Samoa, Culture and Environment

In 2003, through the Alliance21 project, an environmental initiative was held in Samoa as part of the opening of the Nofoalii Centre for Cultural Research. Leaders of this Centre are on the committee for the Charter for Responsibility, with the Samoan members maintaining project work in the Pacific and in New Zealand.

A symposium was held in New Zealand in November 2004, supported by the Charter for Responsibility. The Symposium was to build community awareness of the value of cultural knowledge for Pasifika communities and professional groups. In the globalized environment it has to be a conscious task to preserve cultural identity, retain integrity with cultural legacies and the wisdom that has arisen from the ages of the experience of the Pacific. The pressure for culture to become eroded in favour of commercial pressures means that indigenous languages, the relational priorities and reciprocal obligations of Pacific peoples and traditional governance and systems of land tenure can be swept aside.