Maheata White Davies (ELP 2024) | Consultant, OxPol Solutions, French Polynesia (Morea)
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? In his most iconic masterpiece, Paul Gauguin raises existential questions that everyone asks themselves during their life. As our world is in crisis - we are witnessing two major wars and an unprecedented global warming. Today, more than ever, we need to take time to chart our course on planet Earth.
Where do we come from? We descend from Polynesian navigators, and the ocean connects us.
Our Polynesian ancestors settled the remote Pacific islands - the last place on Earth to become inhabited by humans - more than 2,000 years ago through the art of wayfinding techniques and knowledge passed over oral tradition. They engineered robust outrigger canoes and developed a sophisticated navigation system based on observations of the stars (star compass), winds, ocean swells, bird migration, and other natural signs to find their way over the open ocean long before the first European explorers reached the Pacific with compass and sextants.
They traveled thousands of kilometers from Southeast Asia to the East and eventually reached my home island, Raiatea, in French Polynesia. This territory of 118 islands spread across 5 million square kilometers, the size of Europe, right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Raiatea is known as the “sacred island” and the “cradle of Polynesian civilization”. It sits at the heart of the Polynesian triangle formed by Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island.
As a Polynesian, I am often told that I live in the middle of nowhere which is not surprising. But, in our culture, the ocean does not divide us, it connects us. We believe that we live in the middle of everywhere.
What are we? We are Polynesians in the French Republic
The first European navigators described Polynesia as a paradise, and our islands inspired the Enlightenment in Europe, as did great artists like Paul Gauguin and, more recently, Hollywood stars like Marlon Brando. In 1769, on his scientific voyage to observe the Transit of Venus - the first globally coordinated scientific action - Captain James Cook described Polynesians as vigorous, healthy people. At that time, our islands were self-sufficient and 100% sustainable.
Some 250 years later, after colonization and global capitalism, French Polynesia is one of the richest countries in the Pacific Islands and proudly advocates France’s republican values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. However, too many of our people are unwell and our islands are vulnerable. We import almost everything: energy, food, disease, water, champagne. We have one of the highest diabetes rates in the world. Pollution has become a serious issue from radioactive fallout - we were the center for France’s nuclear testing- to pesticides and plastics.
Today, we face this sad reality, but what I worry about most is that we rely on big countries like America, Europe, and China. We used to be able to ignore what they do on the other side of the world, but like the Hobbits in the Lord of the Rings, we can no longer ignore the dangers that are engulfing the world. As pollution affects the atmosphere and the ocean, our two global commons, the dangers are coming for us too, even in our island paradise. We are on the same boat, we need to change our course, and no matter how small we are, we must act.
Where are we going? As citizens of the world, we must act locally but think globally.
Despite their relative smallness and vulnerability, our islands can make a difference by being a land, an ocean, of innovations. Energy is at the core of our lives, and as we all know, we must move away from our dependence on polluting finite resources like fossil fuels. We need to find new, clean, and sustainable ways to heat, cool, and power our homes, businesses, and transport systems. Of course, the sun is an amazing resource. But it only shines during the day and while batteries help, we also need other options.
The ocean remains a largely untapped source of energy and French Polynesia has pioneered an innovative solution known as Sea Water Air Conditioning (SWAC). It involves pumping up cold water from 900-meters deep to cool down buildings ( Sustainable Cooling: A Deep Dive into Seawater Air-Conditioning (SWAC) Solutions for the Caribbean). This technology was developed in Hawaii as a solution toward net zero carbon. The first commercial applications were in my country, at five-star-resorts in Bora Bora and Tetiaroa. Following these successes, our public hospital in Tahiti is now equipped with SWAC and is saving millions of euros each year, emitting hardly any carbon.
We must redesign our society. I believe that combining scientific knowledge with new technologies and integrating them with culture and traditional wisdom can help inform society to make better decisions. I believe that democracy is the way to embed human values and to ensure that these decisions are made for the common good. As we are sailing to our future island, island earth, yes, our utopia, we must remember the key elements to successful navigation. Information is vital we need to observe, we need data on how the world is and what reality is. Humanity also needs to understand how our planet works, the goal of science. We must use data to build collective intelligence and the foresight to assess different policy choices. Action is another key; we need to try things we hope will make the world better. Most important of all learning is key; we must check our position, observe the impact of our actions (collect data), improve our understanding (update our models), and correct our course.
Our islands are surrounded by the ocean, an ocean of infinite possibilities to feed our people, power our homes, and restore the atmosphere by sequestering carbon. In French Polynesia, we think of Moorea as the “Goldilocks Island”, a model system for the Earth, big enough that it has all the features of a modern community but small enough for researchers to study everything, from genes to society. We must act locally but think globally. We must attract the best technologies and the best minds, and integrate them with our culture and our traditional wisdom to build our island paradise, our island earth. That is the movement we are building –the voyage we are planning–in our Island Innovation Hub with the help of UC Berkeley’s research station on Moorea. Come join us!
[Blog photos provided by the blog author, Maheata White Davies.]