 I'm Karina Lyons, Vice President and Director of Research at the East West Centre and host of East West Centre Insights. The East West Centre is a cutting edge research and capacity building institution and we're based here in Hawaii and our mission is to support a deeper understanding and connection between the East and the West. So every two weeks here on this show, which is Tuesdays at 2pm at Hawaii time, I'll be having a conversation with an East West Centre expert or guest from our global network about critical Asia-Pacific issues. So check us out at EastWestCentre.org slash Insights. You may have noticed I greeted you by saying Aloha and talupalava and that's the signal that it's Samoan Language Week, so right throughout the Pacific, we're celebrating the Samoan language and culture and I wanted to start by sharing my favorite proverb because I didn't tell, I, or maybe you can't tell, I'm probably from the independent state Samoan and I wanted to start with this thing, which is appropriate for the show. I'm a wee alemasina, a alamatois self and it means flaccid or fortunate or lucky as the moon, she goes in return and it's basically a statement about change. And we're going to stick with the Pacific today because our guest today does most of her research right here in the Pacific. She's a research fellow at the East West Centre and lead investigator of the Pacific Islands Climate Health and Migration Project. And her name is Dr. Laura Brewington. Hey Laura, say hi so I know that you can hear me. Hi Karina, talupalava. Talupa. So Dr. Brewington is a geographer with expertise in conservation and invasive species and today we'll be talking about regional security and the impacts of environmental change. So it's a relatively new phenomenon to discuss this idea of security and environmental changes and over the past decade the global leaders in this space have been small island states like Palau and the Marshall Islands here in the Pacific and the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean and today we'll be hearing from Dr. Brewington about the environmental changes happening right now, what that means for human health and resilience, what ill effects that we should be anticipating in the very near future and most importantly we'll be discussing what we can do to mitigate and adapt, so what can we do individually and together to achieve this idea of ecological security. So Laura I'm just going to kick off and to set the scene, can you please tell us what that actually means, like what is ecological security and how does it relate to the work that you're doing? Sure yeah thanks Karina, thank you ThinkTech for hosting me today. When I talk about security I'm thinking beyond what we normally think of when we hear that word national security or borders and defense. For example all the United States and other global powers tend to look at security here in the Pacific through a geopolitical lens, more kind of strategic but I'm talking about a concept of security that incorporates resilient and healthy ecosystems, ecosystems that protect us from things like famine, from flooding, from climate change, from disease and from other disasters. We already know that the loss of biodiversity really can jeopardize the people places that depend on natural resources for survival and it exacerbates climate change impacts and existing social inequalities and these can lead ultimately to things like health emergencies and conflict. If you guys could share the first graphic please, now would be great. In 2019 there was an intergovernmental panel that put out a global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services. That report really showed how much biodiversity we are losing as a result of human choices and our actions and it outlined the five main causes of species loss. Changes in how we use land and water, unsustainable extraction and trade with resources, pollution, invasive species and of course climate change and this report was a wake-up call that the deep connections that we have between humans and our planet support systems are a risk. On the flip side it also showed that we're not going to be able to achieve lasting prosperity, health and stability without natural resource management and protection. The East Bus Center has a really strong research focus. Oh I'm sorry I'm losing you a little bit, did you repeat that last step? Sure, yeah I was just going to say I was going to point out that the East Bus Center has a really strong research focus on climate change and my work is specifically focused on the intersection between climate change and invasive species. So kind of coming back to your question about security, it's really impossible for us to think about security in islands without also considering the environment and as you mentioned leaders throughout the Pacific region have repeatedly said that climate change is the greatest threat to security. Yeah, yeah that's right I mean so for those of you who don't bore yourselves with international relations here in the Pacific there is a regional body called the Pacific Islands Forum and all the Pacific nations are a member of that and for the last 10 years they've got together and published and they're communicating that climate change is the number one security threat but your work is really interesting as it sort of burrows down into that and a common theme is health. So a lot of people are not that familiar with sort of that interlinking or intercepting concept of climate change and health and I wanted to ask you about biodiversity in particular like what role does biodiversity and ecosystem have in safeguarding human health? Sure, yeah I mean at the heart of it we have to rethink how we how we prioritize ecosystems and biodiversity in order to prevent negative health outcomes and I'm not just talking about our current situation with COVID-19 this is the idea of planetary health or the one health framework and in one health things like biodiversity management land use practices and food production systems all acknowledge the interconnections between ecosystems plants and animals and humans so what does that mean? A degraded watershed we know is less valuable than a healthy one in part because it can't provide clean water for communities that are downstream and even the best hygiene or water sanitation efforts sometimes cannot make up for the negative health effects of that upper stream degradation in the watershed. Some of my earlier work when I was in Ecuador was at the edge of the Amazon where people were moving into the area and they were deforestation to create farmland but they started seeing more and more malaria outbreaks in the population because mosquitoes were all of a sudden coming into contact people in places where they'd normally just been confined to the forest and so now here we are with this COVID-19 pandemic and we've once again removed some of the natural barriers between humans and wild animals and the diseases that they carry and the one health idea of planetary health really attempts to restore these broken relationships between people and the environment. Yeah how is that playing out in the Pacific I understand you do a lot of your research in the North Pacific what are some examples to help us understand the issues there. Yeah thank you I do have a project in the Marshall Islands right now that's looking at the connections between climate change and health and the goal is to start improving early warning systems to help prevent up disease outbreaks before they start so early last year early 2019 there was a drought in the Western Pacific and it provided the perfect conditions for a dengue outbreak because it was so dry people were storing water around outside their homes in open containers or they weren't cleaning up dump sites where there was standing water tires discarded tires were especially a problem and all it took was one infected person traveling home from the Federated States of Micronesia which is right next to the Marshall Islands and it started this national public health emergency that really pushed the Marshall Islands healthcare system to the point of collapse. This past January the Ministry of Health and the Marshall Islands and I organized a workshop it was in the capital Majiro and it was about the impacts of climate change on health and people from the highest levels of government were there because they know that environmental changes are affecting every every aspect of our lives their lives especially health. Yeah I remember when you were there we were really worried about you you were right you were there right in the middle of the dengue outbreak and you had to wear a long sleeve I I think we're oh let me see I heard a little bell in my head and I'm going crazy or have a question um okay actually so everybody who knows me knows like I'm a terrible driver and that's panning out here as I'm in front of the navigate and so yeah we do have a question about the Marshall Islands um I just want to set the scene a little bit for those who are not familiar with that with the marshals it's a low-lying at all and so um in the widest part of the island is when you fly in into the airport and the wingspan of the airplane actually seems like it takes up the entire um uh width of the um of the runway which actually takes up the entire width of the um of the island which gives you a sense of um A how small it is and B the ocean's right there so it's really low and um I think um you talked about pushing the health infrastructure right to the edge of its capacity it's in a really small island site like that I mean uh I know this is in your area of expertise but I would really be interested in sort of what you observed when you were there on the ground what did that actually look like yeah well as I mentioned Karina you know when we got there we were in the middle of this historic dengue outbreak um and the island of Maduro the atoll itself was just it was totally pushed to the limits um in the hospital the the area around the hospital there was a an entire board that had been slated to be demolished and reconstructed and because of this emergency they were having to use this you know demolition zone as a dengue board because the patients and the doctors needed to be isolated um from other other patients needing hair in the hospital so I mean it was you know it was declared a national emergency back in September but that emergency had persisted and persisted um and just before our trip the Marshall Islands was experiencing kingtides um in early December and I think it was the the Marshall Islands secretary of health who's a fascinating guy named Jack Neenthal and he referred to he referred to the situation in Maduro as a war zone um there was a total ban on travel in between the islands families were separated from their children people were separated from their jobs um and it was all taking place you know on this rolling scale um of compounding disasters um and when I when I left uh at the very end of January um my flight back to Hawaii ended up being one of the last flights in and out of the country um because of that dengue emergency hospitals were a mess um they had no capacity to deal with another deadly outbreak and the whole country had to completely shut down its borders so they've you know by now it seems like they've avoided the worst of the pandemic but their healthcare system was just so fragile to begin with um and that vulnerability really impacts this concept of security that we're talking about yeah thanks for sharing now I know we have a really big Marshallese community here in Hawaii and it just seems like the challenges are well they're challenging I'm getting a little note from the team telling me they were about to go to a break and so we'll pick right up after this sounds great Aloha I'm Kili Akeena the host of Hawaii Together on the ThinkTech Hawaii broadcast network Hawaii Together deals with the problems we face in paradise and looks for solutions whether it's with the economy the government or society we're streamed live on ThinkTech biweekly at 2 p.m on Mondays I want to thank you so much for watching we look forward to seeing you again I'm Kili Akeena Aloha with East Westerner Insights my mom's going to kill me that I stumbled over the someone words Aloha and you're here with Dr. Laura Brinton and she is a scientist at East Westerner and we were just talking about um the impact of environmental changes and what that really looks like on the ground for real people um how that impacts health and uh Dr. Brinton was in the Marshall Islands in the middle of the dinghy outbreak that happened just this year and right before the the COVID pandemic hit so um let's get back to stuff that's not going to make me cry um so Laura you are um I remember when I first met you and I uh I described you as a climate change specialist and you corrected me because actually your expertise amongst other things is in conservation and I I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about how you'll work on biodiversity and climate change fits into this this space this concept of ecological security that we're talking about. Sure yeah um ever since I joined the East Westerner which was about seven years ago now I've been working with the Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessment teams or RISA on climate adaptation and resilience and your show a few weeks ago interviewed my colleague Victoria Piener who's the lead of that program. We had this really great project on Maui for years um modeling groundwater recharge under future of land use and climate scenarios and when I say scenarios I mean that we sat down and we've worked with land managers such as the watershed conservation partnerships and the county of Maui um water and planning departments and they helped us define like what is a possible land management future that you would want to see um you know maybe it's total forest conservation at the high elevations okay we can make a map of that what do you not want to see all invasive trees in the watershed perhaps um and this project really demonstrated um after the modeling was complete that protecting upper elevation forests on Maui could potentially increase groundwater supplies as the climate changes in the future and that's really good news um because these results these types of results can help support funding for conservation efforts by showing we get more water when we protect our forest. At a more regional level um I represent the east west center at international meetings on pacific island biosecurity uh with members and agencies from pacific countries and territories who are all concerned about invasive species threats and how they move from place to place. This December we're organizing the first pacific ecological security conference in Palau in collaboration with the government of Palau and the whole focus of that conference is to make island food systems and marine systems more resilient by tackling some of the threats that are the most damaging across the region such as invasive ants coconut rhinoceros beetle and things like hull fouling that occurs during maritime transport. Could you guys um share the second graphic please thank you but to answer your question about how this fits into the big picture all of these activities are parts of our way to make progress towards meeting sustainable development goals. I think everyone working in this space realizes that we need to prioritize approaches that achieve multiple sustainable development goals at the same time. So building resilience to invasive species hits a lot of the SDGs that are related to health and water and nutrition and equality and climate and that's why for this conference in Palau in December we're inviting not just the environmental and agricultural ministers but also the health ministers because our goals should be aligned and we have to make sure that we're not working against each other. I'm super excited I am well most of Dallas because we're going to Palau and I absolutely love Palau and I'm not sure if we know that one of our team in the research company she is from Palau, Bilyar and then secondly this conference on invasive species also sits alongside another important conference and I wanted if you just wanted to tell us about that. Yeah so the our ocean conference will be immediately before the Pacific Ecological Security Conference and the two I think are going to be really complimentary this this will be the I believe seventh year that there's been an our ocean conference. The location has shifted over time but Palau is incredibly excited to host it this year and as you know President Tommy Rominga-Sau is hugely supportive of conservation and biodiversity protection efforts throughout the region but especially in Palau and so our ocean is going to host a lot of the expertise in marine policy and marine research and we're excited that many of those people will also be able to attend the Ecological Security Conference right after so it's like a if you come to Palau in December you'll have a two-for-one deal. Do you hear that President Rominga-Sau Dr. Burrington is totally like she's a on-your-economic recovery team and the encouraging people to go to Palau. Okay but something that I just remember something you talked about earlier specifically about the coconut rhinoceros beetle and it just reminded me that when I talked about invasive species in past it just seems really abstract to a lot of people and I wondered if you could kind of give some Hawaii-based examples I mean I actually don't know is the coconut rhinoceros beetle here and if not what are other examples of invasive species in Hawaii and you know what do they what do they do like we're not talking about plants right you're talking about animal life. Right yeah the coconut rhinoceros beetle I really wish that I had prepared a graphic of that because it's this gnarly looking and you think to yourself how could this thing you know sneak in from places outside of Hawaii but it actually arrived on we assume military equipment that was being shipped to Hawaii from Guam and that was in about 2014 is when we think that it arrived to Hawaii and it was discovered because there was all this damage to the coconut palms around Hickam airfield and immediately you know the military was on it they cut down all the trees I think they had to incinerate the compostable material that was left over in order to eliminate the habitat for this beetle. It nests and it eats in the crowns of the palm trees and it basically weakens the tree so that it can't withstand any other injuries or threats so if there are for example a bunch of palm trees that have been damaged by a coconut rhinoceros beetle and a storm hits those palm trees oftentimes just fall over and die so it's just it really really weakens the ecosystem and unfortunately at Guam especially it has been hit very hard by this infestation and has lost a huge number of its palm trees and of course you know the importance of coconut and coconut products to Pacific Island livelihoods and cultures and not to mention the iconic view of swaying palm trees when you arrive in Hawaii so it's an utmost interest that we get this infestation under control. It's just crazy how much damage those little suckers can do and being from New Zealand and agriculture is the backbone of our economy I mean it's something that countries that have a large agricultural sector and export market they take it really seriously. I remember when we had an infestation of freak flies a long time ago in New Zealand if you're watching and you buy our imports but exports not sorted basically the whole country shut down and they just did massive flyover of pesticides to try to wipe it out such you know because of the impact it would have had on our on our economy and crops but I digress I'm just looking at the time because I wanted to ask about you so you sort of touched on a little bit of your life before the East West End before when you mentioned Ecuador and the Galapagos so what were you doing there Daphne going to Freight Health? That is a really good question. When I was in graduate school and it was just starting I was doing research in that for doing Amazon as I mentioned on the relationship between deforestation and malaria outbreaks but at that time there was a lot of drug trafficking issues across the border with Colombia and violence around that field site and so one summer we actually decided that it was just too dangerous to go and at that time it just so happened that the United Nations had just supported the largest mammal eradication program in the world it was a program to eradicate goats from certain parts of the Galapagos Islands and the Galapagos National Park really wanted someone out there to map vegetation recovery in the areas where the goats had been and so that is how I ended up like a month later hiking up a volcano 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador with a bunch of really nice Galapagos National Park guards who didn't speak any English at all my Spanish was was pretty bad then and then suddenly we were at the top of this volcano in the middle of the ocean surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of giant tortoises and thousands of goat skeletons and so that trip actually became part of my dissertation and I ultimately ended up taking a job in Galapagos after I graduated that work in Galapagos is what really prepared me to kind of work at the intersection of science and policy you know on the one hand I was mapping the impacts of invasive species on the landscape but the real goal was to think about things like strengthening local agriculture and reducing reliance on imported goods which bring pests and diseases to the islands you know a lot of people don't know it but there are about 30,000 people who live in the Galapagos and so there's a lot of tension between you know this pristine archipelago that's a world heritage site and towns with tourism operations and hotels that generate waste to change the landscape so there's just there's a lot of tension between those two sides I should ask you a serious question but I um especially since we only have four minutes to go but just quickly did you see goats and tortoises together yeah yeah there's some and you know it's really sad I mean you would you would go to a place where there were feral goats I mean these are not people's goats they're keeping in pens these are goats that at some point escaped and they they reproduce really rapidly they actually are incredibly adapted to very dry places they can even drink salt water and they just multiplied and spread over this you know gorgeous pristine landscape far really far from the towns and the communities and they they were eating the vegetation so rapidly that the the tortoises just couldn't keep up and then they would trample the giant tortoise eggs and the nests so they they caused many many different problems oh gosh that was much more involved than I thought I think we have maybe two minutes three minutes to go and it's been super interesting and we'll have to get you on again but I was wondering what you would tell our audience about what they can do to make a difference I mean can individuals make a difference to any of the public we've been talking about today totally I mean right now it's kind of hard to not feel a little discouraged about what's happening both to the planet and to and to us but there's a lot that people can do to support good work and to support each other I think the lockdown at least for me has shown us that we really can make sacrifices we can stay home and we can wear masks like your demonstration at the meeting last week and you know and we can donate extra food and a lot of us have learned that we can work remotely we can drive less we can pollute less we can provide higher wages for frontline workers we can spend more time thinking and caring about the health and the safety of our neighbors so I would encourage people to think about making some of the changes that they've made during this period permanent you know I want to commit to flying less often for work trips that really could be done online you know I've definitely I've been in Plum and Palau and Saipan over the last couple of weeks I never would have been able to do this I think I have to wrap up so I just wanted to say thank you for inspiring us to do what we can do and and for coming on the show today so that's the East West Thunder Insights for this week and join us next time