10.2190/6PWM-CFTT-PCHE-PVM9 6PWMCFTTPCHEPVM9 3 Political Attempts to Defend the Environment: A Pacific Island Case 187 207 20020509 20020509 20020509 20020509 6PWMCFTTPCHEPVM9.pdf http://baywood.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=6PWMCFTTPCHEPVM9 3 Joshua Epstein New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Stony Brook, New York How can Palauans, inhabitants of a small island group in the western Pacific, protect their environment from an array of complex threats? The present article examines the strengths and weaknesses of Palauan strategies in this regard. These illustrate the importance of political and socio-economic factors, gaps between relatively short-term considerations and long-term goals, and the maturation of Palau's environment and development dilemma. A number of roughly sequential events in Palau's recent history provide the case material. These start with the controversy over whether to locate a "superport" for oil in Palau, during the mid-to-late 1970s. Palau's emergence, in 1981, as a constitutional republic is the last event covered. The reader is also updated on subsequent events. Palau's characteristics were described in the author's first article, printed in the previous edition of the <i>Journal of Environmental Systems</i> [1]. The last article will discuss the instructive parallels between Palau's dilemma, and the nuclear and environmental problems that face us all. J. Epstein, Indigenous Attempts to Protect the Environment: A Pacific Island Case, <i>Journal of Environmental Systems, 17</i>:2, pp. 131-148, 1987-88. R. Panero, A Proposal for the Development of an International Transshipment and Petroleum Storage Port for the District of Palau, Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, prepared and submitted for consultation to the Imperial Government of Iran by Robert Panero Associates, Inc., Port Pacific Development Corporation, p. 15, June 11, 1976. H. F. Olson, An Assessment of the Port Pacific Proposal, unpublished paper, University of Hawaii Pacific Collection, p. 51, May 1978. M. Herz (compiler), Palau and the Superport: The Development of an Ocean Ethic, Publication No. 1 of the Ocean Research and Policy Institute of the Oceanic Society, An Oceanic Society Symposium at San Francisco State University (June 13), as part of the 58th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, San Francisco, CA, p. 17, 1977. J. Epstein, Dependency and Affluence as Challenges to National Development in Palau, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii, pp. 451-452, May 1986.