Your thoughts

What is your definition of a green and blue economy?

By Shahani Mala, journalism student at FNU

Nimoza Bethel, Vanuatu

“What I understand from green and blue econmy is that people we have to use resources that’s sustainable to the environment that keeps the atmosphere, the sea, and the terrestrial side to be more involment to keep it sustainable.”

Madhavi Colton

“It’s an economy that can grow to support human livelihood and culture while also sustain and work towards conservation.”

Aaron Buncle, SPREP

“Sustainable Development. Well, from an economics point of view I would say it’s properly considering the environment and living within the limits of a nature system.”

Durusolo Tavura, Fiji

 “What my understanding of green and blue economy is how you protect the environment. Most of the things that we use now especially things all generated by machinery so in the new modern day now they using all these battery systems that cause pollution.”

King Sam, Palau

“One way to look at generating sustainable revenue for management of protected areas, you can look at either a green economy which means you look at the terrestrial side to generate that revenue and possibly identify some sustainable financing measures through that way or can look at blue economy which in my opinion means you looking at fisheries and identifying if there’s any potential to actually generate revenue for management to that state where these things are applied. “

Premila Chandra, Fiji

 “From what I have learnt from this week long conference is that it’s to do with nature conservation, as simple as that. It’s to do with both our marine environment and our land environment, the biodiversity environment that we have in our country or any other country for that matter in the Pacific Island so green blue economy to my understanding is basically, what NGOS are trying to do in order to conserve our pristine environment.”

Shahani Mala is a member of the Media Team providing coverage of the 9th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas from 2 to 6 December in Suva, Fiji. This is a partnership between the Fiji National University (FNU), University of the South Pacific (USP), SPREP and Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) whereby a team of 10 journalism students are mentored by senior reporters as they cover the conference. This activity is funded by the Pacific Assistance Media Scheme (PACMAS).