end of the year.

"I hope that by attending the conference I can learn more about the procedures and speaking skills involved in this kind of international forum. I'm also very curious, wondering what sort of approach the prime minister of Tuvalu will take to look after the nation's interests. And whether the international community will be more forward-thinking and sincere than in previous years."

Wu Yu-chuan has done a lot of thinking about the experience of the past year. It is really hard to live in Tuvalu. Despite the imported food, "every bunch of vegetables, every fish, and every coconut are all earned with our hands in our battle with nature." From her experience in Tuvalu, she realizes more forcibly that the average diet in developed countries contributes enormously to imperceptible additions to our carbon footprint. "No matter where we live, we need to think carefully about how our simple daily needs impact the environment, and to support local production as much as possible."