It became apparent early in the study that the question of water supply from the Bonriki water reserve was a complex and sensitive social, cultural and economic issue. The community’s affiliation with their land lies at the root of the quest by Bonriki villagers for increased Government compensation for the use of their land for the water reserve and the international airport. Land to the I-Kiribati is both a social and economic resource. No I-Kiribati can be described as being landless as all have an interest in land in one form or other. The I-Kiribati rely substantially on their lands to provide for subsistence living, even in the urbanised setting of South Tarawa.
An interest in land provides a reliable source of food as well as attendant fishing rights in the adjoining lagoon and ocean. It also provides the opportunity for cash income such as harvesting of copra. In contrast, a landless person or family, such as potentially exists at Bonriki, has no reliable means of providing for themselves and their extended family. Further, given that parents have the right to disinherit children from family interests in land, there is a strong tradition and motivation to care for their parents in their old age, so as to share in the families land wealth (Jones, 1997). Added to this is the I-Kiribati norm that people’s activities on their own land and their use of the land’s resources, are their own business (Harrison, 1980).
Traditionally, they can do whatever they wish with their own land. Such socio-cultural norms and values, so fundamental to the I-Kiribati way of life, are increasingly being eroded in the Bonriki community and in urban South Tarawa.
Centralised control of land and resources for public purposes is a notion inherited from the period of colonial rule (Crennan, 1998). It is a concept foreign to the norms and values of the traditional community. These socio-cultural norms and values, their quest for increased compensation and the complexity of issues so coloured the responses of most individuals that it was not possible to clearly separate oral traditions and history concerning groundwater and its use from the on-going dispute with the Government. Moreover, oral traditions about groundwater, evolving from rural, low-density, isolated community experiences would appear to have limited relevance to the urbanised, high density, suburban environment of South Tarawa to-day. What could be ascertained, however, was the identification of a range of socio-cultural norms and values which directly impact on land management practices and water reserve management issues in Bonriki (see Table 4.1). These norms and values go a long way to explaining the attitudes, practices and aspirations of the Bonriki community in regard to the use of their lands as a water reserve by Government.
Table 4.1 Land management practices, Bonriki - The impact of socio-cultural norms and values on water reserve management
Land Management Identified Socio-Cultural Norms Impact on Water Reserve
Element Identified at and Values Management at Bonriki
Bonriki income on a day to day basis enforcement including
security of water reserve
l Provision of housing l landowners can build when and l increasing number (30 plus) and shelter where they wish on their land of houses on reserve edge
l landowner must provide housing l increasing number of roads and shelter for immediate and and access tracks crossing
extended family + reserve
l Gardens and animal l traditional elements of I-Kiribati l contamination of freshwater
enclosures lifestyle lens and disease
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Traditionally, rainwater was collected from pamlams palm thatched roofs and was flavoured and discoloured. Additionally, the national drink, palm toddy has to be made with te ran, further adding to the I-Kiribati preference for well water over rainwater (Harrison, 1980).
The distinction between rainwater and well water may indicate that traditional knowledge about water does not include the processes of recharge of or natural losses from groundwater.
Despite the traditional outstanding strengths of the I-Kiribati in navigation and reading the sea and weather conditions, there appears to be a general ‘disconnectedness’ from groundwater and the processes governing its quantity and quality. For example, the study found that there was, in the I-Kiribati language, no word for evaporation, one of the two principal components of atoll water balance (White, 1996). In order to attempt to explain the processes governing the supply of water to the groundwater to the Bonriki people, the word buanerake (literally, vapour upwards) was coined.
A UNESCO-sponsored study of Tungaru (Kiribati) traditions on the impacts of climate change and sea level rise revealed some apparently startlingly ignorance about groundwater (Riinga et al., 1997). When asked What do you think caused the well water to be brackish?, 45.6% of the 201 respondents did not know, 26% thought it was due to the sun or increasing temperature and only 13.7% thought it was due to the sea or increase in sea level. When the same sample population was asked for Ways to improve water quality? 43.6% had no idea, 26.5% said boil water 3.9% said use rainwater and only 0.5% said dig the well away from the sea. Many I-Kiribati do not believe in germs or that they can be made sick by something in water they cannot see.
While such surveys need to be treated with caution, given the I-Kiribati tendency to avoid conflict (Saito, 1997), there does appear to be a general lack of understanding about shallow groundwater and groundwater processes. This is also the case in many other nations. The UNESCO Groundwater Pollution project conducted in Tonga o (Crennan et al., 1998) also revealed a lack of community awareness about groundwater and sources of groundwater pollution. Together, these point to the need for a community education and awareness program, developed with local communities and targeted at key groups such as primary and high school students.