10.2190/EQYD-2DR6-29JK-3LHV EQYD2DR629JK3LHV 4 Indigenous Attempts to Protect the Environment: A Pacific Island Case 131 148 20020509 20020509 20020509 20020509 EQYD2DR629JK3LHV.pdf http://baywood.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=EQYD2DR629JK3LHV 2 Joshua Epstein Locust Valley, N. Y. This article examines attempts by the inhabitants of a tiny and emerging, dependent country to safeguard their island environment, in the face of complex threats. It is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Palau; which is now a constitutional republic, and still part of the United States administered Trust Territory of the Pacific. Palauan conditions are introduced, including the Islands' interaction with a succession of foreign powers. Subsequent articles will analyze a number of roughly sequential, pivotal events in Palau's recent evolution. These start in 1975, with the controversy over whether to locate a "superport" for oil, in Palau. Treatment ends with the initial challenges to Palau's environmentally-protective government — this was in early 1981. The study spotlights the maturation of Palau's environment/development dilemma. Though it shares some Third, as well as Fourth world characteristics, this case of "national underdevelopment" is also distinctive. In fact, it lays bare dynamics that fuel a most worrisome aspect of "modernity;" the incremental, and building threat of irreparable damage to the environment, from uncontrolled economic and/or military activities. J. Epstein, Dependence and Affluence as Challenges to National Development in Palau, Unpublished Dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1986. R. Parmentier, The Sacred Remains: A Historical Ethnography of Nuremlenguii, Palau, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, p. 5, 1981. D. Shuster, Islands of Change: Church, School, and Elected Government, 1891-1981, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Hawaii, p. 142, 1982. R. McKnight, Port Pacific: Some Cultural Implications, Paper at the Oceanic Society Symposium on the Palau Superport, American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting, San Francisco, pp. 6, 31, 1977. D. Nevin, <i>The American Touch in Micronesia</i>, Norton Publishers, New York, p. 78, 1977. D. Richard, <i>United States Naval Administration of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands</i>, Volume 1, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., p. 164, 1957. Palau Community Action Agency, <i>A History of Palau</i>, Volume 3, Koror, Palau, p. 474, 1978. R. W. Gale, <i>The Americanization of Micronesia: A Study of the Consolidation of U. S. Rule in the Pacific</i>, University Press of America, Washington, D. C., 1979. D. McHenry, <i>Micronesia: Trust Betrayed</i>, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, New York and Washington, D. C., p. 3, 1975. <i>Solomon Report</i>, Pacific Collection of Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii in Honolulu, p. 4, 1963. M. Hamnet and R. Kiste, "American Rule in Micronesia: Where Have All the Dollars Gone?", <i>Contact Magazine</i>, p. 4, 1981. C. Johnson, Palau and the Superport: The Development of an Ocean Ethic, An Oceanic Society Symposium at San Francisco State University as Part of the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Publication #1 of the Ocean Research and Policy Institute of the Oceanic Society, San Francisco, California, p. 27, 1977.