HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The University of Guam Center for Island Sustainability and Sea Grant will be moving to help stand up sustainable initiatives in islands across Micronesia.
Support for neighboring islands will come from $709,000 that UOG received from the National Sea Grant College Program to help expand the local 2030 Islands Network and green growth initiatives, Austin Shelton, director of the University of Guam’s Center for Island Sustainability and Sea Grant, said Tuesday.
The National Sea Grant College Program provides institutions across the U.S. funding for education, research and training geared toward conserving coasts and waterways. Last year, UOG became the latest school to receive national status in the program, and a meeting for all 34 program members was hosted at the Hyatt Regency Guam this week.
“You may be familiar with our premier program at the University of Guam that we lead, called Guam Green Growth. It is our island’s most comprehensive public/private partnership ever created to achieve a sustainable future. And for the first time, we’re going to be able to, with these funds, offer our island partners, our island neighbors the opportunity to hire their own green growth coordinators,” Shelton said of the additional funding.
He went on to explain that Guam Green Growth has outlined hundreds of sustainability goals for the island, and in just the past few years has pushed toward them by establishing Circular Economy Makerspace and Innovation Hub, G3 community gardens and the G3 Conservation Corps.
“We’ll be able to offer our partners, for example, like the Northern Marianas College the Republic of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of the Marshall Islands will be able to get their own green growth coordinators to go through the same process that we’ve been doing. And hopefully, we will be expanding the capacity throughout Micronesia and the Pacific to build on sustainable development.”
Following UOG’s suit, Northern Marianas College plans to also pursue Sea Grant status, said NMC President Galvin Deleon Guerrero, who was present at the Hyatt on Tuesday.
“I think one thing we know for sure that this week highlights is that, whether it comes to diversifying our economy with different aquatic industries, or whether it comes to feeding the world population with initiatives like aquaculture, or really just fighting climate change, these challenges require a global response,” Deleon Guerrero said.
The partnerships made between the islands in the Marianas and others across the Pacific would help to improve the world, he added.
“Because I know, and I’ve said this before, our islands may be small, our numbers may be minimal, and we may be scattered, but when we look at the ocean that still unites us and not separates us, we know that our dreams run as vast as the Pacific that our ancestors navigated, and they run as deep as the Marianas Trench. And so I am very, very excited to join in this partnership.”
Austin Shelton, director of the University of Guam Center for Island Sustainability, makes remarks during the induction ceremony for the first cohort of the Local 2030 Islands Network Conservation Corps at the UOG residence hall in Mangilao on Sept. 1, 2023.
